The first light always has a magic effect on my body. Tiredness was gone, and I prepared myself to eventually make some progress towards Caesar Island! I took the chance to jump out of the boat to open my hatches for more food on a shallow reef edge, but not without having slipped into my neoprene socks as well. You never know what is floating around in the shallow water…

I was all set to push on, and almost mistook Muir Island for Caesar Island and was disappointed not to see any beach, just rough rocky shores. It was in the same direction as Caesar Island, but pulling closer and checking my left over distance on my GPS I noticed my mistake.

I was heading then directly through the gap between Muir Island and the Gadayim Pyramid, which looked like open water to me from th edistance. The tide was with me, but was going down rapidly so I guessed you better hurry up to speed through the gap!

But I noticed before the gap I was caught in a strong eddy, and my speed went down quite a bit. But when I eventually pulled free of the back stream, I saw the tide flushing through the gap like a waterfall! I was not sure about the rocks on the bottom, and was very scared to let go and to do the downhill run…but I had no other chance! The rocks at least looked very round to me through the crystal clear water…

The ride was fast like on a small waterfall, and luckily the water was deep enough to not hit anything. Phhhhh, I should have better stayed out of that reef area!

Caesar Island was about 10 km away. The water in between were full of tidal rips, but nothing was seriously breaking. The water was generally more or less flat, but the strong tidal action was clearly visible and to be felt on paddling.

The reef edges were the spots were the tide played up most, so coming close to Caesar was not an easy game! It may be easy to miss the island fully and get washed past, if you are not ferry gliding somehow sideways with the bow pointed almost 90 degrees out of the desired direction! I had to pull out all the stops to come closer to the only beach I luckily already spotted from the distance. It disappeared for a while, as my drift sideways was heavily. It was a rough and tough ride to approach the island!

But when I eventually made it into quiet waters, I knew I only had to nose around a small spit of rocks to see what I already had spotted from the distance: A white, sandy beach, fully open to the water! I always admire nature to have (mostly) planned an easy access for animals, people and boats to islands and coastlines, thank you, nature!

The whole last area was a bit short of easy accessible beaches, so this one appeared like paradise to me after 37 hours on the water and 120 km! And after that heavy tidal barrier to pull through!

I guessed I was landing at 1 pm on low tide on the edge of the steep sandy beach, but the tide went out even more and displayed a tidal flat which went far, far out! Thank goodness I was not arriving later…

There would have been no chance then to land, as I was thinking to walk out a bit more for pictures, but taking the first steps on the newly displayed sandy wet flat area made me sinking in up to the knees, and probably more if I would have stayed! I was a bit scared and quite hurrying to get out of there…no landing or launching after mid-tide on that beach!

Arriving at 1 pm gave me a bit of rest time for the afternoon, I took a quick swim before the tide was out fully and made camp in the shade of the only tree to go for w well deserved afternoon nap.

Some old turtle slides and nests were decorating the beach, but no new ones pulled up that night.

Text message from Freya via satellite phone:

16.03 123.56 Ceasar Island. 120 km,  5:00 am to 1:00 pm, 32hrs. Paradise bay after long slog through big tides and races. Got some long naps at night on the way.