I know, I have not made many posts over the last little while on my blog and with now only a week to go will give a bit of an update.  Yeah, more updates to the blog will happen, but after the adventure!

I am doing this in my C18 – yeah the same one where I broke off the foot pegs way back at the 32km mark of the HCC in 2014.

I finally got around to fixing up this mess and replaced the pegs on the side with a full footplate.

Lucky for me, in my new boat, it has a full plate, so I had something to guide me in making something.

I made up something that resembled a footplate and then cut the original hinged foot-pedals down so i could re-use them for the rudder.  I used some 6mm ply and then epoxied and glassed it all for strength.

I then took to the cockpit opening with a jigsaw and cut a bit of it away, removing as much as i could to give me more room for the knees to come up – and to let me actually leg-drive.  You get an idea of how much I cut away and how much more room it gives me.

Finally, the keyhole surgery – of installing some rails and fitting the new footplate into the boat.

Of course, with the boat ready, this only left me to get out in it and get ready myself!

I have been out a few times now – and of course, every time I have been out the wind has been terrible, but in only 3 weeks, I have been very happy and over a relative short distance of 15km in 30+km/h winds I have already hit my marathon training pace of 2 years ago!  It took me about 8 weeks last time to hit that pace, so very happy with how things are progressing.

Of course, I would have liked a few more weeks of prep, but once I hit the river it will all fall into place.

With now just 1 week to go, I’ll get out on this weekend I’ll make a couple of small adjustments and then do a nice 20-25km paddle to make sure I’m ready to go.