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S43°53.68' E172°52.86'

Day 2 brings a lovely hot day, with sightings of lots of dolphins, seals and birds. 45km of paddling alongside big cliffs brings tired muscles!

[alex on behalf of jc]

Justine and Barry have set off!

S43°40.4' E173°03.4'

On day one, they had hot sun and saw dolphins. Barry rolled in the surf. They managed 30km in 5 hours and are feeling good!

[alex on behalf of jc]

PICKING UP THE KAYAKS FROM CANOE & KAYAK WORLD, BARRY & KEV
BARRY SORTING OUT THE KAYAKS WITH GAIL & IAN
We’re nearly ready and we plan to start our trip tomorrow morning ( Saturday), probably from Littleton Harbour in Christchurch but that’s still to be confirmed!

We were delayed getting to Christchurch yesterday and arrived around midday so we’d have really struggled to start the trip today, even if we’d wanted to. The last day and a half have been spent shopping and getting sorted. We collected our kayaks from “Canoe & Outdoor World” ( thanks again Kev for paying to ship the kayaks down from Auckland, and for lending us some flares), we spent over 2 hours food shopping and even more time unpacking and repacking it, we’ve bought other bits and pieces, filled fuel bottles, etc etc. The floor at Ian and Gails is still covered with all my stuff so we’re not finished yet! but we’re getting there.
BARRY CHECKS OUT THE SURF NEAR TO WHERE WE’RE STAYING

it’s warm here, sleeveless t-shirt warm and the weather is reasonably settled so it’s a good time to get going. The plan is to warm up over the next few days and not go mad. Right, back to it!!
FILLING UP FUEL BOTTLES

It’s a glamorous life going on trips! Here we are in San Francisco airport, waiting for 5 hours for our onward flight to New Zealand. We had all of 2 hours sleep on our last night in the UK before the alarm went off at 3.15am for our 6.45am flight from Manchester. Thanks a lot to Jeff Cochrane for getting up even earlier to come and pick us up from Barry’s house and drive us to the airport. I feel pretty good now as I slept almost all the way to San Fran, although Barry is a bit more tired.

Just before we left the UK, our thoughts turned to food for the trip and we approached ‘Annies’ in Marlborough for sponsorship. They make healthy and delicious looking fruit bars and they’ve agreed to supply us with some of them for our journey. We’re very excited about that as it’s really important to try to eat as well as we can for such a long trip. We won’t always be able to buy fresh fruit and veg so the fruit bars will be fantastic.
http://www.annies.co.nz

Right, time to check our bags in for the last leg ( for some reason, we’ve had to collect them at every airport). Nearly there now!