DINGO!

I needed to go today, the weather was too good. I felt still a bit sore in the muscles, but luckily my skin was all right allover. We had carried the kayak back to the beach again already yesterday through a short dune track, even a bit further up north west than I landed, almost where the cliffs come down to the dunes.

The beach was full of seaweed, and the fringing reef platform was buried more or less into the sand. There was just a tiny little low surf, nothing to worry about – now…

It became a HOT day, more hot than I ever experienced before. The northerly wind felt like it was blowing directly out of the baking oven, and I had to keep my shirt and hat wet to stay cool. The offshore northerly wind and swell lifted over the day that much I had to take care I didn’t get blown off the 3m swell crest once lifted up high on top. The raising swell forced me more and more offshore, and I saw some ugly breaking surf from the backside…how the hell would I ever be able to get back to the beach? Just don’t think about it now…keep on paddling…

The strong offshore wind couldn’t decide if it wanted to slow me down or speed me up, and eventually I averaged a reasonable forward speed.

I could barely avoid being caught by two fat swell crests threatening me to break right over me by sprinting directly out to sea when they were approaching. And another one gave me a rough shower, when I tried the same, but just about didn’t make it. At least I had my bow pointed into the breaker and besides being nicely wet allover nothing happened. But I eventually decided to put on my PFD and helmet, just in case I got really caught and washed towards the reef, maybe upside down…

The freak waves here along this beach were bigger than anything else, and literally coming out of the nowhere. I kept a good distance out to sea, which was easy to maintain during the offshore wind. When the wind turned at about 3pm, it got cooler and less windy, and I felt the surf was going down a bit. I was actually expecting the offshore wind would keep the surf more at bay than an onshore wind!

I saw a school of about twenty dolphins playing in exactly the surf area I avoided – beautiful! At least what I could see getting lifted up and down…

I reached the 3 km long cliff line before Dog Fence Beach just in time before dusk, where Greg was waiting the last three hours and watching the surf luckily going down towards 8pm. He had to go for a drive during most of the day with the van air condition on, as on land temperatures reached the 50 degrees Celsius mark! He couldn’t really do much in those conditions, but at least tried fishing the last hours.

I landed through the remaining surf all right, and in very last light the surf was almost non existing any more! Good hope for an easy launch next morning…

Text message from Freya via satellite phone:

31.46 131.50, Dog Fence Beach.  75 km, 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Big surf all day, calmed down on landing. 50 degrees Celsius [122° F] today! Greg was baking, I was fighting an offshore wind.