Kismet to Yarrawonga - Murray River

4 Day 95 klm Kayak from Kismet to Yarrawonga on the Murray River 

The trip team was Steven Masters , Martin Smith and myself.

The orginal plan had been for 5 days and finishing at the Mulawa club,  due to higher river flows and slightly longer paddling times, the speed of the trip was quickier than planned with the final day being called early due to conditions on the lake with wind picking up.

Camping was free camping on the river bank which worked well, night two's spot was a muddy bank though which detracted a bit , generally there are a number of sites you can use, and a lot of the sandy beaches are found on the inside turn of tigher bends, remebering the rules that you can not camp on the NSW side due to different ownership laws. (Victoria is crown land for generally the first 60 metres from the bank)

We used the Boiling Down creek as a shortcut on day 2 , this was a great diversion from a placid river paddle with restrictions and submerged obstacles , not a big issue given the river had plently of water and flow but might be a bit more difficult if river levels are down. 

Overall a very good trip , reasonably relaxing and enjoyable countryside to see.

The video of the Trip shows the main highlights.

Kismet Campsite for Launching , a very good park to consider.

Rowers bank - Cowara

Lunch break 

Camp night two. 

Camp night 3

Mulawa lake, a shallow lake with a lot of redgum tree trucks still in place, with a lot a water level or slightly below, this means that any wind creates waves with the shallow water (ave 3 mtrs) and the submerged tree trunks become very dangerous to Kayaks. The river winds substaintially with a lot of boat traffic so using the channels increases the distance substaintially along with the risk of high speed boats.

Equipment

The Kayak used was the Hurricane Skimmer 128,  

Given my tendancy to overpack , a lot of time was spent culling the equipment list and in the end review my thoughts are:

The skimmer is a good kayak and worked very well, allowing easy entry and exits and packed a lot of equipment and was reasonable to paddle, although a bit slower than the sit-in version used by the others.

However it was too much weight for easy travel over an extended period , with food and water becoming main weight components.water was 13 kg and food 6kg and a total weight nearing the capacity of 142kg for the Kayak.

A couple of learnings from this is : the lifestraw 3l water filter performed exceptionally well and replaced the need to have the entire water supply on board , reducing that 13kg to 3kg by end of day 2 as it was simply too easy to filter water from the river source each night for the next days need.

The meals on track packed for 3 meals by 5 days at an average of (4 packs per day @250grams ) meant food weight was higher, however the meals were a lot better than dehydrated food) replacing some of these with a lighter lunch meal, would balance the weight versus taste issue. I had packed some rice dishes from the Supermarket , which proved to be a better lunch than a full meal. but temps were in the mid 30c so that played a part.

The jet boil Minimo proved very valuable , being the wider version of the jet boils it fitted 3 packs of meals on track packs without any real issue and over the 4 days used only one canister of gas. 

Overall not much equipmnet wasnt used to some extent over the trip but some adjustments to reduce a bit of bulk like replacing the sleeping bag with a more compact version would help get it all into the forward hatch and a single rear bag , which is the aim for the next trip.