After previously both rowing and wind surfing between Marahau and Tahunanui, Mark Rayner decided to take up a new challenge and paddle board it.
He set a personal target to complete the record crossing in one day, leaving from Marahau at 6.30am on Friday and arriving at Tahunanui at 7.30pm.
“The morning was calm. I needed incoming tides to take me into Mapua and around the back of Rabbit Island,” he says.
After a half hour stop in Mapua for a beer as he waited for the tides to turn, he continued on his “pace yourself marathon”.
He says the key to pulling it off was timing the weather and the tides.
“It spat me out the other end towards Tahuna.”
Mark kept the trip on the “down-low” and there was no crowd to greet him when he made it to Tahunanui Beach, just Daryl Way from Abel Tasman Stand Up Paddleboard, who had loaned him a board for the trip.
“I told him to remind me never to do that again,” Mark says.
Daryl says Mark was “sweet as” but was quite happy when he got back to Tahuna. “We went and had a pizza and a cider.”
Mark took a day off to recover before returning to his job at Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures.
