I gave it a quite late start this morning – 9.30 am – as there were following winds all day forecasted, a pleasure ride for the first time! This is what I thought…

The little mouse from last night visited me again in the vestibule, but found only my spare paddle bad instead of anothe yummy JAMA drink bag…and left a bit of shit as a greeting on it as to say “I want my JAMA!”

The no winds turned into pleasurable following ones into un-pleasurable following high breaking stuff the last two hours..they required my whole concentration to go straight and stay upright…I even had to brace hard once  – on the wrong side…this made me thinking it’s time to put in the PFD…

I’m happy for quite a long tim eto paddle with my legs centered and unlocked – thanks to good surfski traing – FREE YOUR KNEES! – but the last hour I had them firmly locked in, just in case…

I know I could roll the 18 x with even unlocked knees with pressing against my tight fitting Snapgragon spraydeck, or to have the guts to pull myself into the locked position again upside down, grabbing the rim or the hull. In theory and in practising in flat water…so far I didn’t had to roll at all. 

I expected to paddle until 7 or 8 pm, and to cover some nice miles, but at about 2.30 I decided I had enough of too much concentrated paddling, to go into Tathra and to meet David there. Anyway – 60 km covered for the day in a pretty short time.

There were lights flashing on top of the hill, then a shirt waving, then some hands…felt good to know there is someone waiting for you…I wonder how Paul must have felt seeing more or less always someone in the distance to meet and greet him…the whole Winkworth family was on it’s way to see me coming in – David, Sue and her parents.

I was quite relieved to be in quite waters then in the little cove before the Tathra headland, easy to overlook on the map if David wouldn’t have told me about it!

To practise again, I cooled down a bit with those different rolling methods in this boat. All work fine on both sides…

I went a third time through my gear and left another bag of surplus stuff at David’s to send back to Peter’s logistic basecamp. Thanks for helping me in this way!!!

We could have gone again a bit later when the wind went down, but chatting a bit was quite worth some time as well. David and I put up tents later in the afternoon in a quiet corner of the park, cooked dinner and went through the Northern Territory maps again, where David has been paddling quite a bit.

We decided on an early launch next morning, to paddle together the 35 km to Bermagui.

At 4.30 I heard some noise outside the camp, and guessed David was up already for the bathroom…but ther ewas no previous zipper noise! Hmmmmmm…..

I went back to sleep, and got up by myself at 5 am, walking to the toilet hut close by. There was quite a big animal sitting on the grass – my first Kangaroo! Actually a small one, a Wallaby, and it was that guy making the hopping noise at 4.30…luckily they don’t harm your gear or yourself…

Message via satellite phone:

“36.44 149.58 Tathra. 60km first day following wind, last 2hrs a touch too much. David camps here and paddles with me tomorrow to Bermagui”