Hawkesbury wrapup

In what was an extraordinary Hawkesbury, we started with warnings of bad weather, which were then cancelled only to then have the bad weather come in when we were all at our most vulnerable. 30km/h + headwinds, a fast incoming tide, rain and some pretty heavy 2-3 foot chop meant the last 10km took an eternity. We couldn't stop for a break as it meant we'd end up going backwards and/or end up capsizing, and with driving rain coming at our faces, it was generally an unpleasant place to be.

A stop at Wisemans to have some strapping put on my hands due to blisters, plus troubles with my right wrist were troubles I'd not encountered before, and slowed us down a little, but it was a reasonably pleasant night up until the weather doing what it did.

At one stage we got caught up in a barbed wire fence which got interesting. We were hugging the bank in the incoming tide, when we dodged a star picket which happened to have a trailing string of barbed wire underwater attached to another star picket. We were stuck fast as the wire got lodged in the rudder system and sat the for a good 5 mins trying to get free. Another paddler stopped to help but couldn't budge us, and we ended up being helped by a nice fella and his mates who were having a few beers up the river a little and waded into the thigh deep water in the darkness to lift us off. Thanks mystery man!

We made it in a time of 14 hours 39 mins, which was slower than we'd hoped, but still pretty good considering the circumstances.

Eventually the race committee made the decision to cancel the race for everyone who hadn't made it past the Spencer's checkpoint, which was both good and bad. The conditions were really ordinary, the worst I've seen yet, but it would have been such a shame to have been pulled out after so much work to get to Spencer's.