Monday 2 May 2022 The Murrah

Just a quick paddle today to try out the recently acquired and latest boy toy: the waterproof drone.

A high tide of 1.4ms at 9.22am resulted shallow going when we got onto the water at 9.50am

It was a superb autumn day; sunny, warm with just a hint of breeze - perfect for paddling and drone flying.

Poddling along and

carefully picking our way

we managed to

reach our destination without running aground. Whilst I unpacked brunch L unpacked the drone and got ready to fly.  As I sat on shore and sipped my coffee L paddled back out onto the water and let loose the machine.

All went according to plan until

it did not! The machine suddenly took off, heading south at a remarkable pace until I lost sight of it. L after giving up on the controller took off in hot pursuit. About 10 minutes passed then I heard some buzzing followed by a bang and and a splash followed shortly thereafter by some more angry buzzing and splashing.

L reappearing paddled over to and under a shrub overhanging the water and then there was more frantic buzzing and splashing.  

Having retrieved the drone he paddled back,

bloody and bowed.  His response to my question "how did it go" was the archetypal "I don't want to talk about it".  

The drone in question has very mixed reviews with several different problems complained about and from my observation it seemed that L encountered all those problems in the one flight. 

After making use of the first aid kit to patch him up, we sat down to eat our brunch.  The delicious curried egg sanga's L had made and the beauty of our surrounds soon working their magic, dispelling L's  mood.

Suddenly noticing the water level had dropped, we realised we had  perhaps lingered too long and quickly packed up and returned to the water.

The tide was well and truly on the way out and the further upstream we paddled the more shallow the water became as evidenced by these two plovers standing the middle of the river.

Paddling steadily we made it back at 12.30pm. L having run out of water dragged his boat for the last 30 metres, whilst I managed to sneak through along the edge of the reeds.  Back at our launch site as I waited for L I sat in the boat and was happily entertained by the myriads of little fish in the water beside me. Unfortunately every time I leant over to take a pic they scattered.

 Verdict:  24hours later: still "don't want to talk about it" :)