Pos: here
Loc: somewhere on the water
Acc: kayak
Dist: 117 km
Start: 9:30 End: 09:45

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Bahia Juanchuquita
Estimated landing time: sometimes in the next morning

I couldn’t really say our recovery quality from the last night paddle camping on the jetty with the hammering noise of the construction generator was good enough to tackle another overnighter. But staying another day wouldn’t make the quality any better, rather worse, as the hammering noise goes through all ear plugs. At least the night was quiet.

It still felt a bit strange to camp on a jetty, where the maybe 25 cm wide logs on the ground had about 10 cm gaps, some of them were missing altogether, some of them were rotten, some of them were lose…means our tent floor caught some draft from the bottom. But we easily could find an “outhouse” this morning through one of the gaps :-))

We were planning to do better this time, landing in early morning’s daylight, with constant paddling to keep us warm, instead of floating around as we arrive too early for a safe daylight landing, and freezing again our asses off. So launching time was set later, around 10 am would be fine, we calculated. It was suiting our recovery need anyway.

Sure at clock 8 am the hammering generator was switched on again, and we were sitting bolt upright in our sleeping bags. Slowly getting going, packing, and carrying all down again to the landing jetty on the side which had no floor but only a few cross irons. From there, you had to jump with a good timing on the floating up and down platform.

This morning the swell had decreased a lot, and the climb onto the floating platform and reaching the gear down was more easy. We could see even a surf beach landing would be possible today. But it wouldn’t be pleasant!

In honor of the skills of the “Little Horses” traditional kayak riders, I bought yesterday a small reed model for putting on my sideboard in my living room right beside the model of a traditional Greenland kayak.

When we were packing and launching, a big bunch of onlookers were gathering on top of the jetty and waving us good bye. I assume we may have impressed them with our long distance paddling in general, but not really with being another night out, as being the night out is for the local fishermen quite normal. But they are minimum of two guys in a stable boat with an engine, and if they may fall asleep, no worries…

We were setting out in good spirits for the next 112 km paddle, being well prepared this time. We would change the wet fleece shirts by night fall to a dry one with a second dry layer to keep the upper body warm. I put on under my regular Kokatat sealskin pant a short lycra bike pant, which I eventually noticed I should have already done much earlier on our trip, as my bladder wasn’t so much tempted in the warmer conditions to pee that often! Probably way more healthy…

Additionally, I was using the thin silver emergency blanket which we were wrapping around us on the upper body last night to stay warmer on the necessary breaks, now to wrap around my legs inside the cockpit. This was working perfectly well for additional warmth! Plus my neoprene socks were staying dry launching from the floating platform and my feet stayed warm all day already.

Allover, as it was eventually even a warmer night with very little wind, we managed to stay completely warm both of us, even our hands were not freezing as the water temperature was here along the long beach already one or two degrees higher. The Humbold current is slowly leaving us! No penguins today…