Heroes: Solo kayak legend

When sharks bite the boat, how do you get away?

As I talk to Freya Hoffmeister on her mobile phone, I am in the comfort of a dry house in Surrey, England, whereas she is sitting on a desolate stretch of sandy beach, just south of Perth, Australia. Hoffmeister is on the toughest journey of her life – circumnavigating the world’s largest island by kayak, alone, totally unsupported.

She launched her kayak into the sea from Melbourne, January 18th 2009, beginning a long journey around the Australian coast of 9,420 miles (15,166km), but, by cutting across the Gulf of Carpenteria, it should shorten the distance by about 1,000 km. This means that Hoffmeister is optimistic she will be able to complete the challenge in under a year and hopes she will be finished in mid-December.

When she completes her journey she will be the first woman, and only the second person, to achieve it. The last person to do it in a kayak was Paul Caffyn, 27 years ago, who had a lot of assistance along the way. It took him 361 days.

Amazingly, due to the wonders of the internet and Hoffmeister’s own indefatigability, she has written an up-to-date diary on her website, documenting every high and low of the journey so far, which now has quite a following amongst kayaking and adventure enthusiasts around the world.

Time off

One would have thought that the toughest thing about such a trip would be the hours of gruelling physical exercise. After all, Hoffmeister is usually in the water for up to 12 hours a day, sometimes more. She says, however, that the hardest thing is doing it alone. “One of the most stressful things is that I have little time off," she says. "Because I am doing it unsupported I have to do all the organising, the repairs, all the communications by myself and there is really very little time.”

Hoffmeister is surprisingly casual about the physical trials of such a trip, but then perhaps it is not that surprising when you look at her past achievements, which are almost as breathtaking as her current odyssey.

According to her website, Hoffmeister, who originates from Husum, north Germany, has spent 15 years as a competitive gymnast, five years as a competitive bodybuilder and has 10 years skydiving experience.

A series of records

But it is in kayaking that she has made the biggest name for herself. Since she started the sport seriously in 2004, she has circumnavigated Iceland (in 2007), with a record time of just 33 days, and then did the same round New Zealand in another record time of 70 days.

As if breaking numerous kayaking records around the world wasn’t enough, she has also built up a number of successful businesses over the years, including a salad bar, ice cream parlours and also Christmas shops, some of which are being run by a 40-strong team back in Germany.

So what gives her the drive to do things that most people would never even dream about? Most adventurers don’t have a sole motive for their risk-taking and all-consuming desire to do near-crazy things.

“It is something that won’t be done again for a very long time," she says. "Perhaps not even ever again. Also, people write things on the website like, ‘You are a legend,’ ‘You are a star,’ and it is a nice feeling. Somebody has to be the guide figure: someone has to be at the front.”

Certainly, in the world of sea-kayaking, Hoffmeister is quite clearly leading the way in the sport and the level of support that people seem to give her along the way is astonishing. For, while Hoffmeister is paddling all day, she often tries to go ashore to sleep at night, and sometimes she is hosted by a welcoming Australian family who can give her a dry, warm bed before she heads back on the water the next morning.

It seems that so far the biggest problems on the journey have merely been trying to get everything organised, complete the required number of kilometres in a day, and then write about it all online afterwards. There have obviously been many amazing and inspiring parts.

Hoffmeister says she found the Ningaloo reef, along the western coast, incredibly beautiful. She passed through the reef on stage 10 of the trip, from Onslow to Kalbarri.

However, it isn’t all clear blue skies and beautiful sandy beaches: the journey has obviously involved a fair few dangers too: Apart from the expected worries from bad weather and rough seas, including terrifyingly strong currents, she has had encounters with a range of not-so-friendly wildlife.

Shark attack

One night her kayak was attacked by a shark, which took a sizeable bite out of it. It was around July, well into the journey and she was crossing Cape Jaubert, on the ninth leg of the trip between Broome and Onslow, along the Western coast of the island.

She had launched in the dark at 12am and paddled all through the night and, just after the sun came up at around 6am, she felt something bumping her boat. Not knowing what it was, she continued to paddle, and it wasn’t until she was ashore hours later in good light, that she fully realised what had happened.

With the kayak on the sand, bite marks were clearly visible, there was a hole in the fibreglass exterior, and the shark had even left behind some of its teeth. This was one rare moment that Freya questioned how sensible the trip was and whether it was worth the risks she was taking.

Another frightening time in the journey, Freya says, was when she had to paddle through waters infested with crocodiles. I ask how she coped, and in her causal style she just shrugs it off: “Well, you know, I was there, and they were there… and it was all fine.”

To find out more about Freya Hoffmeister and her current adventure, visit http://qajaqunderground.com