WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Stuart Cleary set out in late 2014 to paddle solo from Australia to New Zealand. But in the end, it was his homemade kayak that completed the 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) journey on its own.
Just hours into the trip, Cleary ran into equipment problems. Later, his kayak started taking on water, and he was forced to abandon the vessel before being rescued at sea. Eighteen months later, the kayak has washed up on a New Zealand beach close to where Cleary had intended to make landfall.
Nathan Marshall said he was taking his dogs for a run on Muriwai Beach near Auckland on Wednesday morning when he found the barnacle-encrusted kayak. He approached it cautiously.
“I thought there was going to be a body,” he said by phone.
Instead, he found a vessel that was stained and battered but remarkably intact considering its odyssey. Inside the cabin were remnants of the failed voyage: rusted cans of food, a radio, a waterlogged first-aid kit.