Andrew McAuley was an Australian mountaineer and sea kayaker. He is presumed to have died following his disappearance at sea while attempting to kayak 1600 km across the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand in February 2007.
In December 2006, McAuley's first attempt to cross the Tasman Sea in a standard one-man kayak was aborted after one night due to trouble keeping warm inside the cockpit. McAuley's second attempt began on 11 January 2007 and ended on 12 February, when the search for his missing body was called off following the recovery of his partly flooded kayak on 10 February about short of his destination, Milford Sound. The sleeping arrangements at sea involved deploying a sea anchor, squeezing his body down into the kayak, and sealing the hatch with a bulbous fibreglass capsule fitted with an air-only ventilator, which, with its self-righting capabilities, made possible riding out the most severe storm conditions that are inevitable in that part of the ocean. However, when the capsule was pivoted to its stowing position behind the cockpit, it made a kayak roll impossible due to being filled with water like a bucket. Therefore, whenever he capsized, he had to swim out of the kayak, push it upright, and perform full self-rescue. When his kayak was recovered, only this capsule was missing. It was presumed to have been torn off by a freak wave. One of its pivot arms had already been damaged. Veteran sailor Jonathan Borgais, who was directing the expedition by providing weather predictions, said, "From the beginning, my biggest concern was the approach to New Zealand. And this part of New Zealand is notoriously dangerous. On a good day, you can get rogue waves: a two- or three-metre set that can come out of nowhere. Not big, but powerful. That's very dangerous. I have no doubt that a wave got him."
Aftermath
The documentary of McAuley's journey, Solo, incorporated video footage recovered from one surviving memory stick in his camera, as well as interviews with people on his team during the expedition. It begins with the distress call he made on the evening of 9 February: "Do you copy? This is kayak one. Do you copy, over? I've got an emergency situation. I'm in a kayak about 30 km from Milford Sound. I need a rescue. My kayak's sinking. Fell off into the sea and I'm going down." McAuley's wife, Vicki McAuley, wrote a book, Solo, about his final voyage and him. In the same summer, a specially constructed, two-person kayak crossed the Tasman Sea by a more northerly route. The competitive spirit may have played a part in McAuley's determination to make the journey when he did. The song "Towards Infinity" was written about his final journey by Australian composers Paul Jarman and Phil Voysey.
