Day 30: That sinking feeling

Veliko Gradiste to Donji Milanovac (71km kayaking, 1km swimming)

In normal circumstances, kayaking into Donji Milanovac would probably be quite pleasant. However, swimming to shore, dragging a kayak that is full of water, in the dark and rain are not normal conditions. This is how I arrived, but before we get there, we have a full day of misery to get through.

I was on the river early and eager to get going on what was to be a long day of kayaking. Immediately, the river widened and even the slim amount of current from yesterday had now dissipated. It was slow progress and after a couple of hours, I took a break from paddling and played around on my phone. I flicked onto my emails to find two emails from the owner of last night’s hotel. The first email was a kind one, noting that I had departed without paying, the second was a warning email explaining that if I didn’t return, then she would call the police. I honestly assumed that the money for the hotel had been directly taken from my card, as a result I had left without a trace. She didn’t know that I was kayaking, so there was no real danger in her threat to call the police, but I did feel bad, so I replied and asked if there was any other way I could pay. She said that I could pay using PayPal. This required me to set up an account, verify my identity, put money into my account and transfer it to her, all whilst floating down the river. Eventually I managed to pay, but this episode had taken a long time and I was now well behind schedule.

After this, and just before lunch, the river widened even further to probably its widest distance yet, at least 5km wide. As it did so, the wind began to pick up, creating sizeable waves that I hadn’t encountered so far. It was a horrible stretch of kayaking, the waves were throwing me all over the place and the water, which was filthy, was occasionally coming into the boat. Eventually I reached the end of the wide expanse and the river rapidly converged. Exhausted and fed up, I stopped for lunch. Lunch was an uninspiring cheese wrap that did little to lift my spirits and I then continued on into the wind.

The next part of river took me throw high sided mountains, that on a nice day would probably be quite spectacular. Today however, the wind was now so strong, that I could do nothing but keep plodding along. The kilometres passed and soon I was reaching my destination. I came round a corner and in the far off distance, I could see the mountain side covered in the town of Donji Milanovac. Distances on the river can be quite deceptive, I knew I still had about 10km and that it would be touch and go for me to arrive before sunset. I was going as fast as I could, but the wind was now making kayaking extremely difficult. For the majority of the final kilometres, the wind was coming from directly behind me, meaning that if I could keep the boat straight, I was effectively surfing down the river. Normally, I would’ve just sat back, ensured that the kayak was straight and let the river take me, but in this occasion, I was bitterly aware of the impending darkness, so I ploughed on.

The river had bent in a way that meant I was on the Romanian side, the wrong side. About two kilometres from the town, I decided that I best start heading across the river. It was about 1km wide at this stage, but immediately I knew this crossing could be treacherous. The waves that were previously behind me, were now coming directly from the side and growing angrier every minute. I got about half way across when the first large wave threw a decent amount of water into the boat, I continued on. This happened a few times more, the kayak now half filled with water. I was edging towards the bank, but the majority of my energy was now spent trying not to capsize. I was now sitting comfortable in water and I could feel that the kayak was significantly lower in the water. About 200m from shore, the kayak became so full of water and so low in the water, that any wave, no matter the size, was now bringing in more water. I quickly decided that I needed to remove the heaviest thing from the boat before it sank, me. I jumped out, almost tipping the kayak over in the process and began swimming to shore. Swimming actually proved to be much easier than kayaking had been, the waves were much smaller than what I had become accustomed to and the water was actually quite warm. It was now dark and just to compound the misery, it had started to rain. I finally reached the shore, but couldn’t find a suitable place to exit. Eventually I managed to haul myself out of the water, but there was no way that I would be able to get the kayak out, especially now that it was full of water. I looked around and saw a ramp about 100m away, that would do nicely. So I jumped back in and dragged the kayak over to the ramp, hauled it out of the water and used the last of my now severely diminished strength to tip it over and remove all the water.

I had a quick check to see if everything was ok, amazingly, it seemed that the only thing that got ruined was a disgusting packet of biscuits I’d be eating earlier and one of the stickers on the kayak had come off a bit. It was difficult to do a thorough check in the dark, so I will inspect the damages tomorrow. Now though, I trudged up the hill, squelching with every step, until finally reaching a hotel. The hotel was very average but I was mightily glad to be there. Over dinner, there was a power cut that sent the whole place into panic, I considered sneaking out without paying, but conscious of the punishment I received today for accidentally doing that this morning, I decided not to. An extremely tough day, even without the ridiculous conclusion, this would still have been the toughest day. Still, good to get some swimming practise in 🙂

NB: I heard recently on QI that when the Titanic started to sink, the staff on board had their wages immediately stopped as they were no longer sailing a ship. In the same vein, I have deducted 1km from today’s kayaking and awarded it to swimming instead.