Workin' nights

The best and worst parts of the course were definitely the nights, best because it’s a different feeling, its not 95F, and the stars are beautiful. I say worst because we were not all that comfortable being on the river and yes, we were a touch nervy. We did two nights and its hard to say which was worse, probably for me it was the second because I was so tired. There were five times that whilst pausing between strokes I momentarily fell asleep and would pitch to one side, waking with a jolt that would nearly tip the boat. By the first night when we were still five man crew we made some good time relative to other boats, it was fun to see another light in the distance and slowly reel it in stroke by stroke. There was a horrendous checkpoint on night one which was incredibly dangerous. It’s a broken road bridge that always would have been low to the water but has now all but collapsed, the water actually flows over to top of it in the middle section – how it has not been completely washed away is a mystery to me. Anyhow, we got there after doing some of our best paddling, as we pulled up there was an aluminum boat trapped sideways against the middle section, we came in on the right where the current was less intense and Sykes, being our stroke (the guy at the front) jumped out onto the bridge. My memory is hazy but somehow we ended up with Millsy holding onto the bridge with his legs getting pulled by the current under the bridge, good for us that we had picked the slower current but it was still pretty strong. We got through it, a combination of him pulling himself and Sykes dragging his shoulders was enough but it was definitely a scary 30 seconds and did not look good at all from my vantage point (remember that we are allowed no help from outside, there were plenty of people on and around that bridge watching - to accept help would be the same as quitting). We were told that two canoeists had gone under the bridge and come out the other side okay which is great, but you certainly could not take that for granted. There were plenty of bits of wood and of course the bridge itself that you could knock yourself out on. Once the boat was on the bridge it had to be turned 90 degrees and then dragged up a hill just so we could have a 5 minute break, replenish our water and take in more protein powder. The re-entry to the river was done from the other side of the same river and that too was hairy, just because the current was so strong. This section definitely added to the unease in the boat and to compound this, almost immediately after the bridge, around the first corner we had the first of two capsizes that were completely avoidable and self inflicted, just bad decision-making (it really did not take much to tip the boat with five in it). The problem with the capsizes is not so much the time lost, it was that in the wrong place it was just bloody hard work to get the boat righted and drained. Wrong places were basically anywhere with too much mud or current (both present in the tip after the bridge), or in the second case too shallow so that you have to lean down and twist a 35 ft boat that's full of water and lift it above your head to clear the bilges. In the right conditions, say four feet of water with a solid river bed you could get started again very quickly after a tip, just bend down, put the boat on our shoulders and lift it just a foot. Regardless, this was energy that should have been used to get us down stream but instead was going on pointless tasks and I think it was this section more than any that led to millsy & james starting day two with not much left in the tank, either physically or mentally.