John, vice president of the Carnarvon rescue team, picked me up at 5.45am to be ready to launch in first light at 6.30.

Three guys came out again with their rescue boat that early morning, thanks for that!

Once we left the harbour channel, I was aking them if there was enough water to cut straight across south? There should be…but there wasn’t! At times 10 cm of water is simply not enough, not even for a kayak…so I had to swing off course 90degrees and head straight to the deep boating channel. At least everything was well marked on my GPS map. But the detour still took some time! But if I would have gone straight via the deep boating channels, this would have been a detour as well. So no worries…

Headwind was strongish SE all morning, moderate to easy over lunchtime, and got nasty SW the last four hours. But everything was like forecasted! I still made enough progress, and expected anyway to paddle into the darkness for two hours or so.

I could pick up the Cape Peron peninsula alreday 22 km off the coast, but I noticed later the highest point which showed up first wasn’t the closest point with the beach I wanted to head to and was seeing on Google Earth before. The destination was actually more to the left, where the lighthouse was flashing nicely in the darkness. Half moonlight wouldn’t come up before 10.45pm, so I was happy to have at least a clear sky with some stars lighting the dark night’s sky. Looking behind me, even 50 km away the light pollution of Denham was still visible!

Eventually besides the lighthouse flashing I saw a small light on the shore to the right. I was hoping those were some fishermen on a lovely flat easy beach, not fishing off cliffs or in dumping stuff! I heard some kiddy noise later, and on my flashing to see the shore they starte dto answer somehow! My hearing told me this sounds like a sandy beach! Actually, I couldn’t see it until almost running aground, maybe I was distracted from the light of the fishermen.

They definitively seemed to be quite surprised about what and who was coming out there of the darkness! Two men and two youngsters, having kind of threatening clubs in their hands! Maybe they felt they needed to defend their daddys just in case this would be an alien invasion coming through the night…

But after a bit of a chat they seemed to be not worried, but kind of impressed, helped me to pull up my boat and kept on doing their business.

I set up camp, had a tiny cold shower in the darkness, and started to get warm in my tent with some noodles cooked besides my sleeping bag.

Later one youngster was knocking on my tent door and was aking if I’d liked to see the big fish they’ve just caught – thanks, but my sleeping bag was so nice and warm…and I was bloody tired from the day’s paddle!

I fell asleep at 11pm, getting the idea on my mind about having a recovery day off tomorrow right here at the Cape instead of probably hanging out three days in a row in Denham! Good thoughts…

Text mesage from Freya via satellite phone:

25.30 113.30, Cape Peron. 6:30 am to 9:00 pm, 70km.  Tough crossing in fresh to strong headwinds landing in full darkness at an easy beach.