That shot there tells everything. There are no words, captions or explanations. Just fix it. A tired face, marked by the sun and carved out of salt, the skin hardened by weeks of effort and resistance. The eyes, grown and intense, fix the goal with a strange mixture of determination and vulnerability, as if they were looking for contact with the viewer, almost a hand stretched through time. Behind him, an imposing wave stands threatening, a liquid wall that seems on the point of swallowing him. It is the latest known image of Andrew Mcauleythe Australian adventurer who in 2007 He tries the impossible company: cross alone, on board a kayak, the Tasmania Sea1,600 kilometers of ocean perpetually restlessly, between Australia and New Zealand.
Born in 1968 in Goulburn, in New South Wales, Andrew is not an unconscious, nor an improvised. It is not even one who seeks death to feel alive. Of course, it often goes close to us, yes. But in order, with criterion, with preparation. Before challenging the Pacific, he has already climbed Montagne in Pakistan, walked among the snows of Patagonia, a solitary route route among the fjords of New Zealand. Kayak becomes his way of measuring himself with the world. A header is not enough to decide to cross 1,600 kilometers of solo salted expanses, between Australia and New Zealand. We need a plan, and his is precise, detailed, almost obsessive.
The kayak is six meters long, modified with a stern fiber capsule, yellow and rounded, like a small submarine hooked on the back. Casper calls him, like the ghost: a little for superstition, a little because he really will have to sleep there, survive the waves, hope he keeps. The study lasts months. The ocean, however, does not read the manuals.
Starts on 11 January 2007 from Tasmaniawithout fanfare, only with the obsession to succeed where others have not even dared. The route is traced, but the sea has no straight lines. After two weeks of paddle and silences, the storm arrives. Resist. On January 27, his signal gets uncertain, but Andrew does not give up. The kayak holds, he too. He writes to his wife who will be at home on Sunday at nine in the morning. He says it how certain things are said. Like a father who is coming from a business trip. The son, just three years old, awaits him. The party is also ready.
Instead the next day, at seven in the evening, his voice arrives gracious to the coast guard: “I’m in an emergency. The kayak is sinking. I’m drowning”. Then nothing more. On February 10, the kayak is found. He floats again, but without the capsule, without radiofaro, without Andrew. The research goes on two days, then they stop. Too ocean, too late. Only that photo taken in the middle of nothing remains of him, with that face eaten by the sun looking at the goal with an intensity that displaces. Behind, a threatening wave already seems to know how it will end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvct3aavwr2s
Andrew knew how to risk, but He also knew how to stop. A month earlier, at the first attempt, he had gone back after 48 hours, when he understood that the cold would not leave him escape. “It wasn’t time,” he said. It was not a cowardice, but lucidity. What often lacks those who live in the idea of success at any cost. He does not. He wanted to arrive, yes, but not at the cost of dying.
Today his kayak is kept at the Sydney Maritime Museum. It is there like a heirloom of an era that has not yet passed, because there are men who continue to want to see what is beyond the last line of horizon. Andrew was one of those. He was thirty -nine years old, a family, normal work, any home. But inside, he felt crackling.
His “See you on Sunday at nine” He remained hung in the air, like certain greetings pronounced without knowing that they will be the last. Maybe the appointment was not for that Sunday there. Maybe it will be for another, which has yet to arrive.