Kayaker Tim Taylor is making the break, shooting the gap in the weather to get some northward progress before the next weather system shuts him down again.

Tim paddled out of Breaksea Sound earlier today into the open sea, and faces a lengthy paddle along an exposed coast with no shelter until Dagg Sound, with its entrance about halfway up the coast to Doubtful Sound.

Tim Taylor.

The marine forecast for the area is for a south-westerly wind to freshen to 25 knots from midday, with seas becoming rough at times.

Later in the week the wind's expected to swing round again to the north, rising Thursday to 35 knots.

It's Tim's first ocean paddle since he made the voyage from Preservation Inlet to Dusky sound over a week ago. The paddle from Dusky Sound to Breaksea Sound was via the Acheron passage behind Resolution Island.

Tim's been staying aboard commercial fishermen's barges and depot boats while the more recent storms have blown through.

He's been kept supplied with food dropped off by fishing boats out of Invercargill.

Tim set out from Tauranga on November 27 to become the first person to kayak round the New Zealand coast in a single voyage.