Today we paddled from Rio Vista Park (near the start of the race) down to Spencer Canoes, a total of around 11 miles. We kept up a reasonable pace and improved our control around the faster bends. We put a pretty deep gash in the bottom of the boat, but it is still water-tight and Jack at Spencer Canoes is going to patch it up for us tonight. The word of the day was "portage", as there are quite a few spots where we either had to walk the boat through shallow water or carry it around dams and other obstacles (including Cottonseed Rapids, which doesn't seem to have any routes through it, especially for a relatively wide boat like ours). We're still very happy with the canoe and can't wait for the race to get started! On the nature front, we saw one water moccasin swimming alongside us, as well as a few fairly large spotted gars under the boat, some other random fish and a seemingly endless supply of turtles on every available inch of logs in the sunshine.
We passed quite a few locals today floating down the river on rubber rings, looking very comfortable with their cold beers! All were very friendly and some wanted to know why we were wearing "hats from Saudi Arabia"!
Two days to go - feeling good!
No comments:
Post a Comment