Pos: here
Loc: Balneario Los Angeles
Acc: tent
Dist: 48 km
Start: 7:30 End: 16:30

Day no. 3 with following winds…but tomorrow it will change back to headwinds… 🙁
Launched on high tide over the reef easy, and headed to my first destination of the day – Necochea.

I had a potential host there, Martin Tripano, who was expecting to see me. But as I was already thinking yesterday – 18 km for a day with following winds are definitively not enough…

My first car with sand colored uniforms I saw at the beach at Costa Bonita, a small holiday village before Necochea…so I knew I’d be well expected again!

I headed to wards a big beautiful old ship wreck which was stranded very close to the shore, about 3 km before Necochea, and saw a truck with a guy waving and flashing – this must be Martin!

I took my time to take pictures of the wreck, paddling inshore, and was simply overlooked by the two jet skis with four Prefectura guys racing up to the wreck – on the offshore side! It’s so easy to escape my watch dogs 🙂 – but Martin was yelling and signaling at them, and eventually they spotted me and tuned in – hello! Como estas?

My all friendly escort guided me safely to the river mouth where Martin’s truck was parked. The original agreement was to meet on the last beach before the river mouth – quite a surf going there! I was glad Martin texted me to rather paddle into the river mouth – a bit of a detour, but safe.

I had to tell him my decision to keep on paddling today – very sorry! Thanks very much for your friendly offer anyway! But if I’d be tempted to take up all potential friendly host when it is not fitting into my daily paddling schedule – it was 11 am only – then I’d feel guilty not to have paddled on perfect conditions…and would take five years around the continent.

So Martin was helpful to fill up my water bags together with the Prefectura car- thanks very much! But I had to leave soon…
Just when I was eating my breakfast cerals, out of nowhere a paparazzi car with TV and news reporter came – who has notified them??? My busy chewing and not Spanish speaking saved my butt for another interview…they took pictures and filmed here and there, probably on the news tonight.

Around the outer head of the river mouth entrance jetty – an artificial pile of those four-ended concrete pillars used to guard the shore, there was one of the biggest seal colonies I’ve ever seen! Literally hundreds of them – shouting and barking by me and the two jet skis disturbing their peace…some of them launched, and the water was black of black heads of seals – nice, actually! If they wouldn’t been living on concrete…I took pics and video.

Then my “whale of the day” showed up a hundred meters offshore, and performed a beautiful dive with displaying his perfect tail fin…but the “whale of the day” became soon company some km further on for a guy jumping for joy seeing me – always impressive! And another one was having fun 15 km down town, and the last one I saw while making camp…quite a whaly day!

Just after I left town, the weather changed to the announced rain, decorated with some thunder and lightening…the water was smoothing out on the rain dripping heavily on the surface – just the swells are much clearer and seemingly bigger to be seen in those weather conditions! Fascinating…

Paddling was easy, smooth water, long swells, but heavily soaked hands in the pouring rain! And no vision any more…I was warm and dry in my dry suit, even with warm feet today, but decided to call it a day on Balneario Los Angeles, a place which *must* have some reasonable shore access…

Just before landing, the last group of beach quad bikes was passing by – I saw about 20 of them before, racing up and down the local beach highway – must be fun! And noisy…I felt like paddling close to a motorway!

I didn’t see many reefs like before Necochea, but cliffs were mostly offering no good camping. I was heading in through a sector with less surf, and had to drag my boat quite a long way through the lowish tide and wide beach to a reasonable high and dry camp site – well, all in pouring rain…including erecting the tent…luckily when it came to stripping my dry suit it briefly stopped. Now it’s pouring again…can’t be always sunny! I’m warm and dry in my tent.

See what tomorrow brings – besides headwinds! 🙂