Braver man than I’ll ever be. 20 minutes left bbc 2

Just watching that. Seems that he was defeated before he set off. Didn’t have PMA. Seemed to be fatalistic rather than optomistic. Arguably bit off more than he could chew.

Every credit to the guy for having a go. I ain’t got the balls for that.

oh i don’t know I think it’s in the Australian psychi to succeed. He has also kayaked some serious distances, guess if he had taken the other guys route he would have touched land.

Remind me never to take up Kayaking again. I had a few moments off Orkney, never again.

Good effort that man.

As a father, I had a tear in my eye at the end of that – and I knew all about him before watching that.

I’ve been down there in bad weather but at least I was in a gert big ship, I think he did well to get as far as he did.

As his wife says – he crossed the Tasman Sea.

As his wife says – he crossed the Tasman Sea.

i’ll drink to that

this is the fella that drowned in sight of land, in an orange and yellow canoe?

to be honest it just made me very angry, I can’t say that I think he achieved anything except his own untimely demise. A terrible waste of a life, his poor kid.

he got so close too, still bloody sad and bloody stupid. why didn’t they track him with GPS??

I do think there is a good Q why he didnt have a GPS beacon…

like they said even if they did no where he was the was a 1200km gap helicopters couldn’t go. whilst it is a waste of life, better to have lived a short filled life than a long mundane one.

He was within range at the end but his distress beacon was on the kayak.

Unfortunately too late, a new type of distress beacon that can easily be worn on person at all times is soon to be launched.

Good on him for trying, but like said above, why no tracking system?

Also, they said they were stuggling to understand his distress call. Now I know we had the benefit of subtitles, but even so, I don’t think it was that unclear. They didn’t seem to be making that much of an effort to find him early on.

Mixed emotions watching that.

I think they were making every effort to find him – just did not want family/press to get wound up – as they said, they get a lot of hoaxes.

For those asking about a tracking system; it would be very hard on a vessel with a limited space for battery power, he’d need something bigger which wasn’t what he wanted to do. EPIRB is the only practical solution and the unit he was using would probably be too bulky to keep on person.

I don’t think it gave that impression on the programme Matt, they seemed to imply they sent out one helicopter for a quick look. Although that might well not have been the case.

possibly they did only send out one heli, mrs flash but they cost a lot of money to send out and a suppose thats where a kinda price is placed on life, however sad that sounds.

yeah, you may well be right tails. It was a very interesting programme, I’d not heard of him before.