Boat 339 Kavanagh and Fisher Devizes to Westminster 2004

We’ve done the training 574-miles in 102 hours. Our support crew of Rosemary (John’s wife), Peter (John’s brother), Neil who attempted the DW last year with John and has several Cheshire rings under the belt and Steve Knill an old friend were ready. The weather forecast looked good if a little cold. All our food, spare clothes and equipment were split between the two vehicles. We had a lovely meal the night before and stayed near to Devizes ready to meet up at the start. At 11.02 we started and the support crew had a plan. The first 14 miles does not have any portages, which I find uncomfortable because I like to get out of boat and allow some blood to circulate.

In the early stages it is important to start the mind games, I do two things, I have milestones in mind to break the 125 miles up. I find 10% to 20% of the mileage useful as well as the unitary fractions, 1/6^th 1/5^th and so on. This stops the task becoming mentally too big. I also use geographical milestones, the first portage, the tunnel, Newbury, Reading (where we joined the Thames), Chertsey and Teddington. Later on I will start to think about what is left 1/2, 1/3 and so on. The other thing we do is to talk about something to take my mind of the task, on this occasion it was what are salts, the periodic table and 130 things to do with a wire coat hanger (list available on request).

The first 45 miles was uneventful, in the main we were passing other crews and we were able to jump on the wake of at least three crews that passed us. As it was going dark we had the expected aches and pains and were slightly behind 24-hour schedule but were in good shape. As we entered Reading we started to have problems with the front footrest and rudder. The footrest is designed with the bolt retained by a layer of fibreglass, when it started to slip and rotate we were not able to hold the bolt and tighten it up. We changed into dry clothes and had a hot meal at Shiplake (59 miles), all as planned. The support crew were working superbly; any body that has attempted an event of this type will know how important this is.

We continued to have problems with the front footrest however we were making good progress.

The locks on the Thames are not straightforward. We had all the portage maps in laminated sheets taped to the boat where I could see them, this worked until it went dark, after dark it became more difficult as we could only look at these maps when we were out of the boat and had to try to memorise them, in hindsight we could have taped a light stick to the boat so that I could see them. We made some mistakes and lost a bit of time but otherwise this worked well. The advise from the race organisers is to paddle this section before the race in the daylight as well as entering the Waterside series of races. This would have involved travelling from Macclesfield and the time and cost we felt was better spent on high value training at home.

We had found during training that it was better to paddle without a torch at night and allow our eyes to adjust. This worked very well and our distance vision and peripheral vision was excellent. I found the light stick that the race rules require less of an irritation if it was over my shoulder and behind me. When we could see a boat in front it was useful to follow their light.

At Chertsey we changed again into dry clothes and felt that we should finish in a little other 24 hours. We stormed the next ten miles and 24 hours again looked achievable. About a mile before Teddington the front footrest came off and we lost the rudder. The wing nuts required to fix this properly had gone ahead to Westminster so a repair was improvise not with a coat hanger but a similar piece of wire. As we set off fatigue took over (we had done 108 miles in 21 hours 40) and we fell in, this was not too bad as we were near the bank and quickly got back in the boat. We had repaired the boat and met our support crew above the portage. We had to paddle 10metres before portaging down the rollers, again fatigue cut in and we did not walk far enough out and further damaged the rudder, is this why most crews use over stern rudders? As we approached Kew Bridge, where John and Neil had retired last year we met a Chelsea Port Authority boat travelling up stream and high speed carrying a 3-foot wake with it. As this wake hit us the boat veered towards the centre of the river, the rudder was ineffective and we lost speed as I was supporting and reverse sweep stroking in the back. This caused another capsize and a longer swim. When I tried to bend the rudder back into shape it broke off completely. After we had got out and assessed the damage we decided to walk the remaining 12 miles to the finish. As we set of the support crew in Westminster phoned and I asked Neil to jog along the bank to meet us with the spare rudder. At the time I was not thinking straight and several options would have been better but we could walk 4 miles and Neil would run 6 (yes, I know this isn’t 12). As it happens we walked about 4 1/2 miles with the boat and Neil ran 12 as the Thames path detours from the river. We completed the last miles on the water in about an hour and finished the race in 26 hours 21 minutes and 32 seconds finishing a very respectable 47^th (14^th veterans). My body collapsed after the finish seizing up rapidly although up to and immediately after the finish I had felt OK, I even called for a sprint finish. (Which John point blank refused to have anything to do with!)

What I had asked Neil to do seemed at the time quite trivial, just jog a couple of miles with a rudder, this turned out to be a complete marathon after a night with little if any sleep, well done Neil we would not have finished on the water without you.

The morning after the race I was in a bad way, my left knee had swollen up and was very painful to move or bear weight on. This was the knee I had damaged as teenager and I was beginning to get quite worried. The swelling has started to go down 48 hours after the finish and my other aches are subsiding, is it time to plan the next DW? I don’t think so, the time commitment to training and planning is more than I have got.

My advice to anybody starting this type of activity is plan. Plan your training to include as much of the race experience as you can, paddle at night, paddle during the day, portage, feed, run with the boat. Plan your race, where are you going to feed, what are you going to eat and drink. I ate several packets of jelly babies and can recommend Sainsbury’s own, mini mars, lots of cake, all simple sugars and carbohydrate. We also had a hot drink as often as possible at night and one hot meal of potato and ravioli. Organise an efficient support team, this is essential and a race of this type is impossible without them. Tell them what you need, food, drink, dry clothes, boat spares and when you need them. Then when all the planning is complete remember it has to be flexible to work.