Tag: travel

The big difference

Preparing to go on a multiday camping paddle where you plan your route, load food, tent, minimum 5 litres of water for each day away from a water source and a 20% buffer with everything to allow for the unexpected can see me pack up to 100kgs of gear in my 22kg kayak – with me added I can be paddling 240kgs of laden kayak through the ocean. 6kmph across the water and 30km covered in a day are great numbers – stopping to watch a whale and her baby play is done without thought, exploring a sandy bay, finding birds nesting among the driftwood and spinifex is the why and purpose of the trip.

Paddling 111kms in one stint chasing a time, speed across water is a very different thing – to start with the equipment loaded on the boat is almost zero, enough water, electrolyte drinks and protein bars to get you through to the next checkpoint where you can reload and go again. Your focus instead of being on the environment and its wildlife becomes the kmph number on your GPS, the length depth and draw of your stroke and trying to nail the paddle exit from the water so as not to slow the boat. Monitoring your body for signs of breakdown through either dehydration or calorie deficit, working through the pain in your shoulders and back, ignoring the chaffing that just insists on happening when you paddle hard for four hours or more. The why and the purpose is to challenge yourself, push your limits, raise money for a good cause.

The two are so different that it seems strange to call both paddling – both are hard, both are rewarding in completely different ways. Both are challenging and push your limits which is why I guess I love paddling.

This resident White Bellied Sea Eagle has seen me so often over the past few months he is now starting to let me paddle under him almost half the time

The afternoon Thunder storms – I really enjoy paddling in the rain, not so much when lightning is closely followed by a deep and vibrating grumble. This one cut my Monday afternoon session a bit shorter than planned but added a dose of adrenalin to my day.

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.