What to do?

Lots of discussion at the moment regarding whether to start early or start late and wait for the evening tide window. It seems that there will be a large number of crews (40) attempting to get away at 7am on Saturday, which could make the first pound quite bouncy and slow. Here's my thoughts;

Adam and I just want to finish so for us, an early start is a no-brainer (IMO  ;-)  It gives us 2 bites at the cherry in that if things start to turn to worms and for whatever reason we slow up and miss the early tide window then we will still have the 2 hour window later on in which we can finish the event. We are lucky in that we've got a lovely warm clubhouse where we can get changed and grab some kip if that does happen. Ok, we'll be last with a finish time of 30 plus hours but after retiring last year, this year it is all about the finish.

But of course, that isn't going to happen. We are going to absolutely nail it this year and that means that when we hit the tideway we will not have anywhere near the amount of river traffic on the tideway to contend with, which I think is another plus point.

If you go for the smaller 2 hour window later on sunday and miss it, for whatever reason, fatigue, injury etc, then that's it; game over. I would have thought that for experienced paddlers used to the event and confident in the pace that they can keep then that's not such a problem.

You need to work backwards. What do you realistically think your time will be, baring in mind that there is very little flow on the Thames at the moment and that's unlikely to change significantly between now and the race? Evening high tide is at 5pm therefore a 24hr ish schedule averging 5mph on both canal and river, you would be looking at starting at around 7.30pm therefore you would be doing the canal between 7.30pm and 6.30am then the river from 6.30ish to 5pm.

That means doing the canal in the dark (lots of portaging in the dark; seems like a recipe for disaster to me) and then doing the river in the day time (potentially a lot more river traffic to contend with particulalry if it's going to be fine weather)

I am sure that there are some advantages to starting later ,but I cannot think of many. Being able to travel down on the day / less people at the start?

Discuss.