Lighthouse at Point Hicks

Launching erly again at 6am, not sure what the day will bring again as for the wind…forecast as usual, mornings light to moderate headwinds, afternoon strong…

i was bit short of fresh water for another night out there on the beach, and I was happy to get a fishíngboat coming asides at abou 9am. They gave me two small bottles of drinking water, better than nothing I thought…thanks for that!

Some km befor rounding Rame Head there it was again…that amazing change from moderate hot land wind to strong cooler seawind, but both coming somehow out as headwinds blowing down the coast where I came from. The change at night abou 6pm was noticanle again, after about 10 min of no winds it was blowing HOT again against me until about 10pm it goes a slight bit down, but still annoying…

This time the sea wind came with a change of water conditions – it got really rough out there! Fun to paddle, my boat feels stable and secure in the rough stuff. But it doesn’t make you faster…at least falling asleep was not an option, still padlling with closed eyes though, as feeling the wind on my face makes it easy to keep direction.

The bay behind Rame Head with the Skerries to the left was filled with sea life – seals en masse, a big school of dolphins, and an ominious fin I wasn’t willing to identify…my first shark?

No way to land for a break that day without getting too much off course. So I kept on fighting from headland to headland, at least having always a “nearby” goal to reach. Better than endless sand stretches…

My GPS was always counting down the km to the next headland. The numbers move faster when it is under 10km left, as it shows then the 10m steps as well :-))

I could have pulled in on one of the several beaches between the now a bit more rocky coastline, but I knew it was blowing extremely stong tomorrow, and I’d loved to reach Mallacoota that night.

Darkness came, and I was still paddling 3-5km against the strong force 5 headwinds. I kind of like the challenge of fighting headwinds…

I need some practise in night paddling anyway, so I got prepared when the sun was gone. It *is* a difference if you paddle at night when it is nice and calm like on my last night in NZ, or if it still blowing like hell against you and the seas are quite rough…

10pm it got a slight bit less, that I was daring to pull out my cell phone to see if I’ve got reception for a call to my shore contact Peter Provis. I realized I forgot to store his number… a call to another friend didn’t got the contact going.

I sent out a SPOT message when it got dark. It clearly indicated that I was still on the water, and I sent out two more on the next hours. I was hoping one of my monitoring contacs would see it, and assuming I was due to head into Mallacoota at night and Peter would be waiting there then…but you can’t expect people standing at the beach at midnight as a reception commitee for lonely paddlers!

So I was allright by myself for that night then. I just had to reach the safe landing spot…again without GPS things would be tricky.

First I was heading way too much to the left following the lights of the small village, but then getting around Bastion Head I saw at least two red lights which must indicating the inlet entrance. I knew about a concrete launching ramp where Paul landed right before the inlet entrance, and i was hoping to fin that.

Three cars coming up at once to a spot on the shore, blinding me with their full on headlights. I was assuming that was the ramp somewhere there, but I didn’t feel like bumping into drinking parties of some blokes at Friday night…so I kept on going a bit towards the inlet entrance, listening to the sounds of the beach. At some point it sounded just like an easy shallow landing, and I dared to go in, no problems.

Midnight…two flashlights were walking up to me soon – is that Peter looking for me? I was just getting off the water from my midnight cleaning dip, and I guessed you better cover up soon :-)) – two fisherman coming up to me with the comment:”So paddling around at night, hmm?” They were so right…but they kept on going. I just pitched my tent and fell asleep…18 hrs of paddling, 75km, civilisation reached as planned and I knew I had a day off for recovery tomorrow.