I’m feeling humble this evening after underestimating the size of the surf that we landed through.

We had planned to avoid surf landings on this exposed North coast but our progress today was slow due to the wind and waves being against us and possibly the current ganging up against us as well. We weren’t going to make it to the village of Mega before dark despite seeing its telephone tower and the brown cut of a dirt road scaring the hill less than 10km ahead. We identified a few potential landing spots as we headed East towards Mega. Sandy beaches breaking up the steep craggy hills that rise sharply from the sea then dissappear into the mist. I liked the 2nd one, a small clearing in the thick green vegetation where we could put our tents and a man made wooden structure showing other people more familiar with this coastline had chosen it as a place to land. The surf looked gentle. There was one more possibility 3km further on, a village but with more dumping surf than our other options. Sandy wanted to go back to the earlier beaches. I thought I could handle the surf at the
village but agreed. Back at my favoured spot 80 minutes Street we’d first been there, something was different. Maybe the swell had picked up or the tide level had changed. It wasn’t gentle. Sandy went in to land but decided against it. I was filming her from a safe distance and the waves washing up the beach behind her looked a lot bigger than the 1metre forecast.

Back another km to our first option, it didn’t look any better. The campsite looked good, a rare clearing behind the beach but spray was loudly pounding down on the beach and the white wash surged up the steep sand. Sandy said if she was by herself she wouldn’t land. She’d carry on eastwards in the dark until she found somewhere without surf, paddling through the night if she had to. I didn’t much like the sound of that and said I thought I could land in between sets and pull my boat up quickly before the next wave.

I timed it quite well, paddling in on the back of a wave, not quite surfing it but reaching shore and jumping out before the next wave. As I grabbed the bow of my kayak to pull it up the beach, the receding wave sucked back powerfully and I saw rock appear below the kayak. The wave was breaking onto reef, not sand. The kayak got pulled back slightly onto the reef then the next breaking wave pushed it towards shore. I let go as it washed up the beach then grabbed on again to stop it revisiting the reef. As I looked back at the waves breaking powerfully and Sandy looking tiny behind the foaming wall, I felt guilty, arrogant and a bit foolish. Some of the breaking waves looked more like 2-3metres from this angle.

Sandy landed well a few metres down the beach where the waves were on average a bit smaller and breaking onto sand. I know she’s thinking she wishes we’d carried on.

Now we’re camped and hope we can launch safely and easily tomorrow. It’s one of those dumping breaks where we could be lucky and time it well so that it feels easy but there’s a lot of power there if we time it badly.

We’ll be up early to check out the surf at a similar state of tide to when we first saw it today.

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