Day Eight, Coles Bay to Friendly Beaches
We had a great paddle down to Schouten Island, with a nice 20kms / hr wind pushing us down in two hours.
We found some very generous yachties waiting off Cook's Beach to catch the nor-easter that made the second part of our day quiet tuff going. These great people all dug into their pockets and gave us around $55 in donations.
As we paddled past the majestic cliffs of the outer Freycient Peninsular, we sighted our second pod of dolphins for the day, this second pod was much larger than the first and they chased us for about 500 meters in very big and choppy seas, making very light work of cutting through the waves that were making life 'tricky' for us.
As the dolphins left us, we had our first sighting of a shark. It was somewhat larger than the dolphins, but lucky for us it was surprised to see us in it's feeding grounds and left us alone, after circling us only the once. We suspected it may have been attracted by the baked beans that Ben had bought up just prior, a result of a bout of sea sickness brought on by the exceedingly rough conditions.
We had planned to finish the day at Sleepy Bay, but despite having been in our boats for about six hours we made the decision to take advantage of the favorable conditions and push on for an extra 10 kms to the southern end of Friendly Beaches. This section of the trip had a few notable moments, the first being the almost catastrophic loss of a collection tin from Charles's kayak, the tin was saved but his sun glasses were not so lucky ... need to keep an eye out for those freak waves. We also passed a yellow double sea kayak that rather oddly seemed to be abandoned on the rocks just south of the White Water Wall.
By the time we landed we had been sitting in the boats without a break for over seven hours!
The track into the southern end of this beach was quiet a test for our support crew ... Layland Brothers take note, Teresa Seaman might just give you a run for your money.
We would also like to make a special note of thanks to Pat Fasnacht and all his mates at the Iluka Tavern who, along with the bar staff (who generously donated all their bar tips) for managing to fill up a whole tin with donations, fantastic effort guys!
About nine yachts at anchor off Cooks Beach
This group of yachties gave Charles a very generous donation, thanks heaps.
