Freya Hoffmeister

Freya Hoffmeister

Freya Hoffmeister, “The Woman in Black”, is now on the final leg of her kayak circumnavigation of Australia.

 

 

The maritime community of South Australia was provided with a fantastic presentation from the renowned adventure paddler Freya Hoffmeister on Thursday night the 3rd of December at the Victor Harbor Yacht Club. The crowd of over 70 on the night included many well known adventure kayakers with Peter Carter and Laurie Ford seated amongst many others in the audience.

 

Freya arrived in Port Elliot early on Wednesday evening about 7.15pm along with a handful of local sea kayakers. Her journey along the Fleurieu Peninsula and the Waitpinga cliffs in near perfect conditions a definite highlight for this adventurer.

Having only slept 10hours over the previous 3 days, Freya took a well earned rest day on Thursday but organised herself to deliver a speaking engagement to the local sea kayaking and sailing community in the evening.

The audience was spell bound as this elegant jovial lady described her last 320 days at sea; adventures with whales, flying fish hitting her in the head and scary moments being knocked out of the boat. Gasps and sighs were heard from attendees as Freya described sleeping in the kayak for a week as she crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria from Weipa to Nhulunbuy. The kayak was also on display during her presentation and everyone was quite surprised at the simplicity of this very practical sea craft.

Encounter Paddling hosted the evening and President Cath Venning concluded the formal part of the evening by presenting Freya with a club polo top. However the crowd stayed for an extra hour as this engaging female adventurer signed autographs for the audience.

At 6.15am on Friday morning Freya paddled out of Horseshoe Bay on her way to Kingscote on the limestone Coast. She is expected to take 2 days to reach Kingscote and will consequently have to tackle a significant surf landing somewhere along the Coorong before she makes camp for the night.

 

 

Freya launched from Queenscliff, Victoria on the 18th of January 2009. She has been paddling in an anti-clockwise direction along the Australian mainland coastline ever since.

Freya expects to complete the 15,166 kilometres voyage in less than one year. On her first day at sea Freya paddled about 50 km then in subsequent days simply kept going reaching the approximate half-way mark at Broome in 171 days. 

To cut 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) off the trip, she paddled across the Gulf of Carpentaria from Jackson River to Nhulunbuy a distance of 575 kilometres. The crossing took seven nights and eight days and required sleeping in the kayak at sea at night. This crossing has only been done once before in a solo kayak, by Andrew McAuley.

The only other person to have successfully completed the whole Australian circumnavigation previously is New Zealander, Paul Caffyn who took 361 days in 1981-82.

To date Freya has had more than 300 days of pure adventure and occasional abject loneliness as she has paddled around 90% of the Australian continent. Her story, although not yet complete, is an amazing story of strength, persistence, perseverance and adventure.

Hoffmeister is a former Miss Germany beauty contestant and competitive gymnast, body-builder and sky-diver. She lives in Husum, Germany.

 

 

Freya expects to arrive back at Queenscliff, Melbourne before the end of December. The Victorian Sea Kayak Club have extended an invitation to all interested poeple to join in welcoming her back to Melbourne. However given the uncertainty of Freya’s arrival date it is clearly difficult for anyone to commit to being at Queenscliff. Nevertheless the VSKC assure us that attendees will be most welcome to join in the celebrations at this historic event.

The location – next to the jetty, Tobin Drive, Queenscliff.

In the meantime keep up to date with her progress through attention to Freya’s website:- www.qajaqunderground.com