Posted By: christian myrick
2017 bwkc part 2 - 10/11/17 04:36 PM
We have been looking forward to this for months. Our prep was solid. My soulmate, amanda and her youngest son, ryder and another buddy went down to corpus thursday after work. Overnight drive we pull up to bob hall pier to see our good friend george young. We also noticed the tide was up super high. Into the parking lot. We walked out on the pier and saw some monster surf. The next day was spent just trying to find any dry sand at all. Found a tiny piece at packery channel. Took empty yaks into the surf to play and get practiced up for the next days tourney. We got beat up a bit. Jellyfish were everywhere, not the worst just a nucense. After that castnetted some mullet in the surf and casted ryders(8yo) pole out. It is a fin nor offshore 7500 on a 10 ft surf rod,,,he just got for his birthday. We get a big run, its a 35" bull red! Ryder reeled it in by himself, a little help holding the rod. The next morning we decide to go to port a south jetty to launch for the tourney. The surf was easily managable getting out. We decided to take the road less traveled (most others went to the ships) we headed straight for a rig 6 miles offshore. The first part of our paddle was easy going. Current was noticable but managable. About 11 am we are 4 or so miles out the wind picks up. There are 4 of us going out, bkt, george young, amanda and me. Bkt,,,the smart one,,,decides to turn around to fish around the jetty. We are trying to find clear water. The 3 of us press on to the rig. The further we paddle out the waves grew. No breaking waves yet but they are comming from 2 directions. We see several 10, 12 ft rollers. The wind and current pushed us around the south side of the rig, it stops being fun about here. We decide to paddle back. George has a spanish mak and amanda and i have nothing. We got pushed so far south we paddled into the wind and current the whole way, it was brutal. We were lucky to average 1 mph paddling as hard as we could. Now the waves are getting much larger some 20 ft+. It really isnt much fun now at all. Nothing made me feel smaller than sitting on top of those waves looking down knowing i was about to slide down the back side. After 5 grueling hours of the hardest paddling ive ever done the 3 of us made it back to our launch point. Bodies totally spent at that point, cramping. It was a huge relief to see bkt on land. George and myself wipe out in the surf, amanda rode in like a champ. We didnt make it back in time to see the winners. Had the best beer ive ever had that night next to the campfire. In 35 years of paddling ive never seen anything like that. Some of you will judge us for going out or staying out as long as we did. We all talked about the possibles before, we knew the risks, its not for everyone. It was however for us. We probably wont do it anymore...dont wanna tempt fate twice. Lol. Sunday we spent the day catching bull reds with ryder. This was one of the best experiences of my life. It had every single emotion all wrapped up in one trip. Those of you thinking of offshore, understand, it is the most beautifull thing you can do. Its amazing. Its also unforgiving. We were lucky, had conditions got any worse we wouldve had to call coastguard for rescue. We had contact via vhf radio.