I left late after I felt like I didn’t need to get up early for that short 25-km hop planned for the day. I pretended that it was my rest day…actually, yesterday should have been off and not plugging into that strong headwind.
So I fell asleep again after waking as usual at 5 am… It felt good! But as usual, waking again after too much sleep makes you feeling even more tired…

The day was calm with low headwinds, but the further I got to Point Avoid, the more I could notice the big forecasted 5-meter swell.
In the triangle between Price Island, Golden Island and Point avoid, the water was in massive movement sideways and up and down. Yesterday with the strong winds it would have been probably even a more scary place to be, with swell crests breaking everywhere. Today it was luckily breaking only over the reefs which I could make out with no further surprises.

But I had to go around Golden Island, the gap in the reef on my GPS map was at least today closed out in the massive breaking swelł – at least what I could make out from my up and down position. I didn’t dare to go closer – “If in doubt, stay out!”. I saw a bunch of tourists on the top of the headland, no need for a spectacular showdown…

Yesterday on the reef between Misery Bay headland and the small offshore island I found a clean gap to hop over into calm water. Today in the morning viewing it from the sheltered side even that gap seemed to be gone in the overnight lifted swell.

After rounding Golden Island at 2pm, I arrived in calmer waters, the fat reef break connecting the island and the headland to my left. But the beach was still guarded with surf, the lowest breakers seemed to be straight ahead. In the northern corner of Gunyah Beach it seemed like the surf was huge, and it was probably getting worse towards the south eastern unprotected end.

I landed allright through about five lines of moderate to low breakers, and the view from the beach with an outlook of some lower swell tomorrow was not so bad at my landing spot.

I enjoyed another afternoon off, do two afternoons off make a full rest day? I had to believe in that…

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