24 Hour Adventure Race Part 2 - Rotoehu!

We soon realised this paddle was going to be tricky with a follwing/side-on wind and quite a slop. Trev was quite stressed as a result of his previous swim and that this was about his fifth time in a kayak. We separated a bit as we were tossed around across the lake but I was determined to stay with Trev. About 3/4 of the way across, out in the middle, he tipped and by the time he came up the wind had blown his kayak away from him. I managed to get to him and have him hold on to the back of my kayak and told him to not worry about his boat which began to drift away. I saw Barry paddling to shore (to get a boat to help I soon discovered and not fleeing in denial!) and I called/shouted/yelled at Lea to come over where I convinced her to raft up with me. As we achieved this the rubber bungy Trev was holding onto broke and we drifted away from him.

I broke up the raft and paddled back to a fading Trev anf got Lea to raft up again. Without knowing how long it would take to get a boat to us and seeing Trev in quite a distressed state with the cold fashioned a way of getting him onto the back of my boat. I needed to convince Lea that we would not tip in doing so and he managed to scramble up and lie across the back. We now just had to wait because we were going no where. Trev was freezing and all we could do was rub his hands to keep him warm. Just as we were contemplating trying to access Lea's drybag to get some warm clothes we saw the boat that Barry had got, after some convincing, approaching.

To our surprise he was just going to go on past and recue some who had washed ashore. We convinced himthat Trev needed saving and in a great piece of driving he got beside us in the swell and pulled Trev on to his boat.

It was now left to Lea and myself to cut across the wind and chop to get to shore safely, which we did after meeting up with Barry at the entrance to the bay.

This was a great example of the team sticking together and sticking it out.

I had a few tears of relief and tension escaping as I met our support crew. But they warmed us up, fed us and the mighty Trev, knowing his boat was still out there and having been through quite an event, climbed on to his mtb and we set off on the next stage of the great adventure.

At this stage we were very worried about the Lost Wanderers. But all ended OK, but their race was close to an end at this point. Destry, I want you to type up a report on your team and email it to me to include on the Blog.

More to come. Go the Possums!