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.

New Toys

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Well, Toy.

20141225_195937_resizedYep, that is an Action Camera mounted in it’s waterproof housing attached to the front of the boat.

The handlebar mount goes on almost perfectly on the front handle, and at this location, I can face it either forwards or backwards.  Forwards for the scenery, and back, well, lets see how bad my paddling really is!

Since the weather today was excellent, low to mid 20’s and barely a breath of wind (well 5-15km/h predicted) it was worth ducking out and giving it a go!

I did a full lap around Westlakes, then did a small triangle around the northern end and shot a couple of videos.

I have included all the details in the video, and no, it is edited so as not to bore you to tears watching nothing but me for an hour and a half!

Before I get into that, yes, it was a good day, and the 11km lap was pretty quick –  averaged 9.2km/h and given that this is the “off season”, pretty happy with that.  I guess more importantly, this was probably the first time out in this boat where I was not really concerned about swimming, which is a big boost to the overall average speed.

It started out with about a 5km/h breeze, which strengthened to about 15 mid-way thru the paddle.  Anyway, onto the video’s.

Note, no audio track on these videos.

Video 1 – Selections of the full lap.

Video 2 – The complete triangle around the end approx 11 minutes.

Well, now, not only a fun toy, an extra dimension that will allow me to see what I am doing (wrong) and hopefully improve the efficiency of my stroke.

So, how many things can you spot that I could improve in my stroke – and yeah, like I have not already seen most of them!

2014 HCC

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First, a big thanks to all the supporters and sponsors, with your help. this year we contributed $390 to the overall fund-raising efforts.

The trip over set the tone for the whole event and well, it wasn’t great!  We got around 400km from home and had to turn around and come back and swap cars – yep, 900+km and a lost day driving was not a good start.

Onto Saturday, as per usual, I didn’t sleep too well and only managed about 6 hours the night before, so it was going to be a long event!  Saturday, saw a high temperature with around 33deg at the start and a prediction for about 14 overnight – which is quite hot for paddling.  Knowing full well how the heat can affect me, I decided to not put on my wetsuit pants (or even my spray deck for that matter) for the first leg.

(Stephen) Sandra, Dad and Me, just before the start

(Stephen) Sandra, Dad and Me, just before the start

 

Ready to get on the water

Ready to get on the water

This year, due to the tides, I decided to do the BorB and had a 4pm start.  As we were on the water waiting for the start Brad pulled out his phone and snapped this picture.

Just before the start

Just before the start

 

Sandra, Dad any myself on the water just before the start.

Sandra, Dad any myself on the water just before the start.

Taking it quite easy for the first 10-15 minutes was something that I knew I needed to do so that I didn’t suffer from the heat.  I held back and kept my speed down and once I had settled down and got into it.  Once I started moving, my avg speed just kept creeping higher and higher – this was attributed to the tide. As usual, I had an APRS tracker on the boat, but this time, it was just not being heard and only reported a couple of times near the start and once about 40 minutes later.

About an hour after the start, there was someone coming up behind me and making a lot of noise.  When I turned and looked, it was Rod Clarke on his Outrigger just flying past, way faster than me.   Not long after that a C4 with a LRec double went past, I managed to climb on behind them for about 500M – but they were just too fast for me!.

Just before Catti (checkpoint A), I had someone climb on behind me and stay there until just before Sackville – yep, they got a free ride for about 20km!

It was about 1km from Sackville when I hit the change in the tide – I noticed a lot of very large whirlpools everywhere across the river and that is all it could have been – the in and out flows meeting.

Arriving at Sackville at 19:13, I noted that my avg speed hit 8.8km/h as I pulled in.  I was well and truly in front of my planned arrival time of 19:37!  I did a quick prep – eat and drink, pulled on my wetsuit pants, put on my spray deck as it was just starting to get a bit cooler.

I jumped back in the boat to get going just as Dad and Sandra were arriving, organized myself and was getting set when disaster struck.  I pushed against my foot pegs and snap!  the left one gave way.  So, pulled back into the shore, tied up the rudder as I would not have any steering, and got set again.  I took a couple of strokes and almost went out – there was just no way I could paddle with only 1 foot to push and drive with – I simply had no power or balance, so the race was over for me.

Speed plot

Speed plot

I knew that I had been pushing along at a decent pace with the tidal assistance, but it was not until I pulled the plot that I could see how well I was going!

Start (Orange Dot) to Sackville where my race ended this year.

Start (Orange Dot) to Sackville where my race ended this year.

With a broken boat I had no choice but to withdraw, my race was over almost before it begun.  It was about this time that I wished that I had  brought the other boat, but them’s the breaks, and this time it was my boat.  Now what was I saying about retro-fitting a full foot-plate in this boat – well, now it is something that I have to do before I can get it back on the water!

can you spot the broken bit?

can you spot the broken bit?

You can see that the right footrest is intact, and the left one that broke off is sitting just above the rail.

Yeah, it was a bit disappointing to not be able to complete the whole 111km, but there is always next year!

Yea, almost forgot, Congrats to Dad, finishing his 3rd HCC a few minutes faster than his last time, and to Sandra, who paddled with Dad completing her very first Marathon event.

too late now

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With only a few days to go to the HCC, I did a final training paddle last night.

After much effort over the last several month’s trying to get my seating all sorted out on the new boat, and finally getting the comfort all sorted out literally a month ago, I had to bite the bullet and concede that I simply did not have enough time or even any Night paddles under my belt to go for it.

So, Sunday morning, I did a few checks on the old boat and discovered that the Rudder cable I didn’t snap during the RPM was literally hanging together – only 3 strands of wire in the rudder cable were left intact!. So a few hours cutting the cables out, fitting the Dynema rope and adjusting saw it all back together.

Unfortunately, this meant I didn’t get out on Sunday, so that left Monday evening.  Conditions were not great (again) with 20-30km/h winds, but in Ol’faithful, I hardly noticed.

I put in a 2 hour paddle, 16.7km, at a tad over 8.3km/h.  Not as fast as the new boat, but never any concern about coming out either.  I certainly realized within a few minutes the limitations I have been working with for the last few years – and yes, I really did miss the extra deck-height for the leg drive – and also missed the full foot-plate to actually get the leg drive.  This is something that I will be addressing and retro-fitting a full foot-plate!

This was the first time I had paddled my old boat since the RPM and whilst it is very comfortable, after paddling the new one, it was immediately obvious as to all of the reasons why I wanted another boat to remove the shortcomings.  Yes, the lack of room for leg drive, the lack of a decent support (full foot plate) to achievie the leg drive, the very wide deck making the catch difficult (read needing quite a long paddle) and finally the hull design being a big limitation – the maximum hull-speed I could achieve was 10km/h for a very short burst but only with a 30km/h wind gust from behind!

With nowhere near the preparation that I wanted, I will have to be content with a fairly slow trip down the river, knowing that now I have the seating/comfort sorted out I can keep working on improving my technique and becoming comfortable and confident in more varied conditions.  There is always next year, and the upside, I now have a full year to really get stuck into getting to know a new boat!

Knowing that I am literally limited to a slow trip, I have been able to finalize my Race plan, and all being well, I expect to do it in around 14.5hours total, a 4pm start and finish just after 06:30am

Seating – nearly there

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Well after continuing to try a few different things over the last couple of outings with a little bit of success the previous outing, again I tried several different things.

First off, last week, I tried a high back-strap and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was – it eliminated one of the issues I was having.  This strap is literally a bit of 30mm webbing, some rubber tubing slipped over it and a quick release clip that goes around you and slips over the cockpit coming at the front – you have something to lean back into.  Whilst it provided the required support, it was only partially successful in so much as the cockpit coming is quite small, and it kept slipping off.  If I was to use this as a long-term solution it would require a pair of saddles be mounted on the deck to hold it in position.  This would then become a little unruly in the event of a capsize – it would potentially be something that tied me to the boat, so hence the need to look again.

This week, I decided to try my original 40mm thick closed cell foam that I got for the bottom of the boat that proved to be way too much and too high for such a narrow boat and use it in a different way.  I actually put this in front of my original back band and thus spread out the vertical support behind me.

To my surprise, I found that it seemed to work quite well.  It like last week addressed one of the issues I was having, so a step in the right direction.

With this in place, I needed to keep making some minor positional adjustments as well.

Again, after about 30 minutes I was getting a numb leg, again, looked at my seat to see what I could change.  This time, I removed some of my padding.  I took out my bean bag from between the foam and the lambswool.  The bean bag was the saviour on my other boat – it was what finally got me into the comfort zone.  It was interesting to note that this time, it proved to be the hindrance.

So, tried again and found that things were improving to the point where I finally feel comfortable.  There is 1 last things that I will do and that is dto double-up on my sheepskins next week, and to also add a very small foam under my heels.  So, yes, starting to get down to the 1% items to get me as comfortable as possible for as long as possible in the boat!

The other un-expected result of the tiny changes to the seating were that I was also able to play with the paddle length – I was able to shorten it by a massive 3cm.  This moved my paddling from my arms back into the core.  Now I have to re-mark my paddle with my hand positions!

Conditions were what I would call pretty good, but not perfect with around a 20km/h wind – and coming from a 45deg to me no matter where I was paddling.  Always good to be in some conditions that are a little bit difficult to keep you on your toes!

puhi036

So, a plot from the GPS is in order.  Yes, a lot of stop/start on here – did a lot of changes to the seat and foot positions in my attempt to get everything just right.

The good news was that when I was moving, there was only a little bit where I was not exceeding the 9km/h average – which I have not seen since the first week of being in this boat, so some real progress is being made.

So, at the moment, I have less than 5 weeks to go, and til have a few more things to sort out before I decide if I think I can tackle the 111km in this boat or pike out and go back to old faithful!

I grabbed a couple of quick snaps with my phone camera so I could see how it looked before stripping the non-permanent parts out when packing up.  Quality of the phots is not the best, but at least they show the main things.

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Above – the lambswool seat and foam back rest.

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The foam base, with the lambswool removed.

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The back rest without the foam, and the foam base.

It was really good to actually get everything so it was comfortable, and I’ll continue adding or subtracting components until I get it where I need to be.

Now I am where I am, I will look at getting some night paddles in – and see how I go.

It just goes to show, don’t give up or even dismiss taking a radically different approach to what you have been doing and even what was working for me in another boat.