I woke to a crisp, bright day, the sky blue and the air fresh. The wind was pumping and I was excited to paddle, the waves looking good for a downwind.

Across the Golfe de Beauduc the waves lined up beautifully and I had the best downwind of the trip so far. The coast then curved north but if I headed straight to Marseille, my bearing would align with the waves. This would be an 80km paddle but I was flying along, so I thought it was possible.

As I approached the Golf de Fos-sur-Mer I spotted 3 container ships crossing my line, heading into the big industrial port. The waves had built and I could only see them on the peaks of waves. Ahead, I could see the water became brown from the outflow of the river Rhone. Perhaps caused by this current, there were football pitch sized areas where waves were haystacking and breaking, cloud of spray blowing off them. I headed further offshore to avoid this, but at this point, the wind started blowing down the Rhone and was pushing me out to sea.

Getting to Marseille was now out if the question, I had to paddle side on to the breaking waves to avoid getting blown out to sea, while dodging the container ships. The wind was gusting 30 knots. I was definitely out of my comfort zone and my imagination leapt to the worst scenarios – what if I have a hypo? What if my rudder breaks? What if the waves get bigger?

There was a lot going on and I found it very psychologically challenging knowing the wind was blowing me out to sea. Now on dry land,  I can’t even understand why, but at the time I was genuinely fearful. Looking at the GPS track, I wasn’t even far offshore, it’s just a matter of perspective.

Physically I was fine in the conditions, I was struggling mentally. I didn’t believe in those worst-case scenarios and tried to apply reason to the situation. I remembered my grandpa laughing reassuringly when, as a young child, I was frightened by his sailing boat heeling. For me, it was instinctively scary, but his experience made him comfortable in such a situation. The sailing boat was behaving as it had in the past, and nothing had gone wrong then, so why should it now? If we had really been in danger, he wouldn’t have been laughing, and this thought was comforting. This situation was the same – I was instinctively overestimating the risk. I imagined a more experienced paddler was with me, who was relaxed in the conditions. This attempt to reassure myself that the conditions weren’t physically dangerous, it was just my mind saying so, didn’t really work.

When emotions tell you to be afraid, it’s difficult to reason your way out. Forces of nature are intimidating. In the end, my mind felt muddled and I didn’t know if I should be afraid or not. There is, of course, a point where you can’t physically deal with the conditions. While I don’t think I was at that point, it’s better to crack mentally first, and get to land alive.

Land couldn’t come soon enough but progress felt painfully slow. I went in between 2 container ships and grafted into the harbour of Port de Carro, physically exhausted and sobbing after the emotional stress.