Greymouth to farewell spit

After 10days continuous big day paddling, a night in a bed at Paul Caffyns house was a great treat! However, the high pressure was still nice and settled over the country, so no days off for us! got to push on!

We left through the greymouth river bar early the next morning waved off by Paul. We set off for woodpecker bay with empty kayaks (a nice change!) and Paul agreed to meet us at Woodpecker bay that afternoon with our kit. paddling with light empy kayaks that day we found ourselves flying much quicker than usual, avering 7km an hour. It was cool and misty as we left and the sea stacks and arches and cliffs along this part of the coast were really cool, passing pancake rock was great. We made speedy time getting to woodpecker bay almost an hour earlier than estimated. We had agreed to meet Paul here, but neither of us could remember exactly where he said to meet! We searched around the sheltered lee landing for a while looking for him, but no sign, so decided to head in through the surf to the beach where there was a road. Eventually we found him!!! He had just missed us as we paddled away from the sheltered landing! oh well!

He gave us our stuff, but sadly we left our tent pegs in his car ... meaning we had to get inventive with our tenting for the rest of the trip.

Next morning we were up in the dark, hoping to get a big day in. We launched through the surf as the sun was rising and had a lovely morning paddle in flat calm windless conditions. We quickly covered the 35km to Westport, and still feeling energetic, crossed straight over in a random direction towards the outline of land we could see, vaigly estimating it 30-40km away. Eventually we reach landed near the village of nagawaki at about half 6. Landing through the surf, we were waiting for a set to come to paddle in after, but 3minutes of waiting and a set hadn't come ... so we got restless and just paddled in, just our luck as soon as we started paddling in here came the big set!! one broke on us both and we both held on tight and sidesurfed it facing each other and laughing to the shore! We were knackered after 12 hours paddling and our longest day paddling yet, 70somethingkm. We found a fish and chip shop and a bar .... happy days!!!

On the water early again! This was day 12 of big paddling and we were starting to feel the aches now, but the weather was due to get bad soon so we really wanted to get as far up the west coast as possible before we got stuck. We launched through the river bar, timing it well not getting wet! The massive cliffs were spectacular for the first part of the day, after this we found ourselves paddling alongside a seemingly endless gravel beech past karmea. The day was HOT with barely any wind!! we were sweatiing in tshirts, having to roll and constantly splash ourselves with water just to cool down. The day felt long and hard!! Eventually 55km later we landed through our much loved 'dumping surf' at a gravel beech near the start of the heaphy track. landing was smooth, we have got the technique down to a t now.

Next morning, day 13 of paddling (wow we felt tired!!). The sandflys were horrific that morning!! Wearingb full headnets we quickly dismantled camp, packed our kayaks at lighening speed and got ready to launch. Fi, being eaten alive didnt sttempt to time sets and ran towards the water with her boat. Before she had even got into her boat a big old dumper crashed and sent the boat flying! A while wrestling with the boat in the gravel dumpers, all was ok, we braved the sandlys and we took our time this next launch. Both timing it well and launching together.

Paddling was slower this day, we could feel we were tired!! About 30km in, as we just passed big bay, a northerly wind picked up to 15knots, we carried on paddling and it rose to 20knots! We had no weather forecast as teh radio had broke, and didn't know wetaher it was guna rise or ease. Anyway paddling into 20knots is no fun, especilly when your as knackered as we were!! so we turned around and backtracked 1km to big bay where we landed through some surf. James got barrelled by a wave but rolled and life was good. This was an idellic massive sandy beach with palm tree back drop in the middle of nowhere!! we felt pretty lucky to have this all to ourselves! We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon enjoying being off the water early! rest was neeeded yes!

Next morning, we woke to heavy rain, and northerly winds blowing strongly! didn't need much of a discussion to go back to sleep and decide on a rest day. As the day wore on, the wind was still strong, and a bog swell had picked up out at sea, causing the surf to get pretty big!! There was a southerly swell and a northerly swell, causing waves to break violently all along the bech with no real gaps between sets! 8-9foot big crashing waves out there did not look appealing to launch through! We enjoyed a day of resting, not doing a lot, drinking lots of tea, playing chess!

The next day it was still raining but the winds had dropped a lot. We decided to give it a go! The surf had dropped a bit too. Another entertaining launch for Fi! james got out first easily.

what happened, i went out in the next lull between sets, howevr just as i was reaching the back a massive wave reared out of knowehere and crashed violently right over me! The impact of this exploded by spray deck! With a heavy boat full of water, and the next set coming I had no option but to swim into shore. there was a strong rip coming away from the beech with made it a big effort getting in. I left my boat to it which got in eventually, and whilst getting trashed by waves made it back in. goddammit!!!!

Anyay launch 2 went better ... just as I was nearing the back, a simmilar big wave appearded out of nowhere again! WIth all my energy a charged so hard at the steepening big wave ... reaching it as it capped, and by boat took off in the air like a rocket becoming completely airbore! enough speed and drop for my stomach top feel like it was flying! I landed pretty much upside down! quickly rolled and was amused to find james laughing at me!!

We paddled on that day, and a 15-20knot southerly wind picked up whoohoo! We did a good sized day to the waganui inlet where we knew there was a really good hut to stay in. The waves on the inlet bar werent breaking too violently, and we both managed to awesomely surf some of the waves into the bar side by side, it was great!! We found a big empy hut when we paddled in. It kind of smelt like mould bit it had beds and a cooker and it was luxory for us!!! We even found a 3 year old beer in the cupboard! We managedto get some phone signal for the weather foroecast here, and found out strong northerly winds were forecast for the next few days. We were glad we made it to this hut to rest out the storms.

We had a good sleep in the comfy bed at the hut and spent the next day relaxing with unlimited cups of tea, reading all the terrible womens magazines people had left in the hut!

Our bodies really needed some proper rest at this point, things were starting to ache! Our leg muscles are seizing up from sitting in kayak for so many hours for so many days and it hurts to straighten our legs and walk!

After a couple of days rest we were getting cabin fever, getting restless and wanting to go. the forecast was better, so we left teh hut and paddled across to the bar to camp for the night to get a good start. however, when we got there we were met with the most narlyest thing we have seen so far in new zealand sea! The bar was MAD, with huge waves breaking the entire way acroos over a kilometer out to sea. We climbed up a hill and could just see white mess and huge spray flying up everywhere out at sea! We hoped would be better by the morning.

In the morning it looked slightly better, but still horrendousley narly, and attempting to leave through it was not an option, we would get trashed for sure! Our food supply had got ridiculously low. We were now living off a bowl of porrige and plain rice a day. We were kinda in the middle of knowehere here, but decided to attempt to get to a down to get more food, even though it would be a big mission. We kayaked across to the far side o the inlet, and found a dirt track of a road. We eventually managed to hitch our way into a town 40km away, where we managed to restock food and eventually find a local driving abck along the middle of knowwhere road to hitch with.

The next day the bar looked better and the weather was for 25knot westerlys. We could get to farewell spit with a wild ride! We managed to sneak out through the far left hand side of the inlet without getting wet! With 25knots and a sizeable swell, the sea was rough today! We had a wild ride surfing the waves all the way to farewell spit, with a fair few of them of them crashing over us with suprise! it was great and so much fun!! occasionally passing the bays, the wind would funnell in and out at high speeds, grabbing our paddles and nearly knocking us over! On reaching farewell spit, we decided to stop at the start of it and land through the small surf here. , as we didn't know what the forecast was doing for the next few days, and figured it would be a bad idea to get stuck of the end of a sandune with no water! Luckily we made a clever decision as we did end up getting stuck for a while.