How do you plan and pack water/nutrition for a 20 mile+/4 hour+ solo paddle? My particular interest is on a prone board where space is limited and you lack a backpack style hydration system. This is something I deal with a lot as a prone paddler on the Gulf Coast of Florida

David, Gulf Coast, USA

Answer: Great question. Even if it is not hot outside, packing along enough nutrition and water for a 4 hour paddle is challenging for the prone paddler. Until Coastal Eddie comes out with a 4 pronged water bottle solution we have issues.

Staying on top of your nutrition will require at least 64 oz of fluid and 250 calories/hour. We will get to the hydration in a minute but bringing enough calories with you should be pretty easy. The key here is to use maltodextrin in your water bottles. Because of the size of the molecule you can add many more calories to the bottle than if you attempted this with a glucose or simple sugar based solution. If you try to just add more powder based on a simple sugar you run the risk of going to high with the osmotic load in your water bottle you will get GI upset and you can get dehydrated as fluid is sucked into your gut. For reference, A 6% solution of simple carbohydrate solution (glucose etc.) will have 100 calories while a 6% solution of maltodextrin will have 600 calories.  Follow the directions from your maltodextrin manufacturer but you should be able to easily get 150 calories into each 16 oz water bottle. That is 600 calories if you drink 4 x 16 ounce water bottles. All you will need to do to make up the additional four hundred calories is take along 4 gels and you are done.

NOTE if you are using Carbo-Pro or other straight maltodextrin source, you absolutely must add electrolytes (especially sodium).

The question then is how to find 64 ounces of fluid during your paddle. Here are some options:

• Some of the local paddlers use 24-30 oz. water bottles . If you do that, you can probably squeak by or just find one more bottle to get you through the paddle. Other paddlers use the normal cycling 16 oz bottles. If you do that you will need to find 2 more bottles along the way.
• You can zip tie a third water bottle across the top of your 2 water bottle cage setup
• You can duck tape two water bottles to the top of your board before and then stop and take them off and duck tape the empty ones back in front of the cages.
• Plan on stopping along the way. You can either paddle in if there is a store near the coast  or plant some water bottles on the beach or coast up the road
• Rendezvous  with a paddler friend along the way who will give you a bottle or two (e.g. find some people to support you along the way)
• Paddle with some SUP folks who can pack along an extra bottle in their packs

Roch and George