Day Three (Race day two)

Another 5 am start, but people are in a more optimistic mood this AM than last PM, so we are going out to do the best we can. It's a bit of a double whammy to have the second day - which is probably every novice's worst day - as the longest day. Still, the truth of the old cliches that you can't finish if you don't start, and you won't know if you don't try can't really be argued with (except on literary terms, not particularly relevant here). There's no option but to tackle the first two stages, because we can't get the boat out at the first checkpoint, but everybody is prepared to sign on for that.
The campsite & the start at Tocumwal are very close - walking distance if you hadn't paddled a boat 100 km the previous day, probably, but certainly a convenient distance that doesn't impact unduly on the waking up time. There are no dramas with the start. The organisers have rejigged a few of the faster boats' start times, but that doesn't affect us.

The second day is the worst in terms of the roads between checkpoints; there's a kind of sand/clay dust up to 10 cm thick on some of them & it's a little surprising that I managed to stay on road the whole day. The dust is unbelievable; there's no point being within 100 meters for the car in front if you want to actually see where you are going. The shot above is the best of the day two back roads - i.e. one where I felt I could actually take a picture without imperilling my life.
This is gratuitous art really. No particular reason for it other than the organisers significantly overstated the difficulty - or maybe I significantly overestimated the impact of the difficulty on my driving times - of getting between checkpoints, and so I am here early. This is a puddle, BTW, not the actual Murray. The river was at its highest level for years.

A geographer might produce quite an interesting account of this trip, from the bankside view. I didn't actually realise it on Day 2 (where the scenery was very similar to Day 1) but subsequently I came to realise that over the 400 km (river distance) there are really quite significant changes in the supporting landscape. I'm sure that, armed with that knowledge, I couldgo back and revisit days 1 & 2 and find more differences as well. Broadly though, the first 2 days featured very beach-y checkpoints, as here. These were infested by people camping (note motorboat pulled out waiting for paddlers to pass), many of whom were not at all enthralled by being required to move out of the river for the three hours of the race. I gather that on the river itself there was a degree of truculent hostility made alcoholically audible to the passing boats, but possibly protected by numbers the spectators didn't actually hear much abuse. Muted sulking really. One of the interesting features though was that these were/are pretty brutal campsites. They are not nice beaches, in any ocean beach sense. There's as much dust as sand, plenty of stones & nothing like comfortable vegetation cover to put a tent on. OK, there's plenty of camping equipment these days to keep you off the ground and you can haul it all in on a 4WD/trailer, but it still looked a lot to me like making the best of a bad job.

I expressed this idea to a couple of land crew who were also waiting, and was told : These are inland people. They're tough.

That puts me in my place. Still, at least I'm not complaining about the heat. My new friends point out that 38 by day and 24 by night is luxury camping weather. In their last Mildura holiday, it was 44 in the day and 36 at night.

Oh.

One of the other problems we had with the big boat and the small land crew, was finding an appropriate place to beach the boat. Here you can see the smaller kayak making a beeline for shore & refreshments, while our crew has to head another couple of hundred meters downstream to park. And I have to chase them carrying 15 kilos of water and an esky.

RD 2 had a curious, somewhat paradoxical end. Chris, the paddleboarder & our coach, pulled out at checkpoint Bravo (I keep wanting to say Beta) - we were amazed that he'd actually started the day because he looked so bad at the end of RD 1 - but he jumped on board the dragon boat at Charlie for a combination coaching/assisting/motivational stint. We also got a volunteer first aid official on board, thanks Seja, who was invaluable over the course of the race, helping me out bank-side when she wasn't paddling herself.

Anyway, halfway between Charlie & Delta we started to feel the heavy hand of the clock on our collective shoulders, and eventually accepted a tow from the control boat for the last 7 km of the 4th stage. That meant we had to pull out of day 2, and skip the last 12 km stage. What was odd was that, although that looks like some kind of failure superficially, in reality something happened on day 2 (in the boat) that meant on days 3, 4 & 5 there was never any danger of not finishing. On the last three days, despite all the problems with the boat & the heat, the dragonboat was a powerhouse and consistently beat its own checkpoint goals (well, my calculated goals for it, anyway). Whereas on days 1 & 2 the main question was, will we make the checkpoint in time?, on days 3 thru' 5 there didn't really seem to be any question of that at all.

Pulling the boat out at Delta wasn't the only drama though. The "main" road was out because a bridge was down, so we had to bring the trailer in, & the boat out, the long way around, via Charlie. Still, despite all this, when we finally got into Picnic Point, there was a good feeling about the place. And great showers at the camping ground. And a bus to take us to an airconditioned club for dinner. Michael & Martin, ground crew for transport & logistics, had excelled again.

Except for one tent, which sadly, I have become the sole expert in. Still, it doesn't take long.