Pos: here
Loc: across Cabo Manglares on the water
Acc: Navy boat
Dist: 50,3 km
Start: 6:40 End: 17:00

Tomorrow’s estimated landing: Tumaco

The short night at the Navy station was perfect – apart from me locking my bathroom last night from the outside unintentionally. The trick was the locking button pressed itself in against the wall when opening the door. One guy was climbing up via the ceiling where he easily pushed some cover aside into the bathroom and could open it from inside again…seems like this was not the first time they did that 🙂

This morning ,the tide was really at it’s lowest, and the concrete staircase just had enough water upfront to get my kayak afloat. Inside the village were two huge travel busses parked – were there really tourists coming to La Tola? Or did they shift workers in the morning to somewhere? On the water, I saw something like a tourist boat driving around…

I got flooded out the river mouth with nice current, and took this time the main exit channel. It was wave free a long while, where already it was breaking in multiple lines to both sides. I already had hope I could paddle out through all unbroken water…

But eventually even the highway was facing breakers, but I figured they can’t be that bad. Just go through…

I had to pass about twenty lines of moderate just about not breaking waves, then they broke, but fortunately not everywhere at once, so I could zig zag and stop and go my way out without getting trashed. They became actually higher and higher on this “main” exit, and eventually they stopped breaking, after maybe another twenty lines to pass where I was bouncing quite often with a heavy crash over the crest landing on the other side.

The biggest ones were fortunately not breaking, at least not just when I was there, but they were scary high and eventually breaking noisily quite close behind me. I think I had again quite good luck and timing…

I was just sitting again in calm water and started my breakfast granola with milk powder, as a fishing boat also came out the breaker zone, and obviously admired me to have come through unscathed…two friendly guys had a small chat with me.

Another boat stopped also by with two other guys looking actually not a s friendly, and my conversation was very short. Good bye!

In the Navy station, they said the escort boat was supposed to wait outside the river mouth for me – but all day I saw not any Ecuadorian escort boat any more. They may have given up on me already…

I paddled safely out of Ecuador eventually into Colombian waters, where I was supposed to meet the Colombian coast guard boat from 12 h on. I was already well into the Colombian side, and not any boat showed up until 3.30 pm…5 more km to Cabo Manglares! What to do now? I felt like I’d be actually quite happy to have them by my side as planned with Capitán de Fregatas Carlos Delgado, but my direct call to the boat via VHF was not successful (I learned later it was *their* radio making problems… , and my direct call to Carlos via sat phone didn’t connect either.

But I could call Peter, who eventually got hold of Carlos who promised to check where the boat may be gone…

After those long hours of seeing not any boat anywhere, eventually I spotted two fishing boats – one bigger and one smaller one coming with high speed toward me. They barely reduced speed to have a curious look, and were gone very soon again. The smaller one was loaded high with canisters of some sort – whatever was in there…

Eventually, after a lot of calls to Carlos via Peter, the coast guard boat came from the south, saying they have been looking for me further south…well, you could actually spot a boat here on this dead calm water for miles and miles, and I was paddling like I said in a direct line from La Tola to Cabo Manglares…

No worries. But I was eventually quite relieved to meet the four guys and their big open coastguard boat powered with three huge engines! They would be able to catch any one out here, if necessary, I think…

We discussed what to do, as next morning getting out of the river mouth form Cabo Manglares villages won’t be possible, and honestly I was not keen either to paddle again into another river mouth! The easiest way was to jump on the boat! The guys would sleep on it anyway, and in the village was nothing prepared for my stay. So why not just stay here out there on the water for the deserved night’s rest!?

Five strong pairs of hands were lifting my heavy loaded kayak over the quite high side on deck, and we could start a quiet night on board! Thanks for looking after me, guys! A night on board is actually the easiest solution, as long as they drop me tomorrow morning again on my same GPS spot…