Solitary Endeavour on the Southern Ocean

This programme contains some strong language.

Kayak One. All stations. All stations.

A call for help was heard.

No other information was received.

Well, if anyone but Andrew had come to me with that idea,

I would have just thought it's not a possibility,

but when Andrew McAuley tells you that's what he wants to do, you take him a little bit more seriously.

I've been in those waters many, many times, so I know the conditions.

And I will tell him, look, you may have 10-metre waves, how do you think you're going to feel about it?

Visualise what it's like to have a wall of water coming towards you.

This is what you're going to experience. Do you want to do it?

And he kept saying yes.

My father was in the Navy and I told him that he was going to try and paddle a kayak to New Zealand

and his face just went ashen and I said, "What's going on, Dad?"

And he said, "I was there in a naval boat once, and this boat's antenna is 30 metres above the water level,

"and when the two destroyers were in the troughs of the waves,

"we couldn't see the antenna of the other boat."

So the size of swells that you get out there is enormous.

It's cold water. It's big swells.

It's wild winds.

It's a very intimidating piece of the world to be out there on your own.

Yeah. I am scared.

I am scared about this trip.

I feel fear.

I don't necessarily fear being afraid

because, being afraid,

you face your demons, you know.

You're taken places in your head that you just can't be taken in normal everyday life.

That day, back in December 2006,

was such an incredibly emotional day for both of us.

Neither of us have ever experienced such intensity and emotion before.

I never would have asked him to not go, I couldn't have done that to him.

I knew the risks. I knew it was an enormously challenging undertaking...

but I had no other choice than to just believe in him

and believe that nothing could go wrong.

OK. Let's do it.

There'd been so much preparation and everything was so busy

and we hadn't spent that much time together in the final stages because there was just too much going on.

And finally, it was here. He was leaving.

-Bye, Dad!

-Bye bye, my beautiful little boy.

-Bye, Daddy. Bye, Dad.

-Daddy's gonna come and hug you...

And we just didn't want to part.

SHE SOBS

It was just like our hearts were being wrenched out of each other's chests.

It was as if we weren't going to see one another again.

And I so much then didn't want him to go. But...you know...

we'd been through too much in the preparation.

I think it was such a difficult thing for him to leave the beach that day and for me to watch him.

And when he did paddle away,

I sat there holding Finlay tight and we both yelled out, "Bye, Daddy,"

and waved to him, "See you in New Zealand, Daddy."

See you in New Zealand.

See you in New Zealand.

Bye, Daddy.

Bye, Daddy.

HE SOBS

Bye, Daddy.

I rushed up along this path that was following the coast up this hill.

I sprinted up there, trying to look for him,

trying to get one last glimpse at him and wave and I was yelling out to him but he couldn't hear me.

And I was just in hysterics because I just didn't want him to go.

-I love you...

-BREAKS DOWN SOBBING

Andrew was an adventurer, from the moment I met him, that's what I knew him as - an adventurer.

I take the credit, or the blame I should say, for introducing Andrew to kayaking.

He soon caught up and way overtook me though because his fear factor is zilch

and he just, as he does with everything else,

just pushed it beyond the recreational and enjoyable level, onto the really totally out there

and on the edge of your seat excitement level.

And he brought that mountaineering mindset into sea kayaking.

He did the first non-stop crossing of Bass Strait, 35 hours crossing.

He crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria and all these trips were a build-up to this Tasman trip.

So how do you feel, Andrew?

Cold! That's cold!

He'd done his apprenticeship, he'd done his training

and everything was leading towards this trip.

I thought if anyone could do it, he was the one that could do it.

Extreme adventurers probably do have a slightly different emotional makeup to your average family man.

You don't go and put yourself in the middle of the Tasman without certain psychological characteristics.

There are some adventurers that are extremely emotionally hardened and to feel alive,

to get that high, if you like, requires them to put themselves into a high level of risk

than someone with a greater emotional sensitivity.

For many people, to experience that intense feeling of being alive,

you need to touch that potential to die

and, in realising that you might lose your life, some people get a sense of how special life is.

So I think this passion that he had for adventure

was very much in a position of tension and conflict with this love that he had for his family.

He knew he could not achieve his goal.

He was suffering from hypothermia the first night out.

It was obviously a wise decision. He wouldn't have made it.

He turned around before he hit the point of no return.

It was, basically, just the cold.

Hello, gorgeous. It's me.

-Good. How are you?

-'Oh, Andrew's so funny and so predictable.'

He rang me... sounding extremely shattered.

Hadn't slept much and I was hallucinating by the time I got here.

Yeah. It was pretty wild.

And I burst into tears because it was a mixture of just absolute relief

but a really strong disappointment for Andrew, too.

And I'm proud of you for holding your chin up so well, gorgeous, cos it's not easy.

No, it's not easy.

But then he said, "Well, we'll talk about it when I get home as to whether I make another attempt,"

and when he said that, I knew without a doubt that there would be another attempt.

Anyway, beautiful, you don't have to worry any more. I'm on solid land,

I'm feeling the sand between my toes.

'He'd already made up his mind before he reached shore that the second attempt wouldn't be too far away.'

I think it was the first time that that ever really hit me -

the possibility that I might never see my family again.

It's difficult giving advice to people, so I said,

"If you die, and there's a significant chance you could die,

"you're going to leave your son without a father and that's a very significant omission in his life."

And he thanked me for bringing that up.

And I said I didn't feel, as a friend,

that I would want him to go on this trip without at least giving an outside perspective.

I have thought about not returning to do the trip. I guess that the trip is very important to me

and I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it could be done safely.

No-one's ever paddled a kayak from Australia to New Zealand before.

And no-one in the world's ever done anything quite like this on an ocean as rough as this before.

That's going to be breaking new ground for kayaking.

If you're going to do it, if you're going to go to all that effort,

you'd want to be first.

Two more kayakers hope to become the first to make the crossing.

James Castrission and Justin Jones have detailed plans to paddle from Sydney to New Zealand...

There are another couple of young guys from Sydney who plan to...

they're planning to paddle from Sydney to Auckland.

They're using something that I don't really regard as a traditional kayak.

It's a very expensive non-production boat, costing in excess of 80,000.

It will have a big sleeping cabin at the back and, the way I see it, a true kayak doesn't have a cabin.

When did you both establish that you were going around the same time?

Well, I suppose we really only found out that Andrew was going to go about a month ago.

Yeah. So that was a bit of a shock.

Having two young upstarts, wanting to take away his crown, was a very threatening concept.

And though they were doing it in very different ways,

the iconic notion of being the first to have paddled the Tasman was clearly important to Andy.

There's good vibes between you. There's no competition.

You're not feeling any?

Not thinking about the competition.

It seems like there's good camaraderie here.

-Or is there a bit of...?

-What do you think, Andrew?

Well, like I said to you before, I think it's great to see the spirit of adventure still alive

and it's good to see people getting out there. I'd rather think there's an atmosphere of co-operation.

There might be some friendly rivalry but I don't think a place like the Tasman's a place for competitions.

A lot of us told him just forget about these other two because it's a separate trip.

They're at more northern latitudes, a less intimidating body of water in a double kayak.

But it was definitely confronting for him,

the notion that these two guys could beat him across to New Zealand.

And unfortunately, that element of competition did come to have

an adverse effect on Andy's mentality and preparation for the trip.

The day he arrived in Tasmania, he got a call on his mobile phone from the Tasmanian Water Police.

Said they'd like to meet him and have a talk before he took off.

And looking back, it was nearly like an ambush.

How will you cope with making the right decisions, in times of extreme stress, in treacherous seas?

It would appear the police were tipped off by someone that would prefer Andrew didn't make the trip.

I mean, we have our ideas.

They'd been advised that Andrew was about to go and that he didn't have all the right safety gear

and they probably shouldn't let him go.

We've just been meeting with the search and rescue guys and they have the potential to stop the trip,

so we're just waiting here very nervously to see what happens.

Yeah. He outlined his background.

I got no qualms about that, but the Tasman Sea is a big area.

One of them said the boat may be capable, we're not sure if this trip is humanly possible.

But, you know, they were concerned for his safety, obviously.

This is a detention notice.

And that detention notice essentially impounds the kayak

and it means that I'm unable to continue with the trip.

What they insisted that he do before he left was a risk assessment and a safety operation plan.

Andrew listed all the possible scenarios what could go wrong and the chances of it.

You know, the whole thing was a fairly high risk operation right from day one.

I mean, as they said, they can't really stop him going,

but they could make it hard for him.

At that point, they lifted the detention order and said

they would still prefer he didn't go, but good luck.

We're clear to go, so that's great. Whoo!

The second departure was a bit different.

There was nearly no-one there. Vicky and Finlay weren't there.

I think that made it a lot easier for Andrew, emotionally.

Didn't have the crowd.

Sort of slipped away in the dark, so to speak.

But I still remember the guys that gave him a hand to put the boat in the water saying, you know,

"This is really hard core stuff." And when he paddled off,

you knew you were witnessing a moment in history.

You knew no matter what happened, he was going to be in the news.

It was fairly similar to your normal production boat, some modifications.

He needed to sleep in it. It needed to be a space capsule for the ocean.

So we built the boat to handle more than he could handle.

Tuck down inside like this.

Move my body forward.

Well, it's very tight.

I'm down here. I can only fit one arm in, it's so tight

and the other arm tucks across me like this, in Egyptian mummy style.

So you're really locked in.

Head on the seat, for comfort and then I

move the hood over the top and say goodnighty night.

Gave him the ability to sleep in the boat in any weather conditions.

If the boat were to tip upside down, all that air and buoyancy underneath

would tip the boat back upright without really any input from him.

It looks crazy.

There was no way you could paddle across the Tasman without the cover he had on the back.

So I decided to get involved in helping him with the preparation,

so he would at least know what would happen with the weather systems.

So I trained him to understand the nature of the high pressure system, of the low pressure system,

to understand the clouds, which is what navigators have always done.

The key is how much can you take?

That's it. How comfortable are you?

How good are you?

And what can you handle when things get really bad? That's the key to it.

A kayak is small and can be buffeted around

but its strength is, if it goes over, you can roll it back up.

He'd lost one of those fundamental strengths in kayaking.

If he went over, his casper would fill up with water,

he wouldn't be able to roll it, so he would push out and come up to the surface.

And then you have to roll the boat over,

so when the boat's full of water, it's very unstable.

It's actually really hard to keep it the right way up.

Not only that, you've got to pull yourself up into the boat

and then get the water out.

Now, you don't go over in flat water, you only go over when the water's rough.

So doing that when you've got two or three metre

swells bashing over your boat would be difficult, to say the least.

And he realised that it was a very dangerous manoeuvre,

that every time he came out of his boat, he was at risk of dying.

And not unreasonably, he became a little bit scared of that.

The safety authorities, AMSA, their concern with Andrew was he was out of helicopter range.

He had 200 kilometres each end from Australia to New Zealand where he could be rescued by helicopter.

So that left 1,200 kilometres in the middle, which basically means he'd have to be rescued by ship

and there's very little shipping traffic in that area so it could be days before he got rescued.

In 15 degree water, you only last hours so, if you ran into trouble,

that would be the end of the road, pretty much.

Oh, what a morning.

Andrew's oblivious to all this drama, he's just paddling away.

Basically, we told them that he's 400 kilometres out now, we're not going to ask him to return to shore.

He won't anyway. In fact, by Paul's calculations,

it'll be quicker for him just to continue and make landfall at Milford as planned,

so I've been on the phone with them all morning. It's quite stressful.

But hopefully, he will just continue getting the messages at 5.30, so come on, Andy, go, go.

Every day, around 5.30, I will do a forecast.

I would transmit some information as to what was going to happen the following day.

Within 15 minutes, he would have to answer me and describe local condition.

And that would confirm the forecast.

He's been running now for about five to six days,

in very good, very quiet conditions

and making an average of about 31 to 33 miles a day.

That's very good.

Now, in the Southern Ocean, things like this never, never last.

It's a very wild ocean and, even at this time of the year, we get some very serious weather patterns.

Yeah. Don't think I'll be doing this one again in a hurry!

Think I will have had enough of paddling for a little while after this trip. Anyway, back into it.

And he knew that there was absolutely no way he could go across without having a major storm.

There was no doubt about this.

The key was to decide whether or not he could deal with it.

The sea's building up quite a lot and it's pretty rough.

And while I was packing the gear up today, it made me realise just how close to the edge I really am.

Most people, when you get to a certain stage of tiredness, or cold, people just give up.

They just get in cold places and they just say...

"I'm just going to die." And they stop. They give up.

I'm scared because this trip makes me realise that I might not get back

and I've never been able to say that about a trip before

but on this one I can say it, because it's just such a hard trip.

It really is such a hard trip.

And I'm never, ever, ever doing anything as hard and as dangerous as this...

What keeps you alive in those situations is actually a will to live,

a will that can bear the suffering that you're experiencing.

I've got to keep it together. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I've got to keep it together

and really focus and make sure that I pull this off successfully

because I've got too many things to go back to - a beautiful wife and a beautiful son...

Little Finlay, he's just the most gorgeous kid in the world. I really love him...

I can't wait to see them again.

I've got weddings to go to. I've got heaps of friends.

I have a lot of people who want me back. I've got a great family.

My sister, brother, mum and dad. Everyone. I've just...got to get back.

I never will do anything as hard as this again in the future.

That's a promise.

I picked up that storm six days in advance, in fact.

Did not tell him anything because I wanted to verify it.

Five days before the storm, I notified him of it.

I took this one very seriously. It was a bad one.

It was critical for him to know long in advance so that, mentally,

he would be prepared, knowing that something really bad was coming.

And anything between 40 to 60 knots of wind,

you can also get waves that can exceed, you know, 12 metres.

That will compare to the 1998 Sydney-Hobart, similar conditions, probably bigger seas.

'The tragic toll from the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race stands at 6 dead.'

We got knocked flat by a huge wave.

Wouldn't like to guess how big it was. It rolled the boat upside down.

There were two guys washed overboard that were on deck at the time.

The one Andrew went through would've been very similar to that storm.

So he was in that for 48 hours.

It was a horror.

Ten metre swells.

50 knot winds gusting up to 80 knots.

No news yet.

It's about 11 o'clock now. We should have had a position report at 5.30.

Between 5.30 and 6 o'clock.

And we are running about, um, six hours late.

Has he ever been this late before?

No. Never.

It's probably hard for any of us in the eventual to really think about

what it would be like living through that for 24, 48 hours.

You have these huge waves that are coming through and the wind is cutting off the tops of the waves

so that all the tops of the waves are breaking.

So, as he's lying there, you go up the wave, you possibly get spun at the top of the wave,

you come off the wave and go bang at the bottom, so each swell, he's coming up and then bang! Bang!

Rolling down the face of waves at two o'clock in the morning with no windows and 600km from land,

that would have been an horrendous position to be in. I don't think we could even imagine how bad.

When Andrew's message didn't come through, I turned my computer off

and walked away and said to my wife and family, "Looks like it's all over."

I cannot tell you the anxiety that I felt...

I didn't even want to ring Jonathan because I didn't want to know.

There we go. We got the message.

There we go. Time, 21.33.

"All is fine.

"Wind dropped to 25 knots.

"South west. Sky cumulus.

"Position will send in in morning.

"Terrifying start.

"Terrifying start.

"Then settled a bit.

"Broke the pivot arm on canopy.

"All OK. Terrifying start."

That's what...he would have had experience, because the seas would have been absolutely horrendous.

So all is well.

I feel like I'm in a prison cell.

And thankfully, the capsule worked...as advertised

and the boat didn't stay upside down, which was a relief.

So right now, I'm...

It's still pretty windy, so...I'm gonna...

It sounds like...it feels like it's going to be OK for paddling, though.

I've just got to be super super careful and, um...

I'm going to have some breakfast before...

I venture out into the big bad world.

And, um, when I do...venture out into the big bad world,

I've just got to be really careful.

The last thing I want is another capsize. I really don't want to capsize again.

Another wave. Um...

Yeah, so...

it's pretty dangerous out there, really.

I just want to paddle conservatively and stay upright,

but I've got to make progress as well. I'm not going to make any progress...if I sit in here all day.

He kept his nerves and that's one of the thing that always amazed me with Andrew.

He had control of situation that was way beyond everything I have ever seen before.

The sort of storms that he went through were the sort of storm that he thought he would probably die in,

in terms of our discussion leading up to the trip. But he survived that storm and I don't know how.

Again, it's that will to survive thing.

At three weeks into that trip where he's already not at his best,

how you would get through that sort of experience is amazing.

Andrew got through it and started paddling a day or two later

and sustained a little bit of damage to one of the pivot arms on the canopy on the boat.

Well, by that stage, yes, he'd survived that huge storm and then he was getting so close.

What could go wrong? What could go wrong now?

You know, he's home and hosed.

He's done it.

I'm feeling a little bit dejected at the moment.

I'm not sure whether I can pull it off. It's just so hard.

Not so much the paddling each day but living in this fucking little cockpit thing.

Each night, when you can't move, you can't do anything,

can't even put cream on my arse to get rid of these pressure sores and salt sores because it's so tight.

And I'm just finding it very, very difficult. Much more so than I imagined I would.

I really feel that I'm right at my limit and this is about as much as I can handle.

So I've just got to really focus on hanging in there and...I've just got to make sure I don't lose it.

You can call it the Tasman Sea but it's really the Southern Ocean.

It's below 40 degrees. It's very rough out there. It's so exposed.

Such a long way. He's all on his own. It's just very, very full on.

-FINLAY:

-That's my daddy! That's my daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!

Just left Queenstown after a very busy morning with the media.

We're just heading out now while we wait for Andrew, he's still a couple of hundred kilometres offshore.

He's in a direct line, at least, for Milford, so that's good news.

At least we know he'll definitely make it into Milford.

Someone, they've had a garbled message from someone called Kayak One in the fjord region.

And he said they couldn't understand... Yeah.

'The Friday night...

'there was a great sense of anticipation in the air

'because Andrew's last message indicated he'd see us on Sunday.'

And we were out at a noisy restaurant when a couple of phones went off

and then Paul said to me the rescue co-ordination centre were on the line cos they'd received a transmission.

He sort of asked me, he said what call sign would Andrew use?

-He said I won't tell you, that way I'm not putting ideas in your head.

-Oh, no, that's definitely him.

He said Kayak One... This guy's in Wellington.

He said Kayak One, but they couldn't understand it.

They said it didn't sound like a distress signal.

They go to channel six to make contact then change channels.

We were really excited because we thought he'd made good progress and was now within radio contact.

'We went back to the motel and then Paul had said that the RCC would ring a little later on.'

And he played me a very short snippet of the tape so I could identify Andrew's voice.

MESSAGE IS REPEATED

We got four words, you know - Kayak One, do you copy? Over.

Was a little bit hard to even confirm it was Andrew,

but we were not alarmed from what we'd heard.

So, I think it's just that he's trying to alert us that he's closer than he'd anticipated

because we've got all this media waiting and we've got to notify them.

'Yeah. Um, there are some other words in there.

'There's more to the transmission than that.

-'We're having great difficulty in deciphering it.'

-Right.

'And that's part of the reason that we're taking this precaution

'and if we can get the helicopter out, we'll do it tonight

'because in the worst circumstance, if Andrew is in need of assistance,

'we don't want to leave him out there overnight.'

The reason they didn't play the whole message was because they did not want to alarm us unnecessarily.

Well, they didn't.

I mean, I pretty well went to bed like normal, you know.

Some guy's called on the radio and could have been Andrew.

How difficult was it last night out there?

It was a brilliant night, last night. No cloud cover at all.

A million stars and half a moon, so a good chance of seeing him.

Well, we're sort of working on where RCC think he MAY be.

That's not to say that he's not a few miles to the north.

-Can't wait to see Dad.

-Neither can I.

Neither can I.

The next morning, Vicky received a call

saying that they'd managed to extract a few words from the transmission but them being...

my kayak's sinking and help.

And I must say I'm feeling very nervous.

I really don't think it's him,

but the whole situation is not a pleasant one.

John from the RCC said, "We have many hoax calls

"so we have to investigate would this be Andrew or a hoax call?"

The next day we still hadn't heard the rest of the recording.

So in my mind there was every possibility that it was a hoax call then.

I'm just hoping that Andrew's oblivious to all this, that he's just merrily paddling away out there,

doing what he's doing and we will still expect to see him on...

..Sunday morning, as was planned.

I hope we get a glimpse of him. I really do.

It'd make me feel a lot better if we do. Keep our fingers crossed.

Well, you know, it was a little bit disappointing not seeing him out there but it's an awful big ocean...

and we only covered a very small area.

So it's certainly understandable that we didn't spot him out there.

It's pretty difficult to pick up a tiny little kayak.

Looking good. We've had a possible sighting so they're just going up in the chopper to confirm.

We'll hear back in half an hour, or so.

We'll wait and see. We won't get our hopes up too high, yet,

but yes, I'm feeling confident it's him.

We may all be able to sleep tonight.

It was a while and I thought, well, it's getting late,

and then...this police officer knocked on my door

and came in with this woman and first thing he said was...

"I'm James from Te Anau Police. This is Margaret from Victim Support."

And I pushed her away.

"What are you bringing this woman from Victim Support in here...? What's going on?"

And he said, "The kayak's been found. Andrew's not with it."

And I pushed her away and said, "It is not his boat, it's not him, you go and find him, that's not him."

Well, I think, um...I actually really knew when he said it.

As soon as they walked in...

I knew that...something wasn't right, but I just refused to believe it.

I was just hysterical and all I could do was hold Finlay.

And, um...

I just held him.

'The trans-Tasman paddle of Australian Andrew McAuley could have cost his life.

'The 39-year-old adventurer is missing off New Zealand.

'His upturned kayak was found drifting 80km off Milford Sound.

'From there, the search has fanned out to cover 2,000 square kilometres of ocean.'

From the beginning, my biggest concern actually was the approach to New Zealand.

This part of New Zealand is notoriously dangerous. On a good day, you can get rogue waves.

Not big waves, but two or three metres that can come out of nowhere.

Not big, but powerful and very dangerous.

I have no doubt that a wave got him.

After he sustained some minor damage to his bubble during the storm,

which under normal circumstances, was not really significant,

in the event of a capsize, it became very significant

because the bubble, which would normally sit on the back,

one of the attaching points had become disconnected,

so after that had happened and he capsized, the bubble would then hang down

and once in that position, it would be impossible

for a human to have the weight or the strength to right the boat,

just because of the leverage effect of the casper hanging so much lower down under the boat,

effectively working like a keel to keep the boat upside down.

The last moments...

I can't get out of my head. I don't sleep.

I just find the not knowing what could possibly have gone wrong, really, really hard.

It's quite unbearable, really.

This is my kayak.

Like any dad, his father...

had strengths and weaknesses.

And he will grow up

being aware of his dad's weaknesses, in some senses...

He will grow up without having had that opportunity to know his dad.

The history of our world is made up of people like Andrew McAuley,

people who just want to discover, people who want to explore.

To discover new frontiers. And I think we all like this in a way.

Some of us decide not to do it, or restrain it.

And others will just go and do it.

Until Andy started thinking about crossing the Tasman,

it wasn't in the realm of possibility for a kayaker to single handedly do that.

But if you start thinking maybe you could,

then sometimes you can, and he almost did.

He was about 35 nautical miles off shore. He crossed the Tasman, there's no doubt about that.

He crossed the Tasman in a single kayak. No-one's ever done that.

Some people'll argue that he didn't actually set foot on shore, but hey, you know...

..he made it.

Anyone that says otherwise can get stuffed.

He made it.