22nd May 2020                                                  CDU Newsletter 652
 

Terry 0417 977 330

terry@canoeingdownunder.com.au (email)

https://canoeingdownunder.wordpress.com/  (website)

https://www.facebook.com/canoeingdownunder/ (facebook)

https://terrybolland.wordpress.com/ (trips & achievements)

 In January  last year after running a basic skills course for Ascot Kayak Club I asked the participants on the course if they wanted to continue paddling. If so I would run another course. The catch was - it wasn't going to be a social paddling group but a fitness and racing paddling group which I called the Progressive Racing Group.
 

Virtually every member of that group said yes and since then this group has gone from strength to strength with other paddlers joining along the way. There are now 50 members in the group and before the corona virus lock down there were around 26 paddlers taking part on a Tuesday evening.
 

Last week being the first week back we had 18 paddlers and we are in winter. It is a very social group, but saying that the competition between the paddlers is fierce. Three of those paddlers have become so fast they have now joined the elite group of paddlers.
 

They are also a crazy bunch, but in a nice way and great to be with.

Five of these crazy women last week paddled 50kms in a day. When you think that paddling 4 kms was really tough for them last year, now they are entering in the marathon races and paddling, 12kms, 20kms and now 50kms without a hint that they are going to stop there.
 

I think some of them are on their way of trying challenges bigger than mine. 

A 50 Kilometre Challenge
Five Ladies from the Progressive Racing Group decide to go for a  little paddle.

by Isabelle Combe.
 

Last Sunday I did a 50km paddle with the most amazing bunch of women...Sharon, Kate, Steph and Jane. We chatted, we laughed, we supported each other... We took our time, had quite a few breaks and had a blast that ended up with tears of laughter and maybe a few from the pain as well. Couldn't imagine better company.

Thank you and to my partner Geraint  for the photos, support and coffee and the cuddles at the end. Thank you Jane for the yummy feast and bubbly at the end of an absolutely amazing paddling day.
 

We started at Ascot Kayak Club paddled to the city and then back upstream to Middle Swan Bridge before paddling back to Ascot Kayak Club.

Kate Martin, Jane Dooley, Sharon Cobley and Steph Bedden. Photo Isabel Combe

Near the city.
 

The ladies near Middle Swan Bridge.
 

Isabel and the ladies taking a break.

I'm not sure why, it was only 50 kms!!!
 

Steph feeling on top of the world after the paddle.
 

Isabel drinks a coffee as Sharon does some yoga exercises!! Or is she asleep!

What is Going to Be Their Next Challenge

Back in 2012 on my 60^th birthday year I decided to paddle 6000 kilometres in that year. With 38 days to go before my birthday year was up I still had 1200 kms of the 6000 kms to paddle.

As well as paddling 1200 kms I still had to work. To make things a little tougher we were moving the shop from near the Railway Museum in Railway Parade to the new location in Moojebing Street.

So it meant that I had to paddle nearly 32 kms every day for 38 days to make the target and if I missed a day I would have to paddle more on the next day.

In that first week though I decided to paddle 70 kilometres every day for 7 days making it 490 kilometres whittling down that 1200 kms target to 710 kms.  I would get up about 4.00 am and be on the river at 5.00am, paddle for 7-8 hours and try to be at work just after lunch.

So doing the 490 kms meant that I only needed to paddle about 24 kms each day for 31 days to complete the 6000 kilometres in the same year. Which I did.

In 2018 I paddled 6500kms in that year.

Since I started paddling in 1975 I have paddled well over 100,000 kms and I'm still paddling 20 kms every day.

So ladies here is another challenge.

James Earl, John Dinucci, Alsion, Pam Riordan and front Olwyn Brown on a social paddle.
 

Sandy Beach Saturday Morning training.
 

CDU Sandy Beach, Saturday morning training a few years ago.

No it wasn't a dance routine!

A group of social paddlers pass the Ascot Race Course.
 

 The same group up at Bassendean.
 

The dog seems to love the ride.

Just before lockdown Stuart Montgomery, Christopher Greed and Sabastian Graf paddled the Murchison River.

With a good amount of rain due this weekend will it come up again.

And will the northern border be open or closed when it floods.

Christopher Greed tackling a big rapid. Photo Stuart Montgomery
 

Through the gorges. Photo Stuart Montgomery
 

A time to relax and check out the beauty. Photo Stuart Montgomery

There are less pelicans around this year at this time than there were last year. Maybe the lakes around the country have water in them and they have no need to come and feed on the Swan?

The Mississippi River Expedition continued

Part 10

Saturday 18^th July

Not only did I get a beautiful sunset last night I also got one this morning. When I passed the small community of Gold Dust a crop sprayer was spraying the fields. It kept swooping down, spaying the field at a low height and then at the end of the field it spiraled up to turn around to head back down the field again. It seemed to be having fun, but I was hoping the spray wouldn’t land on me when it flew over the river to turn around. I was brought up on a farm and the sight of a plane spraying the crops was quite common. We didn’t give it much thought about the poison spray that was drifting down to the ground though.

The river was like a wilderness with only the odd house or building. I had imagined the river being inundated with small towns and villages but much of the way had been trees, forest with fields further away from the river. The river was also much lonelier than I thought however today there were a few people skirting about in power boats. I came across a lone boat ramp where a dad and two children were fishing for catfish out of a small boat. They had several lines attached to floats, which were spread partly across the river just drifting down with the current. They gave me a coke and 2 litres of water before I moved on.

There were some beautiful beaches further downstream and I felt like stopping at them all but unfortunately it wasn’t time to stop and camp.

A couple in a boat pulled up who were fishing for catfish and gave me a cool drink. They said, be careful of the niggers in Memphis they will skin you alive. It was hard to respond to such a line. I moved on with Memphis being about 20 kms away and from a distance of a few kilometres I could see a pyramid shaped building, skyscrapers and a bridge. Once under the bridge I turned into a channel and made my way to Mud Island Park and Marina, where showboats in the channel mixed in with other boats around the marina. I paddled under a suspended monorail as it was crossing the channel and arrived at the marina at 4.30pm where I bought a coke, a sandwich, a chocolate bar from the kiosk and grabbed some water from the toilet and had a good chat to the two young employees.  

Heading towards Memphis City.
 

Although Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi he moved to Memphis, Tennessee with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954. He died in Memphis August 1977 at the age of 42.

The city looked pretty impressive, but it was a little late to look around and I couldn't camp there so I moved on out of the cove at 5.45pm and got back into the current of the river. There wasn’t as much industry on the river as I expected and within 11kms I was back out in the country again. There were several power boats in the city limits to rough up the water but they were gone after the city limits and the river became calm again.

The wing-dams were getting more dangerous. I went over one after cutting a corner and it was like going down a rapid with the first two waves having long tongues before skipping over them and into more turbulence further down.

The sun started to go down so I started searching for a beach and at 8.30pm and found a great beach with a flat top so I just had to stop. Some Canadian geese had made their home nearby so there was a bit of chatter for a while. I watched the barges go by and one stopped to let another coming from the other direction to get around the corner before it moved off. The river was too narrow for both to pass at that point.

Paddling long distances can be pretty boring when the scenery is ordinary and it had been ordinary in the last few days so it was good to watch the traffic which made my journey more interesting.

I washed in the warm breeze, erected my tent without putting the fly on and later after dinner sat drinking coffee and just looked up into the sky checking out the stars. I was in my sleeping bag at 11.50pm.

Sunday 19^th July.

It was very hot in the night so I didn’t need to be in my sleeping bag which was very light,  especially for summer and small to pack up. When I got away I was going to check the milage to the end of the river by reading the number on a spit post, but a barge came by and blocked my view. It was a delight to see the mileage get lower and lower every day.

Soon after in the middle of nowhere a building came into view called Gold Strike which was next to the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel. A little further there was another big building looking like a castle called Fitzgeralds. These buildings looked out of place situated in the countryside over 50 kms from Memphis.   

I met several barges at another narrow section of river where the barges going up-river were giving way to the barges going down river. They say it can take nearly 1.5 kms to stop a long barge pod going downstream with the current.

I started nodding off again so I had a sing-song and started nibbling to keep awake. There was little to see for a long time apart from trees and a pretty wide river, but then I saw a barge and a bridge which was enough to inspire me to pick up the pace and get out of my trance. The road over the bridge was called the Martin Luther Junior Drive. Paddling hour after hour can be uninspiring especially if the surrounds don’t differ. And the river around these parts wasn’t that inspiring.

About 2.5kms from the bridge I saw two men on a big jetty of a gas filling facility throwing stones into the river. I paddled towards the jetty which had a barge anchored and shouted to the guys if they knew where I could get some fresh water. They invited me up to the office building where another 4 guys were hanging around. They said I could take as much water from the cold water machine as I liked and gave me some grape juice. We talked for a while and then they offered me a piece of cake. They were loading gas onto barges by a pipeline from a factory.

Drinking water was always a concern. Although I was paddling in fresh water it was far from fresh. With the factories, chemical plants and farms allowing pollutants to drain into the river I don’t think a purifier would make it safe to drink. I didn’t want to carry heaps of water because of the weight and the space it takes up, but it did mean I had to fill my water containers more often.

Back on the river I met two young guys in a dingy. They stopped and offered me 2 beers and 2 litres of water. One man was a teacher and the other an insurance man.  The rest of the day was uneventful the river ruffled up and then calmed, a few barges went by and the sun started to set and it was 8.20pm when I decided to stop on a big beach where later I spotted a raccoon. I was in bed by 11.30pm.

Monday 20^th July

It was still dark at 5.20am and the mosquitoes were still buzzing and in attack mode outside the tent so I waited a while before I opened the tent door. I tried to hurry to get on the water but it still took me 1 hour 40 minutes to be ready to leave. As soon as I left a barge was on my tail. There seemed to be more barges now carrying gas, fuel and liquids than further north and they were much shorter and faster on the water, whereas some of the long barges were not much faster than I was.

The river was still bounded by trees and very few communities so it did feel a lot more isolated to what I imagined it would be like. The beautiful bluffs and cliffs of the upper Mississippi had gone and with no locks it was totally a different type of river. Billabongs or oxbows once part of the river were now cut off from the Mississippi and couldn’t be seen but there were many of them lying on the other side of the river shoreline.

At 1.00pm I had stopped on a sand bar opposite a work site eating a pop-tart accompanied by a flock of stints when a power boat came across asking me if I was alright as someone on shore thought I was stranded. A little further the White River entered and soon after a few houses well-spaced appeared along the left bank. I noticed a dingy on an island and a few minutes later it caught me up and stopped. Beech (male) was a local, but bikini clad Stefanie was from the town of Erie but she was now doing her masters degree at Cleveland University in the state of Mississippi. We talked for 30 minutes and they gave me 2 beers, 1 spring water and a ham sandwich. Just what I was waiting for! They asked if I wanted to stay for the night at their home but because I had to keep to my schedule, and it was only half way through the day I decided to keep moving. Having a schedule was something I often regretted because when offers like this came up, it was hard to take them up unless it was close to the end of my paddling day.

By the time we said our goodbyes we had drifter several kilometres and the Arkansas River on the right hand side was in view. The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi flowing for 2,364kms from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. It flows through Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas and is the 6^th longest river in the US and the 45^th longest in the world.

The river was getting low leaving huge sandbars.

All the dirt patches you see on the kayak are fibreglass repairs.

The kayak was damaged in about 12 places during it being transported from Australia to New York.

Beech and Stefanie gave me 2 beers, 1 spring water and a ham sandwich.

After leaving them and being quite excited, fresh and with a couple of beers into me I was happy and I paddled my heart out for the next hour, but faded a little after that. It’s surprising how fast I could go after a couple of beers. Before sunset I came across hundreds of pelicans which was unusual for this section of river.

The current was now much slower than further north. The high water had floated by leaving a slower current. The slower current meant that if I wanted to keep up to my planned mileage I had to paddle for longer. Some days I was on the move for 12 – 16 hours. Today I had already been paddling nearly 12 hours. As it got dark the swirls and turbulence from the wing-dams were quite strong which at times was concerning and although I could hear them getting closer, I couldn’t see what I was heading into or which way I was going to be pushed when I went over them. Not only that, it was hard to see the channel buoys.

Although most wing-dams were 400 to 600 metres long some of the wing-dams were poking out over 800 metres from the shore. Being that far from shore put me closer to the river traffic if I went around them. Some wing-dams were fully covered with water, creating a long smooth rapid and turbulence, other wing-dams were fully exposed and many had parts of the rocks exposed with non-exposed sections having water run freely through them. It was sometimes challenging paddling at night but it was also a beautiful part of the day.

The barges kept coming with their search lights beaming across the river. Like a stealth fighter I was trying not to be seen. I also couldn’t see much on the river. At times I paddled close to the shore but it meant that the mosquitoes could hitch hike and have a meal of me. There were no landing spots so getting the mosquito spray off the back deck without capsizing proved difficult at times.   

 To my surprise a barge cruised by without using their spotlight. It crept up on me but I was so close to the shore that it would have hit a wing dam before it hit me. As another barge chugged towards me I found a beautiful beach on a corner, so I decided to stop, although it was hot and I was pestered by mosquitoes. With the slower current I hadn’t expected to have paddled 134 kilometres so I was quite happy. At the end of each day though I still had to unload, put my tent up, cook my dinner and write my diary.

Rock wing dams stretch out into the river.

The rope is more difficult to see going upstream or in the dark.
 

The cormorants were out in force again this morning.
 

My demo. Very good condition.Ultra 12.3kgs = $2500.00

Also selling a new Performance model. 15.5kgs $1600.00

$2500.00
 

A very fast ski.

Not suitable for beginners.