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.