July 1st, Day 17. A harder day, I woke up with a headache and just feeling like I’d been run over. Not really sure why, I hadn’t done anything differently except now I think it’s because I need to be drinking much more water than I am, and that my food is not giving me much energy. It’s easy for me to get dehydrated because I don’t want to stop during the day to pee and then if I don’t drink a bunch before it’s too late in the night (making me have to pee in the night) then I am drinking maybe a litre in a day, where I need two. Oh the luxury for a guy to be able to pee sitting in the boat, I wish. I can’t even use a she wee because I’ve got the butt zipper, which I love it means I don’t have to take my spray deck and pfd and dry suit off/over my head when I pee on land but it just means I have to stop more than I’d like. Minor complaints but that’s why I’m not drinking water.
Plus sometimes it’s a long stretch before I can actually land and the thought of peeing my dry suit just sounds so awful. Then on the other hand, I’m trying to fuel my body off of ramen noodles and dinners that just take boiling water to “cook” rice or noodles. Which I can absolutely do on a shorter trip, but this is not the same. Not good. Paddled past the old ship wreck called Samson that was a British crane barge that ran aground in 1987 at the cliff. So I was floating and paddling over a sunken ship. Spooky. Got into Caliso Bay near Youghal, on a short day because I just felt so exhausted. I got my stuff up into a bit of an overhang and just laid down for quite a while. Today is the day where I’m thinking “this is hard, my food is gross, my body hurts, I’m out of toilet paper so I hope I don’t need it, I wish I had some company” and all the rest of it. But that’s totally part of this. Sunset was really beautiful though, and I started to feel less headache and fatigue. Going to sleep early to catch a low wind morning.
