Adventure Magazine

"Massive boulders shining in millions of reddish-brown
shades in the midday sun, stuck out of the turquoise-blue
water as if a giant would have cast them like dice."
The colours of the Southern Ocean dazzled me, a
kaleidoscopic spectacle of the most vivid shades of
turquoise. At just under 8 knots, the wind conditions
were borderline at best for my 10m2. With a foil board
as my light wind weapon, I was hoping to make things
work and to inspect the weird rock with the hole through
it at Twilight Cove, which reminded me of the head of a
prehistoric Pterosaur, up close. Halfway there, the wind
suddenly died off to literally nothing. Looping my kite and
being dragged through the water like trolling live bait was
rather unsettling. Even more so as a foil looks like a big,
shimmering fishing lure and a friend of mine got bitten by
a shark while foiling in New Caledonia. "Breathe, don't
think of sharks, breathe, don't think of sharks...". I felt
relieved when I finally could feel the sand under my feet.
An elderly gentleman who was on a beach walk and
had observed my aborted foiling mission, came across
the squeaky sand and commented "Three weeks ago
a 4.5-meter Great White made Australian headlines
cruising around right here, with lots of families and kids
on the beach. A tourist filmed it with a drone. Check it out
on Youtube!”. So I did later on. Woooow, he was big…
As ubiquitous as the white sharks in Esperance are,
after a few days there, I stopped thinking about them.
Wherever the swell was up and the wind blew, I went
kiting. I did long downwinders, played in transparent
waves and was without exception, always alone on
the water. The breaks along Esperance’s beaches
usually are a fun size as the 105 offshore islands of the
Recherche Archipelago (also called “Bay of Isles” by the
locals) block the swell.
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