Category Archives: Adventure

Preparation

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

Border2Beach – Murray River 2016

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Wow – it is about to start!

Over the Weekends in March we (Myself and Brad) will paddle the entire length of the Murray River in South Australia from just upstream of the NSW Border at Higgins Cutting to the Murray Mouth at Goolwa.

In the coming days we will post some links where you you will be able to track our progress in (near) real time on a map.

It was nearly a year ago when we first discussed this and a lot has happened but everything is actually coming together

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2016 Murray Meandering

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I have been personally thinking about doing the Murray – paddling the length of the Murray that is, but realize that the logistics make it a dream. I cannot see how I could acheive the whole 2200+ km in the next 5 years.

The next best bet is to see if I can do at least part of it – or how about the 650km of it that Covers off the extent of the Murray in South Australia.

On a whim, today (03/03/2015) I gave Brad a call and ran an idea past him – about paddling the length of the Murray from the NSW border to the mouth over the course of 4 or 5 extended weekends.  I thought, that he, like me is time-poor and would love to do such an adventure and might be able to commit to both the time and timing to make this happen.

As soon as I suggested it to Brad, he had already forwarded me copies of his own preliminary plans (that he has had for about 5 years) to do exactly what I was suggesting – the Adventure was born!

Within a few hours of backwards and forwards, we have put together a preliminary plan to paddle over 4 extended weekends in March 2016 the 650km.

The logistics are reasonably “easy” – We travel of a Thursday evening to our starting location.  We paddle around 60km on the Friday and Saturday, and finish with around 40km on the Sunday before heading home again, with around 160km or so carved off the total each weekend.

What makes 2016 even more attractive is that  we have not only 1 long weekend, meaning we will be able to do 4 days of paddling, but also Easter falls into that as well.

So, with a plan, it was off to review Brad’s preliminary notes and draft a calendar – putting some distances and dates around this idea.

Murray Meandering DRAFT planner

Putting down in a planner really put the whole trip into perspective – and it even fits into my initial idea of distances per day with less than 10km plus or minus on any given day.

Part of our discussions was to open this adventure up and invite other capable paddlers to join us on this a “trip of a lifetime”. and as such, we want to open this up to interested and capable Marathon paddlers whom might consider an invitation to join us for all or parts of this adventure.

If you are interested, in participating and joining this adventure, the first step is to get in touch with me – and from there we can review the criteria and take it from there.