Cyril Derreumaux has completed his solo kayak trip from California to Hawaii. He arrived at Hilo on Sept. 20 after 92 days at sea. He’s only the second person to make the arduous journey by kayak.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Explorersweb.
Cyril Derreumaux pushed off from Monterey, Calif., on June 21 in the company of well-wishers paddling a few strokes beside him. Then came 3 months of lonely effort. He had initially hoped to complete the 2,761-mile trip to Waikiki, Hawaii, in 70 days, but difficult conditions slowed his progress.
However, the seasoned paddler eventually prevailed. Success must taste even sweeter in the memory of his previous attempt, which ended after just 6 days and 70 miles.

A Rough Start
For the first few weeks, contrary winds pushed Derreumaux in the wrong direction. Rather than making progress, the daily goal became not losing distance. Constant swells made him seasick, and he felt very weak. On week two, the tubing that held his steering line disconnected and let water into the cabin.
Then after 46 days, his watermaker broke. From that point on, as well as rowing for 10 to 12 hours a day, he also spent 1-1.5 hours manually generating fresh water. And he spent several bad-weather days in his little cabin, on sea anchor.
It quickly became clear that the journey would take more than 70 days. By the halfway point, he started rationing food. Though he had calculated 6,000 calories a day to fuel all that rowing, he lost weight rapidly, even before rationing. With it, he began to doubt whether he would make it in time.
At the end of August, he decided to change his Hawaiian endpoint. Rather than land in Waikiki, he redirected to Hilo. This cut 6 days of paddling from the journey. It also meant that he had enough food to make the distance without resorting to eating toothpaste, like the first California-to-Hawaii kayaker, Ed Gillet, had done.
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Ed Gillet’s Example; Overcoming Failure
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