Kayaker Tim Taylor is at the southern most tip of the North Island waiting for the weather to improve so he can resume his journey.

High winds in Cook Straight have blocked progress and Tim is waiting it out at a supporter's bach at Ngwai near Cape Palliser.

'It's blowing a lot,” says Tim.

'It's very, very windy. It's easily 30-40 knots.

'Yesterday was the scariest piece of paddling I have ever done. Getting across the Palliser Point, the wind was so strong that I was very lucky to be able to hold onto the paddle and just stay in my boat. It was trying to smash me out of it that's for sure.

'I was lucky one of my supporters down here, he's got a bach just down the road from Cape Palliser, so we are holed up down there. It's a bit of luxury at the moment, otherwise I would just be camping on the point.”

Tim's just a day's paddle from Wellington, but he's got to cross Palliser Bay to the Wainuiomata Coast before reaching Pencarrow Head at the entrance to Wellington harbour.

'I will definitely be following the shoreline,” says Tim.

'It's not a very big run across the bay here, but it's just so exposed to the winds funnelling down from the Wairarapa.

'I'll just have to follow the shore and try and find places to hide. I'll give it a shot in the morning, hopefully the wind will be down a bit.”

Tim's parents departed Tauranga Wednesday to meet with Tim in Wellington, from where he will set out across Cook Strait.

'If I was to get there (Wellington) tomorrow then I might quickly try and shoot across the Cook Strait if the weather was favourable. It's a piece of water that we can't muck around with, we have to be pretty careful,” says Tim.

He's going to be weighing up the weather conditions, deciding whether to carry on, where to spend Christmas with the family.

'It's all a bit of a juggling act,” says Tim.

He leaves the Wairarapa coast with memories of his first swim since leaving Tauranga, when he was tipped out of his kayak while paddling out through two metre swells on leaving Riversdale earlier in the week.

'There were lines of breakers that I had to punch through, I just got to the very last line which was the biggest one.”

He was going up the face when he realised he wasn't going to make it.

'I remember I was going backwards down it thinking ‘this isn't good.' Then it flipped me over and ripped a few things off my boat and I ended up back on the beach.

'It wasn't even a big surf in relative terms compared to what I'm used to, but first thing in the morning, you are cold, the body doesn't want to go as hard. The next run I did it and got out.”

The seas weren't rough in spite of marine forecasts predicting large swells. What got him was the wind.

'When you go past valleys and stuff, all of a sudden a big gust will just shoot down there and you are holding on for dear life just trying to stay upright. So that was pretty intimidating,” says Tim.

Tim set out from Tauranga on November 27 to kayak all round New Zealand in a single voyage. He's given himself three to six months.