MisterMoon wrote:
We'll be doing an expedtion trip in my TI starting on Sunday, April 22. Me and a friend are racing in the LRR Challenge down the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia to Edisto Beach, SC. This is roughly a 230 mile event with three checkpoints. We start in Augusta at 800am on Sunday and go about 10 miles to the first CP at Augusta Lock and Dam. There is a rather lengthy portage there (we'll have our shore crew there with the trailer to help, allowed by the rules). The second CP is about 160 statute miles downriver at Millstone Landing, SC. This is just above where the river starts to get affected by tides. The third CP (not on the website yet) is at Port Royal, SC on the ICW, and the finish is at Edisto Watersports on Edisto Beach, SC. We have until Sunday, April 29 at 1pm to complete the course.
Course Map
Lowcountry River Rats, the organizers of the event, require satellite tracking for all competitors but don't have a public tracking page. For those who want to follow along with us, you can access my Spot shared page.
We aren't planning to push it too hard in this event and plan to sleep every night. My goal is ~50 miles per day on average and finish by Thursday or Friday.
I did a test run on the middle part of the Savannah river in February and found it to be wide and deep, perfect for a TI. It's sailable for sure. We did find a lot of big alligators, which will make selecting campsites interesting. A lot of the nice sandy spots where one might select to camp seemed to have gators on them already.
The weather for the first couple days isn't looking very promising, with strong E winds 10-20 mph, cool temps, and steady rain. This means headwinds on the river. W're going to have to experiment to see if it's faster to drop the rig and gut it out while pedaling or if short tacking upwind is worth it.
I don't expect much cellular access on a lot of the river, so I probably won't be able to update on this forum during the event. I'll try to write something at the end, though.
If my buddy likes this kind of racing, we'll team up again for the Everglades Challenge in 2019.
Course Map
Lowcountry River Rats, the organizers of the event, require satellite tracking for all competitors but don't have a public tracking page. For those who want to follow along with us, you can access my Spot shared page.
We aren't planning to push it too hard in this event and plan to sleep every night. My goal is ~50 miles per day on average and finish by Thursday or Friday.
I did a test run on the middle part of the Savannah river in February and found it to be wide and deep, perfect for a TI. It's sailable for sure. We did find a lot of big alligators, which will make selecting campsites interesting. A lot of the nice sandy spots where one might select to camp seemed to have gators on them already.
The weather for the first couple days isn't looking very promising, with strong E winds 10-20 mph, cool temps, and steady rain. This means headwinds on the river. W're going to have to experiment to see if it's faster to drop the rig and gut it out while pedaling or if short tacking upwind is worth it.
I don't expect much cellular access on a lot of the river, so I probably won't be able to update on this forum during the event. I'll try to write something at the end, though.
If my buddy likes this kind of racing, we'll team up again for the Everglades Challenge in 2019.
Just got home from the race. Good times. We finished the 246 mile course in 4 days 3 hours and 40 minutes, averaging about 12 hours on the water each day. We had a few issues with pouring rain, a bent drive, a damaged rudder, a lost knife and my trusty old Garmin GPSmap 76 is out there swimming in the ICW, but we had a great time anyway. Best day was sailing down through the port of Savannah and up to Port Royal, SC, a distance of about 60 miles.
Here's some video (if I can get it to work)
Monday morning: https://www.facebook.com/john.bell.acworth/videos/10156390127233809/
Monday afternoon: https://www.facebook.com/john.bell.acworth/videos/10156390128283809/
Wednesday afternoon after I dropped the GPS overboard: https://www.facebook.com/john.bell.acworth/videos/10156390128283809/
Crossing the finish line in Edisto Beach
