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| Extreme Adventure Island fishing | | Print | |
| Written by Josh | |
| Monday, 01 June 2009 | |
Without the fish... Times like this, you learn to appreciate the polynesian style of kayaking Sunday's trip out into Shark Bay could barely be called a fishing trip because it was cut relatively short and I didn't get much fishing in. And even if I did, I still wouldn't have liked my chances of catching fish. This day had the same feel about it as Saturday, only the weather was worse. Winds weren't quite as strong for the most part, and when I launched the water looked rosy. This place is notoriously deceptive though, particularly so on this day. As soon as I'd pedaled out past the headlands winds kicked in and made for some fairly uncomfortable fishing conditions. Thick rainclouds in the distance were closing the gap and there just didn't seem to be any fish on the bite. I had a feeling today might be a short trip (which is partly why I only took out a single ama, instead of rigging up the complete trimaran) and I was right. But instead of paddling around the waves that break on the shoulder of the headland, I decided to save time and effort and just come back through them. To be fair to my common sense, I did give a wide berth to the highest parts, but feeling overly confident with the added stability offered by even just a single ama, I somewhat foolishly decided to get in amongst wash. But it wasn't really until I was in there in the fluffy stuff that I realised how foolish it was.  Splish-splash, I was taking a bath! Everything was leashed before I did this, and I was nice and close to land, so there wasn't really much personal danger. But when the force of that first wave hit me I instantly knew that the yak was precariously close to tipping, and had I not reacted by leaning over onto the ama, it would have gone over sure. As much fun as the ride was, I wasn't sure if I wanted another one. I wasn't given a choice though because moments later I was picked up again (though this time I was in a better position). The weight of the ama forced the yak to swing around into the wave though, once again skidding along under the weight of a wall of turbulent water, leaning precariously with my full torso hiking out the side. As the wave passed underneath the yak drew to a stop, a lot like skidding to a stop on a pushbike. Very cool... very Pepsi to the max! It certainly proved to be a faster way of getting back to the launching area. But definitely not a smarter way. Not a short cut I'm likely to be taking again. This is my first high res clip (1280 x 720p) and although not all that long (just over 3 minutes) is a relatively large file size. For reasons that took me a fair while to figure out, it looks great on my PC, but crap online. Compared with what I was hoping for, it's so bad, infact, that I decided to delete it from youtube (rather than have it infect my youtube channel). Its a shame because the clip is pretty good. I could recompile it and go about uploading it differently for much better results, but I really couldn't be bothered going through all that and then re-uploading again. The clip is available on Dailymotion, however, and is worth watching if you don't really mind poor-quality video. So what went wrong? Why did such high quality 1280x720p turn to crap in translation? At this point my best guess is that it is because I used an application to upload the clip to several sites at one go. During the process, I think the video is recompiled to be compatible with the lowest common donominator. For best results for youtube, I think I'm just going to have to upload to youtube exclusively. Finding a good editor program that will allow me to edit MP4 files has been challenging as well. Windows Movie Maker (the software I have been using) cannot open MP4 files, nor can it save as MP4. So I also have a dilema in which file format best to use for online viewing. I can, however, convert MP4 to MPEG files, which Movie Maker can open. It adds an extra few hours to the process, but it's probably something I'll have to swallow. I'm also going to need to upgrade to a much larger harddrive, as I'm filling space rapidly, and not anywhere near vigilant enough about deleting useless crap.    |
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