20.28 148.53 Genesta Bay. 75km, 10am to 10pm. Hit by a nasty breaker on the open sea, I had to roll. I use a lifeline*  now.

*tether to keep kayaker and kayak from being separated.

Aussie size? Banana from Victor and Alyth’s backyard…

I woke at 4am, to be ready to leave the Rainforest house at 5.45am…I could have stayed some more days!

Victor was heading to work anyway, Alyth was on night shift in the hospital, delivering babys as a midwife and nurse.

I’m sorry but I fell asleep on the almost an hour’s drive to Mackay…working online yesterday until 10 pm was out of my regular schedule. Still didn’t update my blog…organisation e-mails were more important.

Victor dropped me and my boat at 6.30am at Inge’s house again, where I got hosted the first hour of my arrival on Saturday. He was heading off to work, but Beth was planned to come soon and drive me around to shop for food, a new mobile phone sim-card and to check on the post office if some other parcel has arrived. Perfect timing and organisation again!

I was editing photos in the meantime and answered e-mails – updating my blog was no time again, sorry…

We left at 7.30am, the food shop opened at 8am. The Telstra shop opened at 9am, no problem to get a new Sim-card (luckily).

A stop on the post office got me a supply parcel from Mirage Sea Kayaks with a freshly charged battery for my electrical pump and a trolley! It was just bad luck that it turned out the next day the trolley was no way matching my heavy expedition kayak…so I’m still without trolley…

Inge Hartley wishing me farewell…

Ready to launch at 10 am, one hour after high tide…I planned a long crossing over to Cape Conway, anticipating I may have to paddle into the darkness.

The wind was strong, the seas were steep, especially as the tide was turning again to wind against tide…breakers were nasty, quite frequent and wet to lean into them. But generally still ok to handle.

But then it happened – one, I reckon it were two from two sides somehow, steep fat breaker threw me, although I heard it coming and turned around to watch it, ready to lean into it as usual. But no chance on this one, and I had my first offshore capsize ever.

I rolled up ok, well, after the second try swapping to the right side. The left side was the “wrong” breaker side anyway.

“Stay seated” was on my mind…I regained my breath, and was fishing for my sun visor floating beneath the boat. Adjusting my headgear properly took some minutes, eventually I noticed a strange sound…the electrical bilge pump was switched on on the capsize.

I turned around to reach for the switch – UNBELIEVABLE! My just sent to Mackay, perfectly matching in timing as I lost my Kokatat PFD two days ago, inflatable PFD was GONE AS WELL!!!

I had stuffed it under my helmet net on the backdeck, together with my plastic lunch box. The lunch box was still there…after the first loss of the first PFD, now this one was gone as well…how could I be so stupid to assume this one would stay under the net…

I obviously simply don’t like PFD’s and they decide if you don’t like me I’ll leave you…the other one I at least usually put on when it became rough and it started to slide sideways off the back deck by some washers, strapped on with one bungee through the shoulder straps only. This one I just forgot about it was there…and I was feeling confident in the seas.

My cussing at myself couldn’t have been worse…again turning around, paddling against the wind and waves and looking for it even after loosing it only 5 min ago was amazingly useless, especially in a sea with 1000ds of dark seaweed plaques and steep waves.

It was time to use a life line…I simply hooked myself to the line I attached already on the bow some weeks ago, basically meant for attaching the floating boat somewhere.

Now just in case of a swim I had my “oversized PFD” – the boat itself – still with me…not too bad actually, even with PFD.

Eventually it became dark – I had still 1 1/2 hrs to paddle to the I reckoned only 100% safe at night to land on bay, Genesta Bay with a wide sandy beach.

It was quite an uncomfortable feeling paddling in those seas actually, especially after the capsize. But it became luckily a bit more quiet, once passing Cape Conway.

Into the bay, the landing in almost black darkness was just perfect made with my GPS- right in the middle of a sandy bay with reefs to either side.

It was a small surf going, so the thoughts of crocs loving already this bay as well was not 100%, away but a bit aside…I had my strong beam headlamp on approaching and shone it around quite a bit…

There was even a small grassy spot to pitch the tent, which was 100% sand free after Eric and Pam’s perfect service on it! Thanks to them!