McAuley spent nearly a week paddling across it in 2004, sleeping at sea in his sea kayak.Īfter that, the Tasman Sea was all that was left. In life, the great bay on Australia’s north coast is 330 miles across. McAuley had no shortage of imagination, and his skill grew in step with his increasingly ambitious kayaking missions. “Ant had always said a well-built kayak is limited not by the modest dimensions of the craft, but by the imagination and skill of the person sitting in the cockpit,” she wrote. His wife Vicki incorporated some of his writings into her 2010 book about McAuley and his crossing, Solo. He planned to publish a book when he finished the crossing and had, in fact, already written a good deal of it. “I’ve always been drawn to challenges at the sharp end of what is possible, initially with climbing and mountaineering, and more recently with sea kayaking,” McAuley wrote before his 2007 Tasman attempt. In the kayak, there was no such limitation. The knee injury meant that in the mountains, McAuley would reach his physical limit well before his mental one.
After his accident, McAuley took a greater interest in sea kayaking.
The impact shattered his patella, and he never fully recovered.Įarlier that year McAuley and his wife Vicki brought kayaks to Patagonia to access the Dedos del Diablo, a set of un-climbed spires on the edge of Chile’s promisingly named Fiordo de los Montañas. McAuley plummeted 30 meters when a handhold pulled loose, ripping two sets of protection from the rock and smashing his knee against the cliff. The route was a favorite of McAuley’s, and a fall there in 1998 launched his kayaking career, albeit indirectly. Jo, a rocky spire reaching 5,400 meters in Pakistan’s Nangma Valley.Ĭloser to home, McAuley and Vera Wong pioneered a line called Evolution in Bugonia Gorge. He took little interest in the marquee peaks, preferring to test himself on lesser-known but more complex routes, such as the south ridge of Ama Dablam (6,854 meters) in Nepal and the first ascent of Mt. He started as a rock climber and mountaineer, putting up dozens of big-wall routes in Australia and alpine first ascents in New Zealand, Patagonia and the Himalayas in the 1990s. McAuley by all accounts was a prudent adventurer, though also a driven one. But if you die, it is too easy to call you a crazy suicidal,” he said. “It seems that if you live, then by definition you are a competent, risk-taking explorer. If he had managed another 30 miles we would have hailed him as a genius, kayak adventurer Jon Turk told me at the time. But if you die, it is too easy to call you a crazy suicidal.” He’d come that close to completing one of history’s most audacious ocean crossings. The video also reveals that McAuley had glimpsed the high mountains of New Zealand’s South Island in the last hours of his life. The canopy, nicknamed Casper, did that job on several occasions, but McAuley’s video diary, found when the kayak was recovered without the canopy, tells of him having to climb back into the kayak after being ejected in a hard capsize. McAuley, whose resumé included paddling 330 miles across Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria and three kayak crossings from Australia to Tasmania, had planned meticulously for the trip, placing great trust in a homemade cockpit canopy designed to right his modified production kayak in the event of a capsize. Nothing could be worth such risk, they scolded, especially to a man blessed with a loving wife and young son. Rau is also the supervising director, and Corbett serves as head writer.įor more on Star Wars: The Bad Batch, check out StarWars.Soon after Andrew McAuley disappeared just 30 miles from the end of a 1,000-mile kayak crossing from Tasmania to New Zealand a dozen years ago, pundits began second-guessing him. Star Wars: The Bad Batch is executive produced by Dave Filoni ( The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars), Athena Portillo ( Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels), Brad Rau ( Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Resistance), Jennifer Corbett ( Star Wars Resistance, NCIS), and Carrie Beck ( The Mandalorian, Star Wars Rebels), with Josh Rimes ( Star Wars Resistance) and Alex Spotswood ( Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels) serving as producers.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch follows the elite and experimental clones of the Bad Batch (first introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars) - and their young charge, Omega - as they find their way in a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone War.
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