Big hole from the shark bite on the top of the stern besides the “.” of the “com”, a dozen smaller holes on the side on the ACR sticker, and a shark tooth was stuck over the “m” in the toggle gap. Quite some jar size…

This was the plan for the day: Getting up after 4 hrs of sleep at midnight, launching at 1am at full high tide and paddling until 1pm high tide again. Sounded reasonable, but I am not good at shifting my biorythm. I’d rather work a bit harder on wheeling out if possible or paddling against the daily headwinds rather than getting not enough sleep…but I gave it a try.

It was already quite foggy at night, and stuffiing the soaking wet sandy tent into the bag is the most ugly chore on camp I can think of. 

Launching through the dumper on the steep beach in moonlight went allright with sliding the covered boat over the back of a wave to the quiet water and then quickly climbing on it and paddling off fast with just straddling the boat. Out of the breaker zone, I took my time to uncover the cockpit and to organize myself.

It was an ugly cold and foggy night. I should have pulled out my overcag, but simply felt more like freezing a bit…I crunched forward quite some times for extended powernaps, not feeling in any hurry to make distance. I eventually covered only 15 km in 5 hrs until 6am when the sun came up and I was off Cape Jaubert. Was that worth the effort of the early launch?

And then my early morning “wake up” bump – a creature hitting way harder than on all previous bumps the other weeks and months was kissing my stern at 6.30am. I heard a crashing noise, and had the evil hope the shark was at least crashing some teeth of his jar in his hard hitting bump. After some desperate bracing I turned around and did see not a glimpse of the beast any more. But I spotted a piece of what I guessed it was shark jar flesh laying on top of my stern…I turned around frequently all morning, but it stayed still on top of my boat and didn’t get flushed away on the flat water…

I didn’t give it much more thoughts, as I felt the boat and I were ok. And after my neck hair flattened again and the goose bumps on my skin softened out…until the next two shark bumps that morning…luckily they were much less hard than the first one. But they still scare the living shit out of you…especially as me being overtired…

I crossed Desault Bay and passed the vast exposed reefs of Cape Missiessy, the last Cape before the long flat stretch of 80mile Beach.

I decided to paddle as close to the low surf line as possible, as the tide went in towards lunch time, and I liked to check how much later after high tide I may be able to still land with some wheeling up the beach.

But eventually a bigger than usual breaker caught me and surfed me nicely, but unintentionally to the beach. I guessed when I was already sitting on dry land, I could as well give the “piece of shark flesh” a closer look which was still lying on my stern…

I climebd out of my boat, and had to face the reality: The imagined piece of shark jar flesh was actually a lump of fibreglass that shark jar has bitten out of my stern!!! A 1 cm solid hole, thicker as a pencil! One shark teeth was at least still stuck in another smaller hole close to the toggle, and plenty of smaller soaking holes were decorating the side.

No questioning what would have happened to the old boat with the lightweight layup on this bite…

I am not easy to be shocked, but being overtired that morning from launching at 1am I felt definitively a bit like that and was the first time of the trip quite down…I even had flashing thoughts about “was that worth the risk”??? I re-heard the crashing noise was actually crashing fibreglass…what you don’t want to believe at that point you simply don’t believe.

I opened my stern hatch, and the expected mess was there: My whole stern compartment was flooded, all gear soaked to the top including tent, my fibre galss repair bag and three food bags. And the trolley, but that was the least worry.

Like in trance I decided to call it a day already at noon, and I slowly put up the tent to dry out, spread all the food and bags out in the sun, and rinsed the holes with fresh water to dry in the sun for the necessary repair.

I remembered in Paul Caffyn’s book “The Dreamtime Voyage” there was a picture of a dead maybe 5m big Black Tipped Reef shark lying on the beach of Cape Jaubert, exactly where I had my heavy bumpy encounter (Picture photographed off his book). I assume that size jar was just matching the bite marks on my stern…

This dead one I found later, about 1,50m, had a mouth (flipped up to be better visible) which could barely grab my toggle…

I fixed the holes with small pieces of fibreglass mat and epoxy glue, collecte dmy dried out gear, and eventually stretched out naked in my tent for a relaxing afternoon nap. I was just about dozed away, when I realized a car has pulled up besides my tent…

I quickly covered my bare skin with a towel, and stuck my head out of the tent for a chat. Two brothers from the Anna Plains cattle station came driving on the beach with a bunch of kiddies for the afternoon, and decided to have a look what was that red thing there glowing in the distance.   

I was evntually getting out of my tent fully dressed, and was pleased to be able to top up my water supplies with about 3 liters. Thanks for that, guys! Ten minutes later, a sister with a kid came up walking to my tent, and brought me an apple, orange and a soft drink they just had on the car. Nice! Thanks!

Text messages from Freya via satellite phone:

19.11 121.26, 80mile Beach.  1:00 am to noon. I got unintentionally surfed on beach and checked the heavy shark bump at 6.5am: a dozen small holes and one 1cm hole. SHOCKED!

The stern was flooded. I’m now drying tent and food now and fixing holes. I’d rather wheel down to the water tomorrow than do any night paddling in this milky water.