Calif. to Hawaii: Lonely, Hungry Kayaker Makes It

San Diego adventurer Ed Gillet completed a two-month solo kayak voyage Thursday from California to Hawaii, defeating loneliness, hunger and a near-collision with a fishing boat.

“I’m very glad I did it, now that I’m here,” Gillet said. “But there were times during my trip when I thought it was a terrible mistake.”

Gillet, 36, paddled his 21-foot kayak into Kahului Harbor at dawn after 63 days at sea, becoming the first person in recent memory to make the voyage in a kayak.

“I feel exhausted because I went the last 40 hours non-stop,” Gillet said. “Other than that, I feel fine. I was out of food for the last four days, and I was a little weak.”

‘Paddled Constantly’

Gillet, who lost 25 pounds on the trip, said he paddled 12 or 16 hours a day. “Since the trades (trade winds) weren’t blowing, I had to keep the boat moving and paddled constantly,” he said.

On arrival in Hawaii, Gillet pulled his boat out of the water, went to a hotel, made some telephone calls to his wife and parents and “bought some junk food”--ice cream and cookies.

Gillet left Monterey, Calif., on June 25 for what he expected to be a 40- to 60-day trip across the Pacific.

“The trade winds weren’t really blowing, so it went much, much slower than I thought,” Gillet said. “It was also harder moving that much weight, that heavy a boat, than I thought it was going to be.”

Gillet said he fretted during the last 1 1/2 weeks because “I was caught in a current heading north. I thought I might miss Kauai, the northernmost island, and there would be nothing until Midway Island or Japan.

“The dangers of a trip like this are illness, or falling off the boat, or losing an essential piece of equipment,” Gillet said. “It’s not a storm, or being hit by a ship or even eaten by a shark.”

Gillet said he almost was hit by another boat as he was sleeping two days after leaving California, 30 miles out.

‘Had to Keep Calm’

“I was asleep and the engine noise woke me up, so I turned on the strobe,” Gillet said. The 40-foot vessel spotted him and veered off, he said.

Gillet also said he paddled some very rough water on days when the wind reached 35 knots or more. “I just had to keep calm and keep paddling,” he said.

Another problem he faced on the open ocean was loneliness after his shortwave and AM-FM radios stopped working. “I missed that kind of human contact. It was very lonely,” he said.

“And near the end I missed not eating,” he said.

Gillet said he plans to fly back to San Diego in a few days. After that, “I think I might slog gracefully into middle age.”

In the past, Gillet has paddled the west coast of South America from the Strait of Magellan to Colombia, along both sides of Baja California and from Glacier Bay to Seattle.