North Head – view from the “Head” to the “Neck” where I was almost tempted to haul over  

I waved good bye to Tim and levi and was on my own again with a loaded boat…in quiet seas, it akes not much difference in stability, but in big seas I feel actually more safe with some weight in the boat after paddling it like that for almost 10.000 km already!

I was heading south and had first to negotiate Point Louise, which showed at least yesterday a quietish gap between the reef an the rocky cliffy headland. It was high tide this morning, and the gap was a bit more lumpy than the low tide situation last night. But I came around all right and was almost surprised to be in quiet water in Achorage Bay allready!

Next was the “real” Green Head which we hadn’t inspected the night before. But I did now, and climbed out on a small beach before. The view from the top didn’t show up any quiet water close to the cliffs, just crashing breakers way out. So give it a wide berth and be safe! It took a while to get around and back into the bay in this swell, but eventually I was in the reef sheltered South Bay and out of the “big” water again.

At the next headland, Sandy Point, I found a small gap close to the cliffs after inspecting it again from the cliff top. It’s so bad that the Google Earth pics are not taken at *that* particular moment you like to be there…future project, I reckon!

The next headland was easy, protected by Saridiand Island.

North Head was looking a bit more tricky. I was probably supposed to paddle out at 30.13.33 114.59.22 through the gap, as there was kind of a small yellow channel marker visible, but when I was there, I shyed away as the breakers on this swelly day seemed to be everywhere and I couldn’t see a clear path on the bouncing up and down swell where to get around the whole reefy headland area. And I couldn’t see a second thing like this and where to head to…

Channel marker through the breakers on the reefs, or sanctuary border marker? I was not sure about that yellow thing out there in the big swell…

There was a smaller headland before the real North Head, and I landed at the beach at 30.13.39 114.59.40, where I simply hauled my kayak over the narrow stripe of sand. I paddled over the quiet bay, landed at the beach at 30.13.46 114.59.47 and inspected the neck of the headland, if it would be possible to haul over that one as well. It was a steep climb up a bare sanddune, but the other side was unluckily steep cliffs with a flat beach access about a kilometer further east – too much work.

So I climbed and walked up the wide North Head area, and inspected it from the top again. Luckily there was kind of a safe path through the breakers showing up from the high top view, ending at another channel marker! So it seems they are there for some reason…

If someone would have been watching my approach from the top of the headland already, and would have signalled me the path through, this would have been nice…but I’m on my own and had to check ways on my own, which took a bit of time. But the walks were a bit of entertainement as well!

As soon I was happily around and closing up to Jurien Bay’s more quiet waters again, I was aiming for that tempting small island with that lovely sandy beach spit out there, aptly Favorite Island! This would be my campsite for tonight! No cars on the beach, no curious people around…besides that single fisherman’s boat floating close around for more than an hour and preventing me even from stripping and showering freely –  :-((  couldn’t they fish somehwere else???  The smell and noise of plenty of sea birds was my campsite company for that night.

Text message from Freya:

30.16 115.00, Favorite Island. 35 km, 7:30 am to 4:30 pm.  Quite some funny headlands in big swell to negotiate today where I preferred to climb out to have a look first, four times!…some scary breakers out there! But landings all calm inside the reefs.