Natchex, Mississippi, finish line of the 42.5 miles Phatwater kayak challenge.What a fantastic event! Keith Benoist(race director) organized a fixed wing ariplane flight over the race course, all 67 km of the river up and back. Some of the shots I have posted here are from that flight. Thanks to Chris Gibson for taking his time and his plane to give Pat and I a birds eye view of the mighty Mississippi River.
The race itself was a race with the clock. The other double we thought we’d race with did not show up, so we had to race the gps. In order to break our record from last year we had to average above 17.9km/hour. Because the river was running slower, we decided to take some risks and paddle further to the outside of the turns where we saw the faster water. That decison proved to be a mistake in the first big turn, as the single group of Sean, Joe and Erik went marching past us on a shorter inside line after about 7 km of paddling. Not sure how much time we lost, but even before that our speeds were only in the 16.5-17.5 range. Not fast enough to break the record. The river never got faster, even slower with a slight headwind for an hour and so at about 2 hours we knew what kind of time we were in for…..never saw the the trio of singles again, but never hit consistant speeds above 20 km to bump up the average time.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to a great race,(Chris for bringing the double!) and a special shout out to Sean Lupton-Smith who raced a totally smart, tactitical race and hung on literally for 4 hours and sprinted for the singles win at the end. Not bad for a guy who was 50th something at surfski champs in August. Well done Sean!