Friday 24 August 2012

Kaikoura down to Banks Peninsula

Hi Everyone,

We have been pretty slack about posting lately so I thought its about time we got a wee update up.. We arrived into Christchurch about a week? ago- lets just say it was a.. long.. day, the day (or night) we arrived!! We left from Motonau beach (about 80km north of Christchurch) in 4m swells.  We soon realized that landing was not an option so we made the call to push on all the way to Sumner.  I got sea sick for most of the day and it got worse after it got dark.  The Waimakariri River mouth was by far the scariest thing we have seen this whole trip- all the rivers were in massive flood and there were huge 5m high breaking waves stretching out to about 2km offshore!! Later on we got smoked by a few smaller breakers way offshore in the dark, and Sims hat got pushed down over his eyes so he couldn't see anything but he just had to keep paddling incase there was a second breaker behind it haha. I was slow as and we didn't reach land till 12.30am.. 16hrs in a kayak is not ideal!!! i dragged my boat up onto the boat ramp and lay down on the ground for a few minutes before throwing up one last time haha.  We grabbed our tent and headed into the park in Sumner and slept in a bush.. still no freedom camping fines!
We are planning on taking a wee break from paddling for a week to refuel our energy levels and make sure that we are good to go for the next gnarly leg down from Banks Peninsula to Oamaru.  Its looking like we are going to get to claim the slowest circumnavigation- awesome! haha.



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