Our final week’s lead-up to the Hawkesbury Classic was far from ideal. After peaking the weekend before the classic with our 60+km paddle, we planned a week of rest, no stress and little exercise to ensure we were in peak condition for the actual Classic. As it turned out, the week was a crazy, hectic one for both of us. I ended up spending 2 days in Canberra for work, which involved getting up at 5am on Wednesday morning for an early flight. As a result, I was feeling rather sleep deprived and could feel the onset of sickness – runny nose, sore throat and blocked sinuses. On Wednesday evening, I was feeling a bit worse. After carbo-loading on a big serving of risotto and hot chips I had a long hot bath and early night in my hotel. On Thursday morning, I couldn’t even bring myself to walk the 15 minutes from my hotel to the office – opting instead to fall into a taxi for a $6 taxi ride. By Thursday evening, when I returned home to Sydney, I was feeling pretty crap. Our land-crew for the Classic (both our fathers) were flying up from Melbourne late on Thursday night, and our original plan had me going to pick them up around 10pm. As it was, I arrived home from the airport around 7pm, ate some carbo-loaded pasta for dinner, did some quick tidying to make room for our dads to sleep and crashed into bed, leaving Shell to stay up and greet them as they arrived via taxi from the airport.

Under any other circumstances, I would have stayed in bed most of Friday feeling sick and sorry for myself. As it was, I had yet another unavoidable early morning start, since we had an interview candidate who we had specially flown out from St Petersburg in Russia as a candidate for our software engineering position. Friday was the 1 day he had to spend with me in Sydney, given that I would be on leave (recovering from the Classic) on Monday, and he would spend Tuesday and Wednesday meeting the rest of our team in Canberra, before completing his epic journey back to Russia. As a result, I was up and in the office early, preparing and fine-tuning problems for our Russian candidate to work on. I spent most of the day in a rather intense discussion and problem solving sessions with our inevitably jet-lagged candidate, and by the end of our day, I was probably as exhausted as he felt. Thankfully, after pumping myself full of herbal and cold-and-flu tablets, I was feeling a little (but not a whole lot) better by Friday night. Another carbo-loaded meal of pasta shared with our dads was followed by shopping for last minute food and drink essentials (gatorade, bananas, high-protein snack foods etc), ready for our big endurance test. The rest of the evening was spent gathering all our gear and supplies for the Classic, deciding on expected checkpoint times for our race plan and preparing last minute equipment.

The day of the Classic dawned rather overcast and cool. Long range forecasts from the weather bureau had originally predicted thunderstorms and showers, but this had been revised to the chance of afternoon showers but an otherwise fine and clear day and night. I woke feeling a bit brighter than Friday, but still far from on top of the world. After some cold and flu tablets and a big breakfast of weetbix, tinned fruit and pancakes, we loaded up the car with PFDs, paddles, food, camelbacks, clothes, maps, compasses, torches and other essential paddling supplies and headed off up the M2 to the starting point at Windsor. Suffice to say with all that gear and 4 people in Starla, we were rather squished in for the hour-ish journey to Windsor.

We arrived at the Macquarie Park starting point in Windsor around 11am and managed to find a good car park close to the scrutineering and registration areas. After filling out the necessary paperwork and submitting our donations raised for the Arrow Foundation we joined the long, snaking queue to have our boat and associated gear scrutineered. By this stage, the sun was out and beating down rather fiercely, turning the chocolate bars that we had received at registration into liquid chocolate mush (which still tasted just fine I might add ). For as much of the time as possible, Shell and I sheltered in whatever shade was available to avoid the searing heat of the sun. I should add that the only reason we were able to do this is because we were very well looked after by our landcrew fathers – they enthusiastically lugged our rather weighty kayak everywhere it needed to go to get through scrutineering and prepare for our start later in the afternoon. It was certainly a nice change from our usual struggles to lug a fully laden kayak down to the water’s edge before paddling!

After all the formalities were through, it was still not even 12 noon, and our start in the classic (as a 2 person kayak in the Brooklyn or Bust non-competitive class) was not until 4:30pm, so we had plenty of time to sit back, graze on some food and watch the frenetic energy and adrenalin of people preparing around us. It was difficult to relax knowing what was ahead of us, but were thankful not to have to worry about the additional pressures of paddling in a competitive class with time pressures. By about 1pm, the sun had disappeared behind some very ominous looking grey clouds, and we quickly loaded most of our gear back into the car or into the kayak holds and covered up the kayak cockpits with taped-down plastic garbage bags (we don’t have spray decks for the kayak yet). Shortly afterwards, the heavens opened. We retreated quickly under-cover, snagging one of the last available tables, and loaded up (and I mean stacked far beyond the brim!) $5 plastic tubs with pasta, hot chips, fish fillets and salad from the buffet that was available as our final act of carbo-loading preparation. We grazed through our mountains of food and drinks for more than an hour as the rain fell around us.

Finally, time ticked over to 2:45pm when the race briefing for all landcrew and paddlers was held. Thankfully, the rain had just about stopped by the time the briefing began. After having paddled in each and every one of the familiarisation paddles, there was very little new material in the briefing, but we did all get to admire the paddling team that had won the auction for boat number 007 in the eBay auction, and had dressed up for their paddle in full black tie gear, complete with water pistols, and landcrew dressed in white lab coats with ‘M’ and ‘Q’ on their backs.

After the briefing, our diligent landcrew struggled with our fully-laden boat down to the marshalling area, ready for our 4:30pm start. In the meantime, the single kayak Brooklyn or Bust paddlers got themselves onto the water for their 4pm start, while Shell and I began some warm-up stretches to prepare our bodies for the 16 hours of paddling ahead. In the spirit of our preparation not going to plan, I managed to pinch a nerve in my back while stretching. After a few minutes of rather excruciating pain, I managed to gingerly stretch out my back again, hoping that I would hold together long enough to get seated in our kayak and at least attempt paddling.

Finally, it was time for us to get on the water, and after passing through the final safety and scrutineering checks of our boat and supplies, our two dads struggled to carry our kayak down to the water’s edge. Final stretches, quick goodbyes and good lucks, and we were finally on the water, milling around awaiting our starting instructions. The start was a rather involved affair, with all the boats required to gather at one point then slowly keep pace with the starting official walking along the bank to the defined start point, being careful not to overtake him at any point. Shell and I positioned ourselves somewhere in the middle of the pack, close to the left-hand bank. One false starter’s pistol firing later (mental note to the starter: you need a cap in the gun to make a starter’s pistol noise ) and we were finally off.

The first stretch of the Classic was very familiar to us, being the stretch of the river that we had paddled twice last weekend in our 60km paddle. As a result, we had a very good idea of how at least the early stages of the paddle would unfold for us, and how long we would take to reach the first checkpoint 12.4 km downstream. I think this was a great help mentally, since we knew it would take more than an hour to reach the first checkpoint and to actually feel like we were making progress – but that after that point, our progress would seem to improve, partly because the tide that started against us for the first 20 minutes or so would turn favourable, and partly because the first checkpoint is one of the longest single-checkpoint stretches on the river. Within our first hour on the water, it started to rain again, and a few people that paddled past us asked us what we were expecting to do if our kayak filled up with water (given that we didn’t have any spray decks to cover the cockpit openings). Despite the rain, we really didn’t get much more wet than paddle splash would otherwise have caused. We managed to paddle through checkpoint A and probably got somewhere past checkpoint B (about 20km downstream from the start) before it really began to get dark (from what I can remember). By that stage, it had also stopped raining.

Our first major milestone was reaching Checkpoint D at Sackville, which we reached about 10 minutes ahead of our own schedule at a shade after 8pm, feeling pretty good after 31km of paddling. After a brief (and welcome) pause to wait for the car-ferry to cross at Sackville, we paddled on past the flood-lit and massively crowded beach at Sackville, checking in and out without stopping. Our goal was to reach the next checkpoint at Dargle (40.8km from the start) before stopping for our first pit stop. Of course, drinking as much as we were, our bladders were emptied somewhere along the banks of the Hawkesbury long before we reached Dargle. Having passed Sackville, our paddle to Dargle was completed pretty much in darkness; the sun had well and truly set, and the moon was not scheduled to rise until after midnight. Despite the darkness which made map reading difficult, the same eerie collection of cyalume lights that we enjoyed last weekend provided a guide for the river’s turns ahead. This was made even easier, given that by this stage, many of the later-starting competitive paddlers were sailing past us at semi-regular intervals, providing a continuous series of lights ahead of us. To be fair to ourselves, this included such impressive sights as a 12 person outrigger and slipstreaming 2-person TK2 kayaks that all powered past us somewhere on that stretch of the river.

We arrived at Dargle about 20 minutes ahead of schedule at about 9:10pm. As we searched for a spot to pull into the very crowded beach, we heard the loud voices of our landcrew calling to us from the shore – loud dad voices are very useful at times like that!! As our first official checkpoint where we had the support of our landcrew, Nigel and Leigh were raring to go – I think they felt they were in some sort of time-trial pit crew operation! With speedy efficiency, they pulled our boat onto the shore, helped us out, and had refilled our camelbacks with Gatorade, swapped over our maps for the next stage, sponged out the kayak cockpits and re-stocked our snack supplies before Michelle and I had really even had a chance to head off to the toilet block! After just over 30 minutes at Dargle and with some welcome food intake of muffins and bananas and even a quick massage of Dencorub into our tiring shoulder muscles, we were back in the kayak again for the next leg to Wisemans Ferry.

By this stage, the tide had turned against us again, but we had factored this into to our expected arrival time at Wisemans Ferry, 24 kms down stream from Dargle. As much as possible, we tried to stay close to the shore to minimize the drag of the tide on our rather wide kayak. Unfortunately, this was made rather difficult given that the night was almost pitch-black by this point, so realistically, much of our paddling was down the middle of the river to avoid running into unseen trees, branches, fences and other obstacles, at the cost of additional tidal drag.

After a few more hours of paddling through the night, we finally arrived at Wisemans Ferry shortly after 1am – about 30 minutes or so ahead of our expected arrival. Thankfully, our diligent landcrew was ready and waiting for us on the shore – again pulling our boat up out of the water as we arrived. Wisemans is 65km from the start and at a bit over half-way into the Classic is apparently the point that sees many people reach the limits of their endurance. As if to prove that point, as I climbed out of the kayak, my tired and wobbly legs almost gave way under me, very nearly resulting in me toppling backwards into the river. Thankfully, I just managed to regain my balance in time to avoid a very cold drenching. Again our kayak was sponged out, gatorade and food supplies were replenished and our bladders emptied. By this stage in the night, Shell’s shoulder was giving her quite a bit of pain – her shoulder injury is actually a niggling problem that dates from way back during our time in Weimar, Germany back in 99/2000 that flares up with any strenuous use of her shoulder muscles. With the help of our landcrew, we sought out the physio tent, and the fantastic volunteers there set to work on Shell’s shoulder. In the meantime, I also managed to get about 30 minutes of serious physio work done to my back, shoulders and upper arms – including a quick adjustment of a couple of vertebrae – that resulted in my whole body feeling far more relaxed, free and ready for further paddling than I could have possibly hoped. In the end, in fact, I ended up feeling guilty, since Shell’s more serious shoulder work was finished long before I finally peeled myself off the physio bench. I honestly don’t know how much further we would have got without the rebuilding physio work we both got though.

A quick change of most of our clothes into something warmer and drier, and we were raring to get back out on the water – well ok, maybe not raring, but after an hour at Wisemans, we were very wary of losing what little momentum we had left to get back out on the water. We bid farewell to our landcrew again shortly after 2am, headed for Spencer – our last scheduled pitstop before the finish at Brooklyn.

Luckily, we again had the tide behind us by this stage, and it’s worth noting that as we headed further and further downstream, the tides did become appreciably stronger. Of course, this was probably equally compensated for by our increasing fatigue as the night wore on and we got closer to the Pacific Ocean. As well as the darkness, as we pulled out of Wisemans, there was also a reasonable amount of fog beginning to close in around us – to the point that even knowing the water, we almost missed the first right-hand hook-turn out of Wisemans; thankfully Shell was the one who realised that the boat we thought was pulling into shore was actually following the curve of the river.

Not so long after we left Wisemans, we were busting for another “comfort stop” from our continual Gatorade intake, but in the darkness it was rather difficult to see a suitable landing spot. After scouting the shoreline for a few minutes, we spied with the aid of our maglite what we thought was a suitable spot with a small muddy looking beach. After maneuvering our less than agile kayak back across to the spot, Shell attempted to hop out of the kayak onto the shore. Unfortunately, the muddy bank was incredibly slippery, and Shell managed to slip knee deep into thick, sticky mud. At this stage, stuck in the back of the kayak and unable to do much to help, I had visions of Shell falling completely into the water, or sinking further and getting stuck in the mud much like her experience with a camper at Cooinda a few years back. Thankfully, by the time these thoughts had flashed through my mind, Shell had managed to recover her balance and crawl up onto the shore. After Shell carefully clambered back into the front of our kayak, it was then my turn to attempt to get out for a pee-break. After a couple of attempts, I had convinced myself that the only way I was getting out would involve a face plant into mud or a drenching in river water. Instead, I managed to coax Shell into paddling about 50 metres further downstream where I had spied a small jetty and pontoon, figuring I might have a better chance of staying dry by getting out there. In fact, when we actually reached the jetty, we found a nice *concrete boat ramp* gently feeding into the river. A few quick strokes and I hopped out of the kayak onto firm concrete underfoot. A few more seconds of scouting would clearly have saved Shell sitting in mud for the rest of our paddle!!

As some reward for our troubles once we were both back in the kayak, we discovered that there was phosphorescence all around us in the murky, dark water. With every paddle stroke, the water literally glowed with thousands of tiny sparks of light – quite an amazing experience really given the darkness of everything else around us . The phosphorescence stuck around for a good few kilometres of paddling before it faded as quickly as it had arrived.

To say that this third stage of our paddle was physically and mentally challenging would be a vast understatement. It was by now well and truly the middle of the night, and although the moon had begun to peak over the cliffs at certain points, it was mostly obscured by cloud and fog, meaning that visibility was still far from the ‘full-moon brightness’ about which we had heard others tell tales. It was difficult to follow our progress on our maps, and we were still 46kms from the finish. Still, we plodded on, simply willing our shoulders, arms, backs and abs to complete one more stroke, just one more stroke, just one more stroke. Slowly, dawn light began to fill the sky from around 4:30am providing us with renewed energy, and slowly we kept eating up the kilometres. One mental setback was when we approached checkpoint K, convinced that we had already passed 2 checkpoints since Wisemans Ferry – unfortunately, we were incorrect, and had to recalibrate our ideas of how far we had travelled.

By far one of the highlights of this difficult leg was our arrival at the “Low-Tide Pitstop”, positioned shortly after Checkpoint L, about 85km from the start. As we rounded the hair-pin bend we were greeted by a roaring fire, welcoming greetings and a small, very welcoming cluster of paddlers already huddled around enjoying hot soup, warm coffee, scones and fruit cake. The pit stop is on a small, remote, otherwise deserted beach on the edge of some muddy mangroves, but I’ve rarely seen a sight so appealing! Without hesitation, we glided into the beach where we were assisted out of boat by Classic volunteers, who then proceeded to make us coffee and scones while we dried parts of ourselves by the fire (being careful not to get too close with all the flammable kayaking gear we were wearing!). In fact, the main person who looked after us, Tim, was someone we had met on the water in our very first familiarisation paddle from Brooklyn to Spencer return.

Tim cheerily told us that we had only 26km to go until Brooklyn, and that the tide would stay favourable for most of that way. With warm liquid in our bellies, caffeine in our veins and some warmth in our bones, we felt very positive about our chances of reaching the finish line. In fact, we even had time to chuckle over our new perspective of 26km of paddling: by that stage it seemed a relatively small distance to cover, but when we cast our minds back to the magnitude of an all-day paddle to Wally’s Farm on the Nicholson River during Cooinda, it was hard to believe we were thinking about the same distance. Anyway, with new found optimism, we hopped back into our kayak after about a 15 minute pit stop and headed back out on the river, but not before Tim also took the time to wash the soles of our water shoes of mud to avoid making the kayak cockpits dirty. Talk about service!!

Back on the river, we were soon passing through Checkpoint M at 88.2km. Around this time, we started to seriously consider whether we wanted to stop at the land checkpoint at Spencer – although we had originally envisaged needing to stop to replenish supplies and rest our muscles, our quick stop at the low tide pit stop had encouraged us to believe that we could make it to the finish without spending time at another land-based stop. As well as bringing our finishing time forward, we knew that not stopping at Spencer would save us at least 2km of paddling to and from the checkpoint. Not only that, but it would also give us the maximum amount of time with a favourable tide (whereas stopping would use up some of that favourable tide time). Checkpoint N, the last safety boat before Spencer, is explicitly setup to relay messages from paddlers about changes of plans to stop or not stop at Spencer. After some discussion over the 5km between checkpoints M and N, we decided to go for the finish without another land stop. After clearly getting our message across to the volunteers at checkpoint N, we paddled on and veered right around the bend towards more open water and the finish line, ignoring the lure of dry land at the Spencer checkpoint in the distance to our left.

Unfortunately, it transpired that our message left at checkpoint N didn’t reach our landcrew explicitly. After waiting beyond our expected arrival time there of 6am, Leigh eventually noticed (during his continual checking of the progress board) that we had apparently passed through checkpoint O beyond Spencer – it was only at that point that Nigel and Leigh realised that we must have bypassed Spencer. At most other checkpoints, this delay wouldn’t have been a huge issue, given that driving between checkpoints is usually far quicker than paddling. For the final 12.5km from Spencer to Brooklyn, however, the only available road route is so indirect that it takes almost as long to drive as it does to paddle. With a little too much haste, Nigel and Leigh jumped back in Starla (our Subaru) and “hit it” towards the finishing point at Brooklyn.

Without knowing any of this at the time, Shell and I continued plodding along past checkpoint O, into the more open waters around Mooney Mooney and Brooklyn. The sun was just beginning to peak through the clouds of fog over the mountains and water, creating an interesting and wonderful photography light – not that we either had a camera or the intention to stop and take pictures. By this stage, my energy reserves were really running on empty – my muscles had almost nothing left to give, and I think it’s fair to say that our rate of progress decreased quite substantially over that last 12.5 kms. Despite my fatigue, however, Shell seemed to have found a second wind after fading a bit earlier in the morning. Coupled with Shell’s energy, the tide was indeed still favourable, and even when we stopped to rest our muscles, we were still slowly drifting towards the finish, which was quite an important feeling for me psychologically. Despite my fatigue, we did actually manage to overtake a few people in those last few kilometres. About 5km from the finish, we caught up with a couple of guys in single plastic sea kayaks similar to our own. They had started 30 minutes before us in the the single Brooklyn or Bust class, but had done a remarkable job in paddling such craft so far. One of the pair was still raring to go and trying to post a time under 15.5 hours, but his mate was clearly flagging, and fell in behind us to ride our wake for the last 4 or 5km to the finish. I must say we didn’t begrudge him at all for that – we knew exactly how tired he must feel and were more than happy to provide assistance to him. While riding our wake, he was also regaling us with stories of being draughted by a (fast) Mirage kayak for about 10km of the Classic, and of how he and his mate had decided to enter the race on a whim over a few beers at a backyard bbq. For us, it was nice to take our minds off the last few kilometres of paddling.

Finally, after the F3 bridge at Mooney Mooney had been in site for quite some time (that last stretch of water takes a deceptively long time – something that again we thankfully were expecting after our familiarisation paddles), we closed in on the finishing line. Once we were within shouting distance, the ‘town crier’ finishing marshall was enthusiastically cheering us in, announcing each paddler by name and number of Classic’s attempted. Of course, he also tried to egg us on to “race” the single kayaker who had been riding our wake who had chosen to overtake us a couple of hundred of metres from the finish. We were having none of that! To be honest – we had never really cared about our time at all, with our goal solely being attempting to paddle 111km in whatever time it took. Not to mention that my muscles couldn’t have raced anything much by that stage!!

As it turned out, we pulled in to Brooklyn shortly after 7:30am, and our final elapsed time for the 111km was 15 hours, 8 minutes and 38 seconds, significantly below our expected time. Of course, that was also completed in a plastic sea kayak that was considerably slower in the water than the flotilla of Mirages that passed us on the water, so we’re especially proud of our efforts! . For actually finishing, we were each proud to receive a Hawkesbury Classic Medallion. If you’re interested (and to prove that we really did finish!) you can find our finishing time in the Preliminary 2005 Hawkesbury Classic Results.

Once again, our landcrew did a fantastic job of clearing everything out of our kayak, packing gear away, feeding us, and literally helping us get our tired bodies into warm, dry clothes. Surprisingly, after 111km and a night of absolutely no sleep, we felt pretty damned good – no doubt due to the adrenaline and elation of actually finishing. Unfortunately, we found out that in their haste to leave Spencer, Leigh had managed to leave his backpack nestled in rocks on the shore. The backpack had a swag of expensive gear in it – GPS, bike lights, rain jackets etc., so despite wanting nothing more than to head home for some sleep, we had to repeat the 50 minute+ trip on winding roads back to Spencer to find the bag. Thankfully, when we arrived, some of the checkpoint volunteers had found the bag, and identified Leigh as the owner based on Virgin Blue booking receipts that he had in the bag. So all was well that ended well .

So, we’ve successfully conquered our paddling challenge, and it feels great!! Next up, our 3 week trek in Bhutan!