Calico Moon 2016 MR340 a DNF story

 Our 2016 MR340 story

We got ourselves to the start just before 6AM. The day was warm and humid already but with a few clouds in the sky. We had the boat outfitted before the solo start. We went down and watched the solos and it went off without a hitch, nobody took a swim. We got on the water about 7:30 and went across the Kaw and hung out by the bank. We spent our time talking to Brian and Marilyn. When the countdown started we moved to the middle of the pack. We took the confluence a little right of center. There were some tight spots where boats almost sandwiched us in. I told Amber to dig and we pushed hard to stay out of trouble. For a girl who had been vocal about how nervous she was to get through the confluence you wouldn't know. She stayed poised and didn't concern herself looking around for trouble. We were in decent shape by the second bridge and were settled in to a quick pace. We decided we were going to race our own race but we were still able to see Brian and Marilyn for the first 30 miles. They were steadily making ground on us. We were pretty sure we'd have to beat them to be on the podium. We passed our first solo at 9:06. A guy paddling a C1 canoe with a double blade. We continued mowing down boats our avg pace past Lexington was 7.9mph. We were there at 2:35pm At this point I was having some serious trouble getting water out of my bite valve. I thought it was the valve itself but it turned out the tube in the jug had gotten shoved down in the jug and was flush on the bottom making me pull really hard to get any water. There was a bunch of boats at the checkpoint when we went past. I debated really hard with myself about stopping and dealing with my water issue but I was still able to get water so we moved on. We starting to lose some speed since the headwind was really getting tough. We had a couple pedal drives pass us they were really low profile and catching less wind. There were a couple boats being paddled past us too. One of the ones was a cedar strip mixer paddled double blade by some guys that came and looked at our Starbor boat last year. They said they had stopped in Napoleon and took a soak in the river. We decided it would be a good idea to do the same in waverly. We got to witness something really cool when a live cottonwood tree broke and fell into the river. We had a bit of trouble getting a text in to mom about which ramp to stop at. We decided to pull close to the first ramp to scope it out and she was there yelling for us. We pulled in and moved our boat up the ramp just enough to be out of the way. We got fresh water we both had about half an inch left. We got fresh food and spiz in the boat and ice socks for our necks. We switched from waist PFDs to our full life jackets. As soon as we were clear of the boat ramp I looked at our GPS our stop took just over 10 minutes. We were checked out of the checkpoint at 6pm on the dot. Just clear of the boat ramp was also when we saw our first close lightening. We hadn't even passed the Waverly bridge yet. The lightening started getting more consistent letting us know we were heading into a pretty serious storm. We kept going with the hopes it would pass across the river before we getting there. The wind was already at 8-10mph and had been most the day. It was really picking up and we started getting some waves. We were on the outside of a bend in the river and the waves were stacking up and turning into breakers. We kept paddling hoping that there would be a spot to pull over for safety. There was a rock check along the outside of the bend. There was a kayak up against the rocks and holding on to them. We passed through the gap and pulled under a tree. We were the first boat to pull in there and got a prime spot completely out of the wind holding onto a few tree roots. The water got crazy outside the rocks waves getting over 3ft. A couple boats had pulled across the river ahead of us and looked to be getting pounded by the storm. We got a little rain but looking at the radar we were just catching the edge of it. After 26 minutes it had mostly blown itself out so we paddled back upstream in the check and made a run at the gap and got back in the race. The mini break did us good and we were back to paddling 8+ mph. We passed hills island and notice some smoke back in the timber a little bit. Then we noticed the smoke was coming from a black tree that was split and had been hit by lightening. We paddled on with our speed going down we were slowing our pace but I knew we did the same last year so I wasn't concerned. Our liquid intake and output seemed to be where we wanted it to be. Amber did her banana fine but an hour or two later thought the spiz was heavy on her stomach. We were winding down on the way to Miami. As it got dark our avg speed was down to around 7.4. Our speed really started dropping when the river got hard to read in the dark due to the moon being covered by clouds. We mostly stayed towards the center. Next time I will try the app MR340 propaddler that has the fast water marked. Even Mansker said it takes all the river reading out of the equation. There weren't nearly as many boats ahead of us as we were used to. We passed quite a few boats and there were only boats about 3/4 of a mile ahead or farther so we couldn't read how they were runnin the river. We passed all the boats ahead of us as they stayed river right in the slow water coming in to Miami. Mom had texted earlier from someone else's phone that she had no service and that we would need to text ourselves in and out at Miami. She also said we need to yell at her when we went by. Amber read the text aloud and somehow neither of us got that part. As we coasted by the checkpoint I got my phone out saw I had a few texts that I would read after I got us through the checkpoint. We were almost to the bridge when I looked at Joes text saying mom had called him and said we needed to yell at her. We tried to yell back towards the ramp but were too far. We weren't going to turn around so we tried the numbers she had texted from. We knew she would find someone and check to see if we had texted in and out and she did. We went past Miami at 10:58. That was 11 minutes behind last year but with the river being way slower we were pretty happy with how it was going especially since we stopped for the storm. We headed on towards Glasgow mom texted saying she was at Glasgow with our sleep stuff ready. We were really starting to get pretty tired after midnight time was starting to really drag. The wind hadn't laid and was killing my eyes without my glasses. I should have gotten my clear glasses out of my dry bag to help counter it a bit. At this point Amber was putting her head down and paddling and I assumed it was for the same reason. The full moon had come out by this time and we were able to see some. It was still pretty tough to read the debris since the water was so choppy and all the boils looked like black sticks until they dissipated. We hit a pretty good sized log hard. A little later we heard rushing water to our right and a kayaker ahead of us shined their light at a wing dyke. There was no way to get clear of it and we were lucky that the part we went over was under enough water. It was on the channel side of the river so I'm still confused why it was there. At this point it was obvious we were desperate for sleep we talked and decided we didn't want to but had to stop at Dalton bottoms. We were 7 miles out. We texted mom and she said she would get there. It took us a little over an hour to get there and we almost passed it. I thought for sure it had an orange light but Amber had seen a red light on the bank before it and wanted to make sure it wasn't the ramp. It was the ramp and there was a woman sitting at it with a lantern. We pulled in and brought the boat up a bit. It was 2:35am. We saw Susan Tretter here and she was looking as beat as we felt. She asked how long we were planning to stay. We said 45min to an hour. She said she would head out with us if we did. The directions in the ground crew book go to a closed road so mom was having a hard time finding it. We ate a little and drank some while we were waiting. Amber was shaking uncontrollably at this point saying she didn't feel very cold but we got cold pretty quick. We decided to lay on the concrete and catch a nap. The bugs were eating us up and the wind was a killer even on the ground. We finally got up and asked the girl with the latern how she got here and she gave us directions. We gave them to mom and she got there. It was about 3:30. We each had an uncrustable and climbed into our sleeping bags. Mom woke me up in about an hour and asked if I wanted to get going. The wind was howling and my eye ulcer was hurting so I asked for another 45 minutes. Mom woke me up again and I noticed Susan was gone. I checked out how packed in our boat was and talked a minute with Steve Kaub and Lorretto. I went up and woke amber up. She said she was nauseous as soon as she got up. We got the boat in the water and were headed the 13 miles to Glasgow. We were going slow around 6.4 miles an hour. I could tell Amber wasn't feeling it. She tried eating a muffin and said she couldn't swallow it. Then a little later she had half an uncrustable but could only get it down with a Sprite chaser. We got to Glasgow right at 8am. I texted us in whole mom and I were at the burrito stand at 8:10. Amber was feeling really bad with nausea and dizziness. She simply couldn't eat anything. We talked to Susan's mom and she said she came in in rough shape. She tried to eat some different things and just couldn't. We lounged never really sleeping trying to recover. After a while we talked to Susan and she was looking better but was still spent. She said she had a rough time from Dalton to Glasgow averaging 4mph through a lot of it. She said she knew what needed done but was putting it off. Amber kept saying if we would just get in the boat it might take her mind off it. I admired her drive but knew if she couldn't eat in the shade getting out into the wind and heat wasn't going to make it easier. She got pretty pale at one point and said she felt like she could barely move. We wished we had brought her blood pressure cuff. Eventually we knew the decision had to be made. At noon she still was feeling bad after pepto and trying to eat many things. The next boat ramp was booneville and that was 30 miles away. If it had been 12 miles we may have tried it but I'm sure in the 5 hours it would taken to get to booneville we would have been calling for a rescue boat. Together we made the decision that it wasn't worth her getting a heat stroke or passing out in the boat and then taking an unwanted swim. We texted in our DNF. Mom and I got the boat up to the car. There were quite a few other boats loading up.