KEY POINTS:
Two Australian kayakers attempting to cross the Tasman Sea, Justin Jones, 24, and James Castrission, 25, are paddling hard for New Plymouth after sighting Mt Egmont about an hour before sunset last night.
"James and Justin reported at around 8pm that they had just caught sight of Mt Taranaki," said Patrick Brothers of their logistics company Race Recon.
"They are absolutely pumped".
The two kayakers said it was a starry night, with calm seas "and the lights of New Plymouth are starting to twinkle".
The sighting followed a vexing two days in which winds and currents turned them round in a loop to the north, when they were actually trying to paddle southwest to reach New Plymouth.
Spokesman for the pair, Tom Mitchell, said the paddlers had been stunned to hear of Sir Edmund Hillary's death, but were inspired to dig deeper and continue on to the New Zealand coast.
Yesterday they stayed in the tiny cabin of their 9m kayak until the wind became more favourable, and put themselves back on full food rations, after halving their daily meals 30 days from mid-December.
They began paddling again about 3pm. averaging 3km/h.
"The guys are so frustrated at today's progress they have decided to paddle into the night," Mr Brothers said after the sighting of Mt Taranaki-Egmont. "They are steaming for NZ".
The pair have already covered more than 3000km, weaving across the Tasman on a trip which was planned to take 42 days to cover about 2200km on an approximate straight-line route.
At dawn, the pair were less than 90km from New Plymouth, still paddling hard and chasing a Sunday finish - which would be exactly two months after they departed Forster, New South Wales.
- NZPA
