2013 Missouri American Waters 340

[G.Gordon]

The longest non-stop kayak/canoe race in America
There has been a kayak or two hanging under my deck for mostof the past decade. For the past year or so I fished out of a Mad River Synergy 14’ kayak/canoe hybrid that I didn’tmind covering up to ten miles in a day of crappie or catfishing. It is a comfortable kayak and I find it functional and adequate for what I like to do. Covering 340 miles over four days or 88 hours or less has never been one of the things I conceived of doing.
In July when we received our issue of the Missouri Conservationist, Brett Dufur had written an article about the 2012 MR340 and the fire was lit in my brain.Finding Flow on the Mighty MO | Missouri Department of Conservation I wonder how many others I paddled with that week that were spurred into action by that article.
I could conceptualize the notion of paddling my 14’ kayak 340 miles, but had no knowledge of what it took. So over the next week I read everything I could on ultra-distance kayak racing. A trip to a local kayak store to buy a better paddle ended with my buying a new kayak in addition. I’ll address this decision later. The repeated idea that every writer or blogger had to say about the MR340 is that the accumulated advantages have to outweigh the accumulated disadvantages.
Trying to stack the “advantages” deck in my favor was the main drive in my purchase of a kayak by Current Design. Their Storm GT at 17’ long was 6.5” narrower than my fishing kayak and it had a rudder. Though it weighed only 2 pounds less than the fishing kayak, it cut through the water more efficiently and was comfortable. I had to do everything possible from the boat prep to gaining knowledge since I probably had less than 100 miles total paddle time for the year at the time I made this decision.
Another huge advantage one can have in a multi-day event isto have a support crew to follow along to give aid, water, food, rest,etc. That was to be my ever ready to jump into anything wife. This plan came crashing down along with the real crashing of her mom, that lives with us,falling down the stairs at the house. Thankfully, she only cracked her ankle, but it was a very important bone and had to be completely off her foot for six week. Advantage removed. Mom is alright and getting around well.
Spending all of my allotted funds on a new kayak and paddle, I didn’t have anything left for a hand held gps to govern my speed to make sureI would stay at a pace to finish the race in under 88 hours. I posted a thread in Missouri Off-Topic and asked if anyone had one they could loan or rent for the week. That is when the great nature of Crappie.com came out. Slab, Hooking-n-Cookin, LSLAngler, and others offered everything from gps’s to shirts to a bed to sleep in when I was in their area. Outstanding community we have in this forum and that goes double for Missourians.
For the sake of being brief, I’ll go through some highs andlows of the days of paddling down the Mighty MO.Day 1. 7am start atthe confluence of the Kaw and Missouri Rivers. The gun goes off and away we go. I’m still in the downtown KC area and everything in my body already hurts. Maybe this is from stress or only sleeping 2 hours from things running through my head, but if something could have hurt or been wrong, it was. My mind is in a panic thinking there is no way I will endure this, we are just starting, what am I going to feel like by midnight or later tonight in Miami over 100 miles downstream.
Just as soon as the hurt started I found my flow and things, including my mind, started calming down. I made the first check point in Lexington, 50 miles down, around 2:30pm with 2.5 hours before the cut off. That had me happy. I was greeted by Jr andDeb (Hookin-n-Cooking) I spent a fewminutes there and launched on toward Waverly 23 miles down. Deadline there was 9pm and I pulled in around 7:30, grabbed some water and a hot dog from the boy scouts and took off again. The body is feeling great. The third check point was Miami another 32miles down. It got dark shortly after leaving Waverly so this is my first time paddling at night much less on the Mighty MO at night. They schedule this race during a full moon phase so that aided in navigation as well as the string of lights from the boats ahead of you. Miami came into view at 12:30 am Wednesday morning, 107 miles down,exhausted.