Pos: here
Loc: Isla Culebra
Acc: tent
Dist: 40 km
Start: 9:15 End: 17:30

It took me exactly two hours to get afloat today after having packed my gear…next time I rather stay on the higher sand belt close to the beach and take the risk to have to get up at night’s high tide, and then to paddle to the dunes…or I should have taken yesterday to get out of this 750 m inland trap with the tidal zone flooded from the strong inshore wind.

It dried out more or less over the day, and this morning as the wind changed and went down the tidal zone was not flooded any more, but rather more soaked.

But I could walk. From ankle deep to almost knee deep soft wet sand…but thanks again, no mud.
But it was a tough walk, three times. First dragging the as light as possible kayak which was the toughest, as it got sucked nicely to the wet sand. I had to stop about 15 times, to get my breath back… great morning exercise for my legs and lungs.
Then the walk back was almost easy…and two times with a heavy gear bag on each shoulder, without falling on the soaking wet knee deep sand.
But it was a lovely sunny day after yesterday’s night thunderstorm and all day yesterday was quite dark as well. The wind forecast was 15-20 kn west, but thank goodness it didn’t breeze up more than 15 knots, and more north west and pushing a bit, until in the afternoon it was less than 10 knots.

I paddled along a high sand ridge for a long long time, until I could make out a crossing over a flooded sand ridge into the inland bay way. Alejandro’s nauti map on the GPS I borrowed from him was for this bay very valuable, as it showed which sand ridges were likely to be dry on low tide. But I was paddling toward high tide around 5 pm, so it was an easy game to eventually cut across all flooded sand ridges (Watt Rücken) to Isla Culebra. It had the one and only high rising bush in the whole bay, widely to be seen.

I was already prepared to stay afloat tonight, rather paddling outside the bay, as I couldn’t judge the flooded areas with the charts and maps I had. I had to paddle where water was, and luckily there was more water than dry sand banks.

I landed on an idyllic island, with a short steepish beach, dragging my boat no more than 10 meters! I think it was the shortest boat drag on the whole trip so far… I almost felt like being on one of my Australian islands, just a few degrees temperature were missing! Still I took a brief dip in the relatively warm water (maybe 17 degrees…), and let myself dry out in the lovely evening sun. How I love this naked lonely island life! 🙂

I even took a short walk to take some pictures on this nature idyll, and was surprised how little rubbish there was…all islands in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia had a lot of flooded rubbish, all coming assumingly from Asia…

My evening couldn’t have been more different from the last ones! I think I deserved it…