Hawkesbury Classic Countdown - It's gonna be a wet one!

 mSo the Hawkesbury Classic is on this Saturday 23rd of October. Over the next 2 days I'll be using this as an excuse to eat a ton of food, mainly carbs (he says with a cheese and bacon roll in his hand) and generally being a layabout while building up my energy stocks.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology forecast for the weekend, they've gone from yesterday's forecast for the weekend of a few showers, to thunderstorms from midday and 35km/h winds.At least at with a top of 29 degrees it won't be too cold until the sun goes down but by the sound of it once that happens it's going to be a pretty ordinary night on the water. On the bright side, we might get a bit of flow in the river that could reduce the impact of an incoming tide? Wishful thinking perhaps...

 In terms of preparation it's meant I've had to change from preparing for the cold to preparing for being wet all night. While it's important to have a beanie (woolen) of some sort to stop the loss of heat through your head, now it's also going to be important to somehow keep my head dry too. Wool is the order of the day, because it still retains warmth when wet so I've got a few old woolen jumpers and thermal too, for the midnight 'till dawn shift.

Because of the cloud there's not going to be much moonlight, so I've also got a head torch so we can minimise the number of times we end up in trees or reeds by wandering too close to the bank. I say minimise, because this always happens at least once or twice regardless of how much you look for them.

I've also got my standard compulsory emergency gear - a space blanket, compass, small torch, whistle etc and a few disposable ponchos. PFD's get tested on the day, and mine is a handy type with a few pockets on the front to stash some nibbles and a few essentials like painkillers and Vaseline for my hands. I've gone for the sans-gloves option this year. I'll have them with me in case I get blisters, but will coat my hands in Vaso to stop them getting too waterlogged during the night.

In terms of food for the night, we'll fed soup and pasta during the night, but I also have a stash of bananas, glucose lollies, muesli bars, nuts and a few energy bars for the latter stages/early morning. I've been experimenting with Coca Cola during training, and while I know you're supposed to avoid caffeinated drinks as they are a diuretic I think one small can's sugar hit can should help push me through the "wee" hours (yep, that's a diuretic joke, who would have thought I'd manage it?) where I have struggled in the past.

My tendency to vomit about two hours into the race on the same corner is expected to continue, and so I'll limit what I eat in the two or so hours before the race to avoid having too many things come back up. I can have a few bits of ready to go once my body has had it's little tantrum so I don't lose too much energy.

Lastly, if anyone reading this is feeling particularly generous, feel free to sponsor me for the race. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and proceeds go directly to the Arrow Bone Marrow Foundation at St Vincent's Hospital to do their top notch research into Leukemia and other blood cancers & disorders such as Lymphoma and Myeloma. This is something particularly close to my heart as I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins's Diffuse large B-Cell Lymphoma in 1999 when I was 16. I'm sound as a pound now after a fair whack of chemo, but I know personally how generally sh*thouse these diseases are. Get in there and throw 'em some coin!

Edit: We're looking for a time under 13 hours, which is reasonable. Last time I did this race in a double it took us 12 hrs 50 mins, so beating that time is the target. Last year was just over 15 hours solo.

The contenders

I realised that mainstream sea kayaks that I had been dreaming of were out of my price range pretty quickly but here are a few of the ones I looked at:

• Mirage 580, the single version of a double I have spent a lot of time in, and really nice looking boats.
• Elliott Marauder & Reflection, but given the comfort issues I've had with my current one, plus a few build quality questions, I was in two minds on this manufacturer.
• Raider series by Roscoe Canoes in Brisbane, but given the distance from Canberra and similar prices I didn't look to much into these.

The average price of these kayaks was approx $3000 and I didn't have that much to spend so started looking for build-your-own kayak kits. While there was a mob in Wollongong, Cape Boat Works who do this kind of thing locally, I found that the majority of the companies making these kits were over in the States. In addition, there are two main companies who sell them in the US:

• Pygmy Boats, Inc., who designed the Coho my father built; and
• Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC), these guys seem to be the big distributor in this game and have an enormous array of designs shown on their website. I also saw one of their boats in the Hawkesbury Classic last year and had a bit of a chat with the fella on the way down the river in the wee hours, it was a nice looking rig.

Some have asked me if I'm apprehensive about biting off more than I can chew in building a boat from scratch, given my woodworking skills are pretty non-existent. I am, but the reassurance from the old man, plus more of the same from Pygmy saying that their boats have been built in living rooms, garages and apartments by people who have never attempted anything like this before, with stunning results. Also, given the whinge-fest that is the Internet, you'd think that if someone managed to bollocks one of these up they'd be on there complaining and giving negative reviews, but I haven't found it yet which has to say something.

I was initially drawn to CLC boats like a textbook Gen-Y moth to a flame as their website has an enormous amount of information on each design, and dial-like comparisons at the bottom of each design page showing how fast/slow, stable/tippy etc each design is. While the website of CLC was better, I got past this and the impression from the research I did was that Pygmy were in fact the market leader. I sent some emails which were responded to very quickly and with some excellent guidance on particular models to suit my size (I'm 6'4'' and 95kgs with size 12 feet), shipping quotes, and whether they could structure the shipments to stay under AUD$1000 to avoid having to pay GST and duty (they could, but the extra postage wouldn't make it worthwhile).

The Pygmy model I was initially looking at was the Osprey HP, as I liked the lines of the hull and deck better, and, let's not beat around the bush - it has a higher top speed! A few emails suggested I wouldn't fit comfortably with my legs, and couldn't amend the plans during construction to shift the bulkhead at my feet forward a few inches to allow extra footroom.
Next choice was the Coho. My Dad's model is a Coho (Standard) and this is what he paddles when training for the Hawkesbury, and what I used in 2009 for the event. Good news was that they also offer the Coho in a High Volume model, perfect! This has the same hull shape, but a deck raised an extra 1.5 inches of deck height for heffalumps like me. Word from Jim and Kelly at Pygmy also is that the difference between the Coho and Osprey HP is academic at best, and the Pygmy actually has a higher cruising speed, hence the Standard Coho being their highest selling model.

SOLD! I order the coho in the next few days once I sort out what accessories I need/want. This is getting really exciting.