I had about 1:20 and finished in 67:38. My partner who had more sleep and I saw some weird things the first two nights, but that section between Klondike and St. Chuck seemed downright menacing. I know I can attribute it to lack of sleep, being the end of the race, and lack of long range depth perception, but the last long wind in the face from the east seemed to add to the trees and surroundings ready to "come after us."

I was quite thrilled to see the Page Extension and was much better at that point.

Thanks for the post to let us know that what we felt was semi normal.

Reeves

We slept wed morning for around 20 min in the front of the boat and then again Wed afternoon for and hour at Katfish Katie's.  Traci, there were people in the trees after Jeff City, I saw them also and some really cool looking designs when the trains went through with their lights.  I laugh now because I really thought they were there for a while even when part of my brain was telling me it was not real but the other part was picking up cartoon characters.  No sleep can really effect the brains ability to process information and this race can challenge that.

At the start of the race I had a plan and a pace which I was planning on maintaining in order to finish the race in 59 hours.  With the water low and slow, I felt like 59 hours would be a good goal.

However, my plans went up in smoke quickly when I started racing people to Lexington. I went way over my planned pace.

By the time I hit Waverly I was feeling sick (I think from the heat and exhaustion) and I had to stop for awhile.

By the time I hit Miami I was really sick and nauseated with a pounding headache. I ended up sitting in Miami for two hours trying to pull myself together.

By the time I reached Glasgow, I was still nauseated and felt exhausted and ill. My head hurt too bad to sleep and when I was finally able to sleep my daughter told me that I had only slept for about an hour when I woke up. ... However, when I woke up my headache was gone and I felt much better and hungry. I ended up eating a huge meal before I left. By the time I left Glasgow (I think I was there for 4 or 5 hours) I was feeling 100% better and I told myself that the only way I was going to finish in 59 hours was to paddle non-stop without sleeping anymore. So, that was sort of my mind set when I left Glasgow.... That had definitely not been my original plan.

The hallucinations started several miles after I pulled out of Jeff City. I started seeing these large (8 or 10 feet in diameter) black glass cubes (or boxes) pop up out of the water. At first I thought it was amusing, like something out of a science fiction movie... but then, several miles down the river, past Chamois,  the water started moving in different directions all around me and watching it was making me dizzy. I had to stop paddling and focus my eyes only on the deck of my black boat multiple times to keep from losing my balance and falling over into the water..... 

The tree people, whom usually seem friendly and non-threatening, seemed to take on a more menacing appearance.  I started seeing buoys pop up several feet in front of my boat, and I would try hard to miss them, but as I was going past them they would vanish into thin air.
I also started hearing whispering voices in the wind.

After awhile I was feel intoxicated, like I had been drinking, and I started playing a game with the buoys, paddling as close to them as I could and trying to hit them with my paddle to see if they were real or imaginary. ..... Lets just say that I did hit a few with my paddle.   

This is the 5th year that I have done the 340 but this was the first time that anything like that has ever happened to me and I didn't like it at all.

By the time I left Hermann I was hearing voices in the wind telling me that I had better paddle faster because some unknown menace was behind me and it was gaining on me.  It was making me feel very paranoid.

What helped greatly was when I caught up to some other paddlers and I paddled with them for awhile and was talking with them.

However, by the time I reached Klondike I was paddling by myself again and the hallucinations started back up full force again.

Coming into St Charles, when I made that right turn, and you see the first bridge, triggered something in my head and I started seeing huge circus tents and huge circus flags shooting up out of the water around me....  Some people had a bon fire going, right past the bridge on the left, and I thought that was the finish line and I paddled up to them and was so happy and relieved that it was finally over, until my world came crashing down when they told me that they didn't know what I was talking about but that I must be confused...

     They had no idea how right they were... I can laugh about it now but at the time it was not funny at all.   

I was able to come into St Charles with a decent time of 62 hours (only 3 hours slower than what I had originally wanted),  but I never want to go through those hallucinations like that again.  .......
. 

Traci

Traci, sounds like you may have been dehydrated before your long stop. 

I think most folks would say that if you can finish an event in 48 hours or less you can probably do it on no sleep, and if you are really nodding off then just a combat nap.  Beyond that and most folks start to need some sleep. 

It also depends on one's goals.  If I wanted to enjoy the journey and was not concerned with where I placed I would sleep a few hours.

And especially for solo paddlers there is a real safety issue.  Most of us would have the good sense not to paddle while drunk, especially not alone, but as we have all experienced, sleep deprivation can impair your judgment and coordination just as much as alcohol. 

I handled the sleep dep better this year than I did in 2010 even though I finished much faster in 2010.  I think the biggest factor was getting a few hours sleep the night before this time, which is more than I got in 2010.  I did have some hallucinations, some quite persistent and based on . . . nothing.  But I don't recall any that were menacing.  I was in a boat full of friends, and I am sure that helped a lot.

Will

Depending on your frame of reference- The Doors or Alduous Huxley- it is entirely possible to "break on Through to the Other Side" in this race. I have done this twice- once during a vision quest with 4 full days of fasting, an evening of dancing, and then a sweat lodge- and once during the 340 while trying to survive the night with a broken rib. In a sweat lodge, being in another world is one thing- but on the river is an entirely different, and more dangerous, situation.
It is very common to hallucinate people along the bank. It makes you wonder about the stories of Naiads, Nymphs, mermaids etc. I actually enjoy these hallucinations as it is fun to watch that guy sitting on the bank, feet in the water, melt into a combo of stone, driftwood, etc as you approach. I like to "think" these are real river spirits who are bemusedly watching our progress. I sometimes compliment them on their appearance. (I once told one that it was a particularly realistic looking hallucination, only to have the guy say "what?"- being a real person.)
At night, trees can take on whole different aspects, and certainly a morning fog can have ominous shapes just downriver.
For me 40 hours seems to be the point when things start happening. In 2009 Di and I finished just after 40 hours and I had no hallucinations.
This year- having a slow finish I had plenty of time to enjoy hallucinations.
The trick is in knowing that they are hallucinations, and then going with the flow....
Chuck

Ok Traci, I feel really bad for paddling ahead just before Klondike.  Up until then you would drop back for a second thee get right back up with us.  I just figured you were eating or something.  If I had known you were that bad off I would have stayed with you.    

One thing this year really taught me is that staying with someone is almost always a better than paddling alone.  At least three times during the race, I hit my lowest of lows immediately after either paddling ahead of or falling behind a fellow paddler.  I honestly think that in a couple of spots, if I had taken a break and waited for someone I would have actually made better time overall. 

Isolation can be very demoralizing...

Joe is smart in that he "knows his limits" regarding sleep.  And a 3 hour rest for him makes him a better net paddler.  Some will need more and others less.  But the key is knowing when you should really lay the paddle down and let your brain put the card deck back in order. 

By that point in the race, REM sleep is only a blink away.  Everyone's different, but I've found that as little as 30 minutes can buy me several more hours of clear thinking.  That's because I'm dreaming the second I close my eyes until the moment I awake.  Very intense, realistic dreaming.  I'm sure it's more productive than the typical first 30 minutes I get at home on a normal schedule.  3 hours is exponentially better and I feel great if I get that.  But 30 minutes between phone calls is more realistic and seems to be a fair substitute that can get you by until the next opportunity.

Again, no two people have the same experience and it's something you just learn from doing.  We were lucky this year to have so many great sandbars and islands to crash on.  I'm hoping we have similar water levels in 2013.

Interesting article on sleep deprivation on rats. 

In today's excerpt - the effects of sleep deprivation:

"In the 1980s, researchers at the University of Chicago decided to find out what happens when an animal is deprived of sleep for a long period of time. In but one of the many odd tests you will find in the history of sleep research, these scientists forced rats to stay awake by placing them on a tiny platform suspended over cold water. The plat­form was balanced so that it would remain level only if a rat kept moving. If a rat fell asleep, it would tumble into the water and be forced to swim back to safety (or drown, an option that the researchers seemed strangely blase about). 
   
"Fast-forward to two weeks later. All of the rats were dead. This confused the researchers, though they had a few hints that something bad was going to happen. As the rats went longer and longer without sleep, their bodies began to self-destruct. They developed strange spots and festering sores that didn't heal, their fur started to fall out in large clumps, and they lost weight no matter how much food they ate. So the researchers decided to perform autopsies, and lo and behold they found nothing wrong with the animals' organs that would lead them to fail­ing so suddenly. This mystery gnawed at scientists so much that twenty years later, another team decided to do the exact same experiment, but with better instruments. This time, they thought, they will find out what happens inside of a rat's body during sleep deprivation that ultimately leads to its death. Again the rats stayed awake for more than two weeks, and again they died after developing gnarly sores. But just like their peers in Chicago years earlier, the research team could find no clear reason why the rats were keeling over. The lack of sleep itself looked to be the killer. The best guess was that staying awake for so long drained the animal's system and made it lose the ability to regulate its body temperature.   
   
"Humans who are kept awake for too long start to show some of the same signs as those hapless rats. ... Within the first twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation, the blood pressure starts to increase. Not long afterward, the metabolism levels go haywire, giving a person an uncontrollable craving for carbo­hydrates. The body temperature drops and the immune system gets weaker. If this goes on for too long, there is a good chance that the mind will turn against itself, making a person experi­ence visions and hear phantom sounds akin to a bad acid trip. At the same time, the ability to make simple decisions or recall obvious facts drops off severely. It is a bizarre downward spi­ral that is all the more peculiar because it can be stopped com­pletely, and all of its effects will vanish, simply by sleeping for a couple of hours."

Author: David K. Randall
Title: Dreamland Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Date: Copyright 2012 by David K. Randall
Pages: 20-22

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep
by David K. Randall by W. W. Norton & Company
Hardcover ~ Release Date: 2012-08-13[/pre]

I know this thread is old but it's awesome, thanks traci!

It makes me recall my experience last year. I had a total of about 4 hours sleep and finished in 58:21. From night two on I had odd things happen but it didn't seem odd at the time lol. I didn't really see tree people but I did see odd lights that still seem real to me. Once I thought I made a wrong turn and was on the wrong river because the river seemed really narrow.... And the last stretch from Klondike on seemed menacing like mentioned above. When I paddled the race for the rivers I couldn't believe how "normal" that stretch was. Lol!
I also dreamed EVERY night for three weeks after the race that I was somewhere in the middle of the pitch black river, alone, and didn't know where to go or if there was anything ahead of me. Not cool.
Some hallucinations are ok but there are some that I definitely don't look forward to.

And such a relaxing paddle across the bottom of Whitewater Bay at the end of that 39 hour stretch too, wasn't it? 

In your case, your long stretch was at the end of the race, so less impact on the overall outcome.

In the 2011 EC, Emily and I sailed and paddled for ~26 hours straight on the first (into second...) day, stopped for a couple hours at CP1, then sailed ~12 more hours to wrap up a 40 hour marathon.  We slept about 6 hours then continued on, however we never really recovered.  We made some mistakes and bad decisions which I'm sure were due to the long stretch of sleep deprivation.  We ended up with a DNF.

Since then, I have done two separate 24+ hour solo paddles, so I know I'm capable of paddling through the night.  I like your 40 hour --> rest --> finish plan; I was planning a similar strategy for the 340 this year.

BTW, If anyone wants some more overnight paddling fun on one Michigan's most beautiful rivers, come join me:
https://www.facebook.com/events/219596201565850/