Paul Caffyn gets Hero’s welcome

Press, 30 July 1980, Page 3

Paul Caffyn gets Hero’s welcome

PA London, The West Coaster, PauL Caffyn, paddled ashore to a' j hero’s welcome at Angelsey,! North Wales, yesterday. With Nigel Dennis, of iWales, Caffyn, aged 32, a geologist, was given a fullfledged civic reception as the two men stepped from] their kayaks after completing the first circumnavigation of Great Britain, by canoe. After a trip of 85 days, Caffyn, from Runanga, near Greymouth, said: “It’s great that we have done it but I’m a little sad now that it’s over. It’s a great way of life.”

Apart from 16 days when weather prevented their putting to sea, Caffyn and !Dennis had followed an arduous schedule since leaving Holyhead on May 5. “Most mornings we would be up at five o’clock, have a quick bowl of porridge, and be on the water by six,” Caffyn said. “We would aim to get in four three-hour stints and if the weather was all right to keep going until about 9.30 p.m. before iit got dark.” ‘ An experienced canoeist I after circumnavigating the i South Island in the summer I of 1978, and the North Island and Stewart Island in I the summer of 1979, Caffyn I had his best day on Monday when the pair paddled 58 nautical miles, leaving them with only a short trip for yesterday’s final section. Normally sticking close to the shore where Caffyn’s

I j •; girlfriend, Lesley Hadley, of Rotorua, was giving vital; “shore support,” the two canoeists were forced sev-! eral times to make open-sea crossings. They paddled for 29 miles up to 15 miles off-shore to get from Kent . to Essex across the Thames Estuary. “It was a little hairy sometimes,” Caffyn said.; “Because of the haze andi everything, we would have a: two-hour to three-hour stint; in the middle where we; could not see land and we I would have to keep a very! close eye on the currents' and on our compasses, but I our navigation was always spot on.” . j Caffyn is still completing'

| a book on his North Island a followpp to one he wrote about • the South Island, trip. He plans a third on the circumnavigation of Britain. i ■ But he said he does not undertake the trips just toi give him something to writeabout. > .’“I love the sea. 1 really | 'dig it,” he said. “To be able to do it day after day like i that, the self-satisfaction is tremendous.” Most of the hazards the two canoeists met on their trip were man-made. “We had far more man:made hassles than natural ones, although we had some pretty vicious rip-tides and currents.” They were nearly run down several times by hovercraft coming in and out of the Channel port of Dover. They sailed at one stage i through a missile firing (range. On another occasion they could hear live ammunition ricocheting from targets when the lookout on a small-arms range failed to see them on the water. Caffyn and Miss Hadley will return to New Zealand “in about a month” when he jwill probably start planning • his next trip in the Nodkapp • kayak, based on the sealI hunting canoes of the West (Greenland Eskimos. I "Australia’s just too big, lit would take too long. But I have thought about doing a I solo round Tasmania which 'has not been done before, land I have looked at Papua ‘New Guinea.” Caffyn said.