Archive for October, 2009

Warming up in the van after 35 hrs of paddling. I’m texting the daily message to Karel n the sat phone

The moon set at about 2am, but the stars shone a bit brighter then to make still a bit of lit night. Actually, when the moon was still out, barely any star was to be seen, so bright was its light!

I slept well all night after the thunderstorm settled around 8pm. The morning had a clear sky, some friendly strong south-westerly’s and an again quite lifted surf. I felt more scared to paddle safely out through the surf rather than doing the long paddle along the cliffs!

The night was still quite windy with strong easterlies, but it was not as cold any more. After breakfast, we decided to drive down to the beach, back to the start of the cliffs, to find another camp spot in the dunes, the very last one, with access from the beach only.

I started typing updates early this morning, and to download and edit pictures of the last days. Quite some work again…

Later, we kept on driving slowly back towards the start of the cliffs, which included at the end the climb down for he van on the conveyor belt over the steep edge of the Wylie Scarp. Besides some scratching again on the peaking up middle section on the bottom of the van, it was no problem. The frequent rock hits on the track before sounded more painful for the car’s bottom!

I got up early this morning to check again the surf situation down in the cove on lower wind than yesterday late afternoon. It was not much difference, just the surf seemed to be a bit lower. Still landing looked ok from the cliff top.

I got the crazy idea this Monday morning to model my new black dress for Greg, including the stiletto high heels I was wearing on my talk in Perth! He hasn’t seen it so far, and I just felt like doing some crazy things.

Two epic rockets flying over Toolina Cove/ Baxter Cliffs…

We drove back to the Cocklebiddy Roadhouse to ask for the track conditions from here down to Twilight Cove, but as expected they told us you could drive that track only with a big 4-wheel truck with lots of clearance. And even those ones get stuck occasionally…

We were driving about 3 km on the beach behind track, before we had to climb up the Wylie Scarp to reach the plains on top which lead to the Eyre highway.

the Bilbunya Dunes in the distance

Time to go for the last bit of beach before the cliffs! The wind was supposed to be 10-15kn headwinds in the morning, and to freshen up during the day to 20 kn. So it would be ok-ish in the morning, and quite some plugging towards the end of the day.