Dusi Day One

We started with the 5th and final firing of the Natal Carbineer's cannon. We had a great opening sprint, and were 5th in our batch at the top of Ernie Pearce weir. Unfortunately we took an unscheduled swim at the bottom! We were great in the boat and managed to get to Campbell' portage without further incident and with some great lines - hardly touched a rock. On Campbell's came the knee test, and unfortunately Greg's knee was not up to it. It definitely took the pressure off though as it confined us to walking for the day's portages. We joined Dave Harker and Kendall Slater on an alternative route through Guinea Fowl portage, which turned out to be flatter, and avoided the chaos in Devil's Cauldron, but was probably lightly longer. Back on the water and following some mamba lines through The Maze, we finally found our second's at Mission - we had missed them at Ernie Pearce, Musson's and Campbell’s. The good paddling continued until the Cabbage tree take-out, where we managed to have our second swim and Greg broke a paddle. Luckily our seconds were close at hand and we got a spare and continued to the finish. Our time for the day was around 4h45, we still need to get our official time. Boat still in one piece and ready for tomorrow.

1 Week To Go

The excitement is building, a week to go. Donations and pledges are starting to come in nicely, and by the time we start the race we should have raised a decent amount for The Sunflower Fund. Remember no donation is too small, together we can make a big difference!

The batches have just been put up on the Dusi site and we are scheduled to start at 7h50 for the first day. This will hopefully change to 7h00 if we make it into the charity batch which is auctioned off (closing on Saturday). This gives us a nice advantage as we start only 1 hour behind the leaders and should have most of the day done before it get's too hot. We will also be amongst the better paddlers up front, so hopefully shouldn't be knocked out our boat by novices taking crazy lines or getting stuck right in the main channels. The portages also tend to get a bit congested later in the day, especially the very steep, bushy and hot path through Devil's Cauldron - so it will be a bonus to get through there before the crowds.

Last CMH dice tonight at Kingfisher, and probably our last hard paddle before Dusi. See you there for a cold Hansa afterwards!