Critical Power at 34 kilometres

I haven’t quite decided whether activity tracking watches are a blessing or a curse. Thursday we went out for our LSD paddle (long, slow distance) with the aim of paddling about 10% further than we paddled last Thursday. Somewhere between 37 and 38 kilometres if you haven’t read that blog post. With northeasterly winds forecast, we went north. Past North Head and up the Murramarang Coast to North Durras where we had a five minute toilet and breakfast break.

But, we were only at 17 kilometres, not the 19 kilometres I had expected. Doug suggested we lap past the Tollgate Islands on the way back as that would add a few kilometres. At the Tollgate Islands my watch was still only reading 33 kilometres, so we really needed to paddle another 4 to 5 kilometres. Probably the distance back to our home bay, but, despite paddling out to the Tollgate Islands dozens of times, neither Doug nor I could remember the exact distance.

About two kilometres out of our home bay my watch vibrated – “critical power level saving data” – and turned itself off. When the manual warned that the watch battery may not last through longer activities, I didn’t expect death at 34 kilometres. I was prepared to paddle around to Snapper Island to get the right number of kilometres, but Doug’s GPS recorded just over 37 kilometres when we reached our beach and that seemed close enough to be good enough.  Conditions were easy with no wind to speak of and just a few lumpy spots around headlands so we were able to keep up a good pace the entire day and finished the paddle in 5.5 hours.