• Activity: Canoeing
• Te Araroa kilometres done: on TA detour Canoeing Whanganui river.
• Official kms: 47km
• Garmin kms: 48.47km
• Total time: 7:14
• Calories burned: 2270
• Body battery: 8/10
• Accommodation: Tent at camp site
• Tent nights tally: 11

https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/walking-te-araroa-3000km-for-the-key-to-life

The canoe company turns up about 9.30am this morning, you would think that means a sleep in. No not for my body clock, alarm set for 7am, awake before 6am. As soon as it gets light I naturally wake.

The positive means I can just chill & have a few coffees.

Antonia & I started walking down to the boat ramp at just before 9am to wait for the Canoe company to turn up. We sat & watched some of the other Canoe companies give instructions to their clients before ours turned up & we got given our 4 x 30 litre & 1 x 60 litre drum to pack with all our food & gear.

Once this was done we loaded up the canoe, tied everything down, got signed off that we knew what we were doing & then took off down the river.

Big day today as the timing says 9 hours to our camp site & we didn’t start paddling to close to 11am.

Antonia & I started off ok, learned how to paddle together, how the Canoe manoeuvres & how to stay stable. Well it started off this way until about 12km where we hit some rapids, got spat out sideways, tried to re-enter but didn’t quite straighten up & boomfa next thing we knew, we were in the water floating down the rapids, holding on to our upturned Canoe & paddle. It took a good 10 minutes before we were able to make it to shore.

Once we reevaluated the situation, we realised my hat was gone, but also Antonia’s cell phone with her drivers license, credit cards & eftpos cards!

Everything else seemed ok though, we tipped the Canoe back over & started bailing water out, 2 passer bys in another Canoe came to our rescue & helped bailing & aided us back in until we could get to a gravel beach to re tie everything back in, have lunch & dry out.

The next 38km seem to go by without any other incidents, I think we have learnt our lesson & we are getting much better at it.

Not a lot of photos today (only GoPro ones) as my phone was in a waterproof drum.

We managed to get to camp just after 6pm, tie the Canoe up & carry our 5 drums & packs up 50 metres or so (2 trips) to the campsite.

Being wet & exhausted, we set up the tent, got changed, ate chips for dinner & here we are ready for bed.

Hope tomorrow we stay afloat, fingers crossed 🤞!