Paddling to Shark Island
Aug. 27th, 2017 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranCome with me this week on a morning paddle to Shark Island...
We'll leave nice and early, so the harbour is both empty and calm.
It will be a nice easy paddle across to the island. We'll have to watch the wind and the chop though. Thee swell picks up quickly when a westerly blows across the harbour. Here you can see the ferry wharf, and on the right is a Navy degaussing station, where they used to reset ships' magnetic fields to avoid detection by magnetic mines.
Just beside the wharf is a little beach, only visible at low tide. There are rocks below the water all around the beach, so it's quite tricky to land a sailing dinghy here. It's much easier with a plastic kayak though.
Once we've landed, we can climb up the rock wall. You can just make out the rocks beyond the beach. I wonder if it might actually be easier to land on the other side of the wharf.
The island consists of one big hill with lots of trees and a rotunda on top. It's actually part of the Sydney Harbour National Park, so there are public toilets and picnic tables as well. We'll need to pay a $7 landing fee to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
From the island, the views are stunning.
When we've had enough on the island, we'll head back onto the water. Australia's largest city is still just waking up.
We'll paddle around to the northern side of the island to look at the Shark Island Light. This marks the lower edge of the Eastern shipping channel. Technically, it's a "port" marker. The red light means that ships heading upstream need to pass it "to port" (i.e. keep it on their left side).
It's pretty cool to see the "Shark Light" up close, but wait... What's that in the water?
It's a seal! Or actually multiple seals... And they're playing together in the water. It's a bit hard to count them as they are only visible when they're out of the water.
We'll sit here for a while and enjoy the show. These are most likely new zealand fur seals.
After we're done (who is ever really "done" watching seals), we'll continue around the eastern side of the island. The morning sun makes the sandstone glow and we'll be in the lee of the island, so there's no wind.
We'll stop for one final glimpse at the southern tip of the island before we head home. The wind has built, so it will be a brisk, wind-assisted paddle back.
We'll leave nice and early, so the harbour is both empty and calm.
It will be a nice easy paddle across to the island. We'll have to watch the wind and the chop though. Thee swell picks up quickly when a westerly blows across the harbour. Here you can see the ferry wharf, and on the right is a Navy degaussing station, where they used to reset ships' magnetic fields to avoid detection by magnetic mines.
Just beside the wharf is a little beach, only visible at low tide. There are rocks below the water all around the beach, so it's quite tricky to land a sailing dinghy here. It's much easier with a plastic kayak though.
Once we've landed, we can climb up the rock wall. You can just make out the rocks beyond the beach. I wonder if it might actually be easier to land on the other side of the wharf.
The island consists of one big hill with lots of trees and a rotunda on top. It's actually part of the Sydney Harbour National Park, so there are public toilets and picnic tables as well. We'll need to pay a $7 landing fee to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
From the island, the views are stunning.
When we've had enough on the island, we'll head back onto the water. Australia's largest city is still just waking up.
We'll paddle around to the northern side of the island to look at the Shark Island Light. This marks the lower edge of the Eastern shipping channel. Technically, it's a "port" marker. The red light means that ships heading upstream need to pass it "to port" (i.e. keep it on their left side).
It's pretty cool to see the "Shark Light" up close, but wait... What's that in the water?
It's a seal! Or actually multiple seals... And they're playing together in the water. It's a bit hard to count them as they are only visible when they're out of the water.
We'll sit here for a while and enjoy the show. These are most likely new zealand fur seals.
After we're done (who is ever really "done" watching seals), we'll continue around the eastern side of the island. The morning sun makes the sandstone glow and we'll be in the lee of the island, so there's no wind.
We'll stop for one final glimpse at the southern tip of the island before we head home. The wind has built, so it will be a brisk, wind-assisted paddle back.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-27 02:01 am (UTC)Unrelated to that, though, I didn't realize ships had magnetic fields, or that those fields could be reset--amazing.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-27 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-27 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-28 08:36 pm (UTC)As I understand it (and I'm getting to the limits of my knowledge here), when they degauss the ship, they are actually aligning the magnetic field of the ship so that the field lines point up and down, so they have no net effect on the earth's magnetic field on the horizontal plane. However, as the ship moves along, the field lines gradually get re-aligned back to the horizontal again.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-13 07:53 pm (UTC)Now what was it I had years ago that had a degauss button on it...?