Calico Moon 2015 MR340

 Our 2015 MR340 story We took off from Kaw point at 8. We took up the rear once again out of not wanting to contend with poorly controlled boats at the confluence. We still had to dodge a lot of boats and power past guys who didn't know what they were doing. We didn't See Joe and Brian ahead of us anywhere. We started passing solo boats at around 12 I think. We past Napoleon where we saw mom and asked where's joe? She said he left 4 minutes ago and Dan was on the ramp with a problem with his seat. We kept an even race pace and came past Lexington around 2:30 we were passing some boats at this point but mostly paddled around the same 5-10 boats. We pulled into waverly around 5:30 or 6 and joe was there getting geared up to pull into the river. We had both ran out of water with the checkpoint in sight. It took probably 10 minutes to get our boat cleaned out and our water freshened up and resuppliedWe headed out with Glasgow as the goal to our next stop then the sun got low and so did our drive. We talked about getting a care package at Miami and with Starbucks drinks then the gps said low battery so we added batteries to the list. I told amber how nice the Miami boat ramp was to come into and how great the helpers were there. When it came into view we could only see the strobe. We couldn't read the ramp at all coming into the ramp. Gordon brown was ahead of us and crossed the whole ramp. We had to paddle in the current to wait until he got out of the way.we had been seeing lightening for a while at this point. We pulled in and got out and a racer helped us move the boat up the ramp a bit. We walked up the ramp to find mom and she was helping joe get fueled up. She gave us our care package and we were off ahead of Joe for the first time! They told Amber that the storm we were seeing was in Iowa so no worries. We paddled fairly easy and fixed the gps and snacked then went back to an easy race pace. Joe and Brian caught us a few miles down the river and we paddled together and talked about our race this far. We were still on track to be in Glasgow around 4 am. But then the wind whipped around and had some coolness to it. We looked behind us and big black cloud was getting ready to cover the moon. We could see a ramp I had previously thought might be the place to get to rather than sleeping in Miami. It was Dalton bottoms. We pushed hard to pull into the ramp. We got both boats pulled up the ramp and texted mom to come back up from Glasgow. We laid down in the rocky grass for a few minutes and my allergies went haywire. Amber and I laid on the concrete and got a short nap in but she got cold and came up to cuddle for heat. Then it started raining. We headed for the overflowing concrete bathroom. We hung out in here and met another fellow paddler dodging the storm names Joshua Colbeck. We talked about memorable moments of the race so far and that this will be one we'll talk about for awhile. Mom showed up after about an hour and a half and we just threw gear outside into the rain so all five of us could fit. Amber slept in the floor and the rest in seats. I sneezed most the time but dozed some. After an hour the rain let up. We got out bilged our boats and got underway to Glasgow. Around 5:30am. We got to Glasgow a couple hours later. We pulled our boat up the ramp and hung around for probably close to an hour eating burritos and coffee. We put out shortly after Joe and Brian again with plans to get to Coopers landing. We pulled into coopers around 4 and got Thai food then planned to crash out for an hour or two while it was hot. I went right to sleep until someone's car alarm was going off. We woke up visited with Dana and probably got underway around 6. Definitely lost some time there. We paddled into Jeff city shortly after dark into another hard to read boat ramp. For my fifth time there i would have thought it would have been easier for me to get in to. We swapped batteries I ate some catfish and pulled out of the ramp with joe waiting for us to paddle together. We made a plan for Chamois which was just 26 miles downstream when we left it was maybe 10:30 small amount of time lost again. We pulled into Chamois probably around 2:00am after finding the ramp. It was lit by a flashing red beacon someone had left out and while we were looking at it we saw an ambulance with the lights on coming to the ramp. We later found out that a racer had gotten hypothermia and had to pull out of the race. We talked to a woman paddler and she was wanting to get on the river. We told her that the fog was building a bit. We woke up around 4 and got the boat loaded with water and some food stuff. Joe once again got the jump on us heading out of the boat ramp. We were paddling along feeling pretty good when Amber suggested we paddle the 90 miles to the finish straight through. I was apprehensive about but agreed that if we ran out of water we could rework our plan on the fly. We had gone about 2 hours or maybe a little less when there was a huge bank of fog and we couldn't tell which way the river went. I pulled it up on my GPS and found that it went left and that the Gasconade was coming in from the right. We kinda just coasted into it paddling slowly and listening often. As the fog started to rise we picked the pace back up. We saw Hermann ahead and swung by to wave at mom. And found out joe was planning a stop at new haven. As we approached new haven there were some kayakers on the left side of the river all going over a wing dike and appeared to be helping one another. They were pulling into the ramp as we passed. Joe and mom were on the ramp so we just cruised on by quietly. We had been planning to take a 3 minute break but we realized we were ahead of Joe and Brian and may have a shot at beating them so we just paddled on. After about ten minutes amber tried texting mom but we had no service. We both started trying shortly after that to no avail. I ended up calling her to let her know what was up, and found out we had worried her quite a bit and she was just getting ready to leave a care package with a safety boat on the bank. She said she was going to meet joe and Brian with Big Macs at Washington. When we passed Washington and knew they hadn't caught us yet and that they were stopping again we thought we had a pretty good shot at staying ahead of them depending how hard they got after it when they figured out we were in front. We went by Klondike at about 12:00 and mom asked us where our next stop was I yelled FINISH LINE. She said she would be there waiting for us. It was then that we noted a barge was coming up river. There was some good dead water on the right side of the river so made for it. We got pulled in there and Hid from the first of the barge wake there. We probably sat there 7-10 minutes and then decided we had lost enough time. We turned straight into the barge wake and it got kind of hairy. The waves were still big rollers spaced unevenly apart. We went over the top of some catching air with the bow crashing down and some just came over the bow. We kept going hard for the next few miles to make sure we stayed upright. It was getting close now and we could tell because we were picking up the pace. We passed the three kayakers who had passed us by just paddling through the barge wake while we were on the side. And when we were about 8 miles out we saw a tandem boat struggling to stay pointed downriver. I told Amber not to try to catch them or we may burn out. She said she wasn't going to but I noticed our stroke rate picked up just the same. We caught and passed them on the straight away at the turn before the bridge of false hope. We kept the hammer down for awhile longer making sure they weren't going to attack us. When we were about ten minutes out According to the GPS I noticed at the faster speeds it would sometimes show me we had a chance of meeting our goal we had hoped for of landing at 3:33. I told Amber and she said lets go for it. We put the hammer down full speed again and pushed under the I-70 bridge to the finish where quite a few people were there cheering with mom even though they didn't know us. We actually worked too hard and came in at 3:32 for a total time of 55:32. We finished in fifth in mixed tandems and 65th overall. We got some water and awaited Joe and Brian's arrival to cheer them in at a time of 56:01 we celebrated and took some pics. We hung around and cheered people into the finish for awhile while winding down. We headed back to the hotel and got showered up and ate some Chinese food. We crashed out until about 4:45 when mom woke up to a text saying Dan he broken his rudder cable. We changed into river gear and headed to the finish line to pull my boat apart. We hustled up to Hermann and split my cable and built a new end and clamped his cable back together. The fog was thick so we still had to wait a bit before he shoved off. We met Joe, Brian, and Kim at Washington for breakfast. After breakfast we headed to the ramp and helped any paddlers that looked like they could use it. We met a cool guy named Dan Perlmutter. He was paddling a plywood and strip kayak that he built himself. He was in good spirits and we found out his boat number was his birth year 1944. Dan pulled in and we got him up and he wanted to cool down a bit. We sent Mr Perlmutter on his way and he was pushed into a dike by a power boat. He flipped his boat. I got in to try to help but he'd already been pulled to far out into some pretty rough water. A local pulled himAnd his boat from the water and brought him back up. We got his boat drained and he was ready to push off. When we asked if he was ok for sure he said" I was a little hot, I needed cooled off anyway!"Dan came down and we crewed him a bit and got him in the water and off he went. We headed straight to Klondike where we thought we had plenty of time for lunch. We saw a barge coming up and knew Dan was gonna wait for it to go by. We went to some winery and had some lunch. We were just hanging out and shooting the breeze when joe got the text that Dan was at the ramp. We literally ran out of there and drove hard to the ramp. We hung out with Dan and he was stoked! He plowed through the barge wake and had a blast. We got him resupplied and off he went. We headed to the finish line and cheered in other boats. Dan came in at 5:56 for a total time of 82:56. We got to cheer in mr Perlmutter as well. We went to the awards ceremony and got our medals and went out and loaded boats. We then hung around and cheered in the last paddler. A guy named Doug Brown who had paddled a tandem Aluminum canoe solo after losing his partner in Lexington. It was awesome to see everyone cheer him in too!