I measured the distance if I would cross the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf *now* instead of heading one day more south…it was 105 km to Pelican Island, where I planned to land. That sounded like a reasonable distance for an overnight paddle!

I decided to give it a go across today. What was one night on the water…I wouldn’t even sleep properly lik eon the big crossing over th eGulf of Carpentaria, just taking powernaps…and I should land in the early morning, or latest at lunchtime, I reckoned…

The weather forecast was not the very best, it was high spring tide, some headwinds should come in the afternoon, and then changing to some stronger south-easterlies. But it won’t be better on waiting another day…strong south easterlies all next days as well. So get it done *now*…

At least the full moon would be shining all night, so if it would be rough, I could at least see something…

And it *was* rough! Tide against wind, wind against tide, tide flooding out and in, it pulled out all stops to show me that crossing was NOT a piece of cake. It was going slow as hell.

On the outgoing tide I couldn’t make much headway, as I had to stay on a bearing taking me just under 90 degrees to the purposed direction to make at least *some* distance…no chance to make any distance at all directly against tide and wind not to lose a degree. I was switching bearing form plus 10 to minus 10 degrees, and the dogleg on my GPS looked quite impressive. Glad I had that machine…without I would be lost. I was literally fighting for each single 100 meter headway…when I dared to go for a powernap in the outgoing tide before midnight I was pushed back 200 or 300 meters…not much pleasure. You would think the ingoing tide would take me along…no, it rather felt like it was perfect 90 degrees and simply taking me in, but not helping into the direction I wanted to go.

From 9pm to 2pm I made only 10 km in 5 hours…how funny! At least I had mental support by frequent sat-phone calls and texts…thank you, Greg, being there for me!

Text message from Freya via satellite phone:

I launched at 9am for a 105 km, full-moon overnighter to (probably) Pelican Island. Feeling good and well rested.