Paddle complete!

Well, he's done it! We're back home now, we "parked" the houseboat on Monday morning, and after a radio interview with ABC Shepparton at 7am in the morning.... and some more paddling Chris has now completed his PaddleForKidneys adventure! He claims he'll now take a short break from paddling.....
Chris' mum Anne came up to Echuca on Sunday, and had dinner with the crew and the paddler on our last night on the river. Handing the houseboat back was a bit sad, it has been a lovely week and good fun. Thanks so much to the "support crew"; Neville, Geraldine and Pat for all your efforts, together we have skippered the Mayflower (!), cooked and cleaned, and of course ensured the paddler kept paddling, sometimes by speeding up the houseboat and dangling some chocolate over the railing....

Below are some final photos.

Chris having a rest after a full day of paddling..... We woke him up for dinner....

Nev, in his role as assistant skipper, working hard!


Hege "skippering".... I make it look easy, right...? (It's because it is!)

Great shot of some kookaburras, they actually came on board and begged (and received) some food the night before, so they're waiting for breakfast here!

Geraldine inspecting some logs in the water, we were moored on this little "beach", and needed to plan how to back out and continue upstream....

This one was actually taken as we were setting out from Echuca, note the hats...!! (Skipper and Captain's husband...) Morten, if you're reading this, they finally got used, how good is that!

And that's all folks :-), Best regards, Chris & Hege

Re. Day 5 begins.....

Apologies for the messy post, can't seem to get the text to line up with the photos, and the actual blog content is after the photos, not before as i planned! Oh well, you'll figure it out I hope.... I did not start day 5 with a glass of wine, ok!! :-)
Hege

Day 5 begins...

Testing radio conditions of course..... and the skipper having a well deserved glass of wine after a hard day of skippering!

Chris hitching a ride.... actually waiting for lunch to be served!

And part of the support crew, Pat and Nev, out reconoitering the river.....

And the last photo... The lifevest is getting too small for Chris..!?

Day 5 is slowly beginning. We're having coffee - lots of it, & Chris is making porridge, he wakes up starving every morning, even after our rather big dinners...., so he must be expending some energy doing all this paddling! He's doing very well, we're all proud of his efforts.

We're slowly making our way back to Echuca now, estimating to be back there on Sunday night. Chris will paddle upstream on Monday as well, to ensure he makes up his target of 160km.

The support crew is having a wonderful time on the houseboat, the weather is being kind, we're on the top deck sunning ourselves as the kookaburras are laughing at us as we're passing by. Hege has just gotten the hang of manoeuvring the houseboat... just in time for handing it back in!! Updates on the day will follow later, for now, here are some photos.....

Some photos!!!

The paddler..... into the morning mist, paddling, having a rest, and entertaining his cormorant audience....

Day 4 - Update at last!

Finally, we get some internet connection. Day 4 of the paddle. Hard work but lots of fun. Started the upstream leg of the trip today and its suprisingly harder to paddle uphill. Weather very kind to us so far. Thanks to eveyone for you support so far - will check in again later on. /Chris and crew.

A trip to the Murray

On the 6th and 7th of Feb Hege, the dogs and I had a great weekend camping alongside the Murray River, and I took the opportunity to do a few hours paddling. It was a good chance to get a feel for the river currents and also the general surrounds. It's going to be a fantastic expereince to paddle down this great river.

We are looking forward to more training back down on Port Phillip Bay and then getting back to the river in 6 weeks or so.

More later.....

The training begins!

25 Jan 2010: This evening I took the new kayak out for its first paddle at Canadian Bay. It was a lot of fun and I was very pleased to paddle more or less for 25 minutes. A good start to the training... and the kayak is red, so it will be fast.

I will keep coming back here and updating status as I prepare for the main paddling event on 27 April.