The tiny little black spot besides the left corner of the middle cloud on top of the cliffs is Greg…

It was going to be two long days and one night. I was not really looking forward to this leg anymore, the excitement of the achievement of “paddling the cliffs” was gone. But it needed to be done, and I’m tending to get unfriendly things out of the way as soon as possible.

Prior to the Zytdorp cliffs, I didn’t really know what to expect. The night was ugly in “survival mode”, but at least the days were ok with mostly following winds, but big seas.

Before the Baxter cliffs, I thought I had perfect conditions the first day, the night and the next half day. But still I got seasick, slowed down quite a bit at night and eventually got into next day’s afternoon strong headwinds the last three hours.

This time the weather forecast was not 100% clear at all. Karel texted Sunday would be calm, but he couldn’t find a matching second day. Buoyweather said for each virtual buoy along the cliffs something different and changed it almost every half day.

Greg was really doing his best yesterday to find out the best two days plus the night together with Dave, the local weather station manager in Eucla, and we decided yesterday it must be *today* and tomorrow. I’d rather have a rest day between that long paddle and the previous days, but sometimes you can’t pick it…

To use most of the calm previous night with the moon in the second half, I set my alarm clock at 2.30am, yaaaaaawn, to be on the water at 3am. The kayak was packed with enough food, water, my floats and over cag the previous night already. I was able to raise and to be ready to go within half an hour. Still we had to climb down to the beach with our head torches on, but all went all right.

The moon was shining bright, the sky was clear, not a single wind was blowing – now.

I could paddle easily out of my one meter wide reef gap, out into the well lit night through occasionally breaking surf. No problem, and I was afloat again, ready to conquer the Bunda cliffs.

When the sun raised at about 6am, the wind started to lift a bit out of the south east, and I thought if that’s going to stay like that, I’ll have a hard time with sufficient progress.

But an hour later, the whole day became as calm as a millpond! Thank goodness…no wind at all, the sea was glassy with a tiny swell only, and it was quite warm and almost muggy. I could paddle along the stunning cliffs as close as, staying entertained with the sight of each single new rock formation.

When you are used to look at either the sea, long beaches or continuous cliffs all day, your eye recognizes the slightest change in an “all the same” looking scenery and appreciates the tiniest change as “interesting”. But I must admit over the months I’d love soon to have a bit more visual and mental input! At least these cliffs had some caves on the bottom…I had to stay out a bit more sometimes to avoid rocks and reef platforms sticking out to sea, but basically I was paddling vey close to the cliff base. It was stunning again. Sometimes I was wondering if there may be a big piece of rock falling down on the water…but there was nothing unusual which made me regretting I was not taking my helmet on this paddle…

I called Greg every four hours via VHF radio to report my progress, but as his radio batteries weren’t the best, we had to keep the chats short. As the highway and later a good dirt track was going very close to the cliff top, I saw him standing on the top more than once, and he admitted later he felt quite helpless, just in case…

But conditions were great, and progress was incredible! I was gliding along on the glassy sea like on rails, and my kayak could really play up its speed qualities. At 8.30 pm, when dusk was setting in, I had covered already 90 km. 95 km left.

Despite the calm glassy sea, I had learnt from experience I should better take my ginger seasickness preventing pills early and regularly. I had a full new package, and swallowed three right after I got up, and then took care about taking one more every hour. It felt a bit unnecessary during the calm day, but how did I know the day would stay that calm? And the dark night was threatening in some hours…

It seemed to work. I started slowly to change into night mode, like refilling my drink bottles and mixing orange drink into it, pulling out my over cag and putting it on, getting my lights out of my cockpit bags, texting my night’s position message, calling Greg again and eventually reassuring that my floats were ready to be grabbed.

All was done as usual one after the other, with some paddling in between to not float around too much uncontrolled with the view down instead of balancing the horizon.

Well, today and at dusk the swell was almost non-existing, and there was not much rebound action. It was perfect. And I didn’t get seasick!

Still, I was planning to take out my floats when the night became dark and the moon wasn’t out yet. The starts were not shining really strong, as the sky was a bit foggy looking. I’d like to take a few naps in the first half of the night, and hoped to be recovered with powernaps when the moon would be coming out at 1.50am. I felt a bit tired from the early start, plus the previous long paddling days with no rest in between…

I paddled about 1 km out to have a safety distance for napping before I installed my floats. This night was much warmer than the night off the Baxter cliffs, and I could even lay on my back deck for a while. But the crunched forward napping position was more comfortable without a perfect padding on the back deck like I had on my crossing of the Gulf of Carpentaria. And I like to keep naps as short as possible, still a long way to go! Who knew how the next day would be looking…some low headwinds were forecasted.

Text message from Freya via satellite phone: