I checked on the low tide rushing in all morning, and found a full sandy gap to the water which may have stayed sandy all low tide through!!! There is always a gap in the rocky reefs, but you simply just can’t see it from the water or even from high up the dunes until you are standing straight before it…

I eventually easily wheeled out, and was afloat at late 8.30am. I decided I’m fit enough to give it a try next night to better launch at high tide shortly after midnight…

But then my treat for the efforts of the last days: I was able to watch two HUGE GIGANTIC (at least to my estimation…) whales at feed and play for more than half an hour close up to 20-30 meters!

I saw from the distance a triangle shaped white object capsizing – a sailboat??? But it came up again and was black…capsized again and was white…again, and it was black…what was that??? I didn’t had any idea for quite a while. But my curiosity made me paddling slightly off course into the bay towards that object, and eventually I got it when I saw the spout: WHALES!

I couldn’t and still can’t tell which species of whales, but they were BIG, and they came closer and closer towards me!! I was not really scared, but simply kept a respectful distance and was prepared to roll… I felt I was close enough to be “right with them”!

They flapped theyr fins one after the other hard and noisy like a canonball shot on the water’s surface, whilst rolling themselves around close on the surface. What a spactacle! And eventually they topped the whole thing (maybe they noticed me watching and liked to show off a bit…) with full jumps out of the water into the air and showing their beautiful fin tails! And the noises…grunting, spouting and whatever sounds whales mke when they feel alive!

Tell me I tried to take good pics, but the didital camera…always 1/2 seconds too slow…and the zoom didn’t want to work at some point…but I took a little video as well.

After those beautiful pictures I had to work hard again, strong headwinds came up across the rest of Lagrange Bay and slowed me down to less than 4 km per hr.

At Cape Bossut plenty of tourists had set up their camp and were fishing off the cliffs, but this was no place to land. High cliffs topped with sand, no access for a kayaker.

I checked on the map for the most reasonable spot to land on low tide, and after the horrible flat estuary outlet around Pinnacle Rock with miles wide of low breakers and found an inlet entrance right before Cape Duhamel, which made me able to paddle quite some way up to land. The wheeling up the sandy flat and eventually steep beach was resonable, but I decided to give it a go tomorrow morning at high tide 1am.

I rather felt like launching at high tide with a bit of moonlight than to paddle into the dark night until the moon would be eventually up around 9pm and not to know how the landing spot would look like.

Text message from Freya:

18.50 121.37 Cape Duhamel 40 km 8:30 am to 5:00 pm.  Launched on half tide after rocky part was flooded.
Chased two HUGE GIGANTIC whales at play for 1/2 hr 20-50 m close up in Lagrange Bay – amazing!!! Never saw such ones jumping and tumbling around and heard their sounds!!!
Then strong headwinds across the bay…
Landing with a reasonable 1 km haul of gear and boat on hard sand. Trolley works well with mostly emptyboat, but still have to walk three times.
Will launch now after midnight and land after lunchtime at high tide, anything else is stupid. I’d rather launch at night with moon than landing in darkness. I’m a morning person anyway. So little sleep this night!