Tag: blog

The Hawkesbury Challenge

 Guys,

Come 3pm on the 26th of October Black Magic (my kayak) and I will line up on the Hawkesbury River to paddle 111kms in one stint. The furthest I have paddled in a single session is 75kms – that was eight years ago when I was a much younger fella. I am determined to complete the distance and have been training hard for the past three months to get ready. Four weeks out I am sore and tired from the training – a spill off my mountain bike last weekend at 20kmph on a rocky downhill has made sitting in the kayak somewhat uncomfortable but thankfully a loss of skin, pride and some gnarly bruises later, I only lost two days training and am back at it.

This event is something I have wanted to do for over a decade and am stoked to be able to do it. The event is a fundraiser for the Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation – this organisation helps keep people alive who have blood cancers – our family has been directly affected by multiple myeloma, lymphoma and leukaemia – they are bloody awful cancers. I would like to raise $5 for every kilometre I paddle – having never done anything like this before (fundraising event – as you know I am often doing mad things to push my body and mind) I do not know if that is a reasonable or achievable target but since I hope to paddle at about 8 kilometres per hour -$40 an hour seems a pretty good number for an afternoon and nights work – this event is a bit bonkers as most of the paddling is done overnight – start at 3pm – I am hoping to cross the finish line between 3 and 4am making it a 12-13 hour effort.  

If you are happy to do so can you please forward this post to your network, if you can spare $5 that would be greatly appreciated.

The fundraising link page is below.

www.givenow.com.au/cr/deantattle

I will keep you posted on how I am tracking over the next four weeks.

Cheers

DT

Hinze Dam – Gold Coast
The flooded valleys make great spots to stop for a drink out of the wind and chop.
Eight large Bass swam and jumped in front of the kayak this afternoon – I very rarely see people fishing on this lake, this day they were everywhere.
Native Persicaria form a great habitat for the Australian Grebes to skitter away from the kayak, the Black and Pied cormorants, Intermediate and white-faced herons have great hunting grounds. You have to be careful paddling under the dead trees as the cormorants always lighten their load before they take flight – have had some close calls.