I woke very early in the morning, my body still on NT time. I felt all sorts of pains and aches from the previous two days, but it was too inviting to get a good push from the wind in the right direction today. So no rest day allowed…

The destination for the day was Lacrosse Island in the middle of the Cambridge Gulf, 55 km only. I had quite some hope to have cell reception and internet on that island out of Wyndham, but no luck…

The island was easy to make out early, as it was the start of the “real” Kimberleys with no more flat beaches, dunes and low hinterland any more, but with elevations up to 100 m at least. Not quite the Alps, but better than beaches and low dunes only forever. It was quite refreshing to see already “The Needles” raising high to the left before Lacrosse Island, even from the distance something to catch the eye all day.

The wind and tide was pushing me strong along, it was quite rough all morning! With the tide turning, the wind went down also. Good, as that wind against the tide would be even more rough I assumed…

I noticed quite soon after launching that the repair on the hole in my hull obviously wasn’t holding up any more today. I had to use my manual pump all 20 min or so, to get rid of the sloshing water around my legs. Good I was planning only 55 km that day, with the good speed I would arrive at good time that afternoon.

To reach the sheltered Turtle Bay on Lacrosse Island I decided to paddle around the northern shore, and enjoyed the view close up to the beautiful high cliffs.

I was scouting around as always for unusual floating objects, and quite some turtles enjoy usually the rough edges of headlands. But this one over there…this looked different! BUGGER, THAT WAS ANOTHER CROC!!! My second encounter afloat, after that one in the low surf at the old Mission Station.…

I don’t mind them when I am on land, and they are afloat or on land also. But with us both afloat, I feel much more vulnerable and way less manoeuvrable than those amphibious animals.

Speeding up as hell out of their way is the only thing you can do, hoping they didn’t take you up and follow you. You can imagine how my goose bumps instantly started growing on my neck agai!

On the north-western side of the island a long reef was poking out to sea, aptly named “Beam Reef”. No other chance than paddling around it…along the tip and on the other side were quite rough tidal rips, fun to paddle, but nice to head eventually in the quiet Turtle Bay.

I was like a wild animal…checking to all sides, carefully listening to strange sounds, slowly approaching the new coast, watching if ther wasn’t a croc hiding in the murky water. Luckily chances are good to *see* them floating first, before they may take you up and go under the water.. But no one was waiting for me in that very shallow bay!

As I had to repair my hole in the hull again, I had to empty the kayak completely. It was quite a carriage up the shallow wide beach on almost low tide that early afternoon! But eventually I could turn my boat around to see that the whole two components epoxy putty was gone…probably by dragging the boat over the ground. It is just a semi-permanent repair…I should have known that and done already the fibreglass job at Bulgul myself!

I rinsed the hole with fresh water, and cleaned the rest of the hull to check for other damages. Luckily this was the only one…time for a permanent fix!

I had to poke out the rest of the putty, cleaned and sanded the area as best as possible, and let it sit in the sun for drying as much as possible.

Meanwhile I took care about my skin and nails and so on…until I noticed the sun was setting and it was high time to start the real repair!

I haven’t much experience in fibre glassing, but I reckoned that hole I should have glassed right away instead of using twice putty and filler only. It is actually quite easy, if you have the right material and mixture and don’t care too much about the repair looking beautiful!

I cut matching stripes of fibreglass mats to fill the hole in a couple of layers, and poured the glass and hardener 4:1 into a plastic cup. Mixing it thoroughly, and then just soaking layer after layer with a brush and filling the quite deep big hole.

A bigger piece on top, and then I put the magic finishing cloth Andrew Divola gave me on top of everything. It was supposed to be peeled off when everything was dry, to have a smooth surface without sanding.

The massive amount of sand flies amazingly sticking soon to the still wet surface was not really bothering my sense of a perfect repair…it would look ugly anyway.

I was just praying my mixture was right and the material was still ok and it would harden out properly!

I was just about to clean up my mess, as I noticed something strange: The rest of the mixture in the plastic cup, the brush still stuck in it, was BOILING! A strange chemical reaction…what if my nicely soaked repair spot would do the same??? I checked it, but there was nothing unusual…why did the rest of the mixture boiled to eventually become rock hard, with quite some heat? The plastic cup was not melting…no idea what was catalysing the reaction.

I touched the repair spot after about an hour, and was relieved to notice it was almost dry and hard…it would be good tomorrow morning.

I had just finished cleaning up, when I noticed something floating close to my campsite in the now quite high water’s edge…a BIG CROC was obviously watching my movements for quite a while! Bugger…this island is crocy! Maybe it was the same chap I saw aroun dthe headland?

I just felt like hiding into my tent asap, not to show any movements any more and hoping the beast would lose interest in stalking me. It was not puffing itself and threatening me, it was just floating up and down in the low surf. I knew it won’t come up and attack me in the tent, this is not what they’re up to when they were not provocated, I reckoned.

Imagine I took frequent hidden looks out of my tent doors where I left a gap to peak out, but one hour after sunset when there was quite bright moonlight the croc seemed to be gone. I was just hoping it won’t be waiting for me next morning!

Text message from Freya via satellite phone: