Yorkville man part of effort to set Mississippi River canoe speed record

Yorkville resident Wally Werderich has been competing in marathon canoe racing since he was a teenager.

So it only makes sense that Werderich would be part of an effort to paddle down the Mississippi as fast as possible.

Werderich and his three teammates left the Mississippi headwaters at Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota at 6 a.m. May 10 and are paddling 2,296 miles to Louisiana where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. The closest town is Venice, which is the last community down the Mississippi accessible by a car.

“I just really love canoeing and I love the competitive aspect of it.”

—  Wally Werderich

They are trying to break the current record of 17 days, 19 hours and 46 minutes, a record that was set in 2021. This is Werderich’s first attempt at breaking the record.

“I just really love canoeing and I love the competitive aspect of it,” said Werderich, who spoke as he was taking a break from paddling. “When I was a little boy, my mom had given me a ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ in 1978. And I always dreamed of trying to break a record. And the other thing I wanted to do was to paddle the entire length of the Mississippi River one day.”

To break the record, the team looks to complete the trip on May 26.

On Saturday, the team had paddled about 450 miles down the Mississippi River. The 50-year-old Werderich, who previously served on the Yorkville City Council, learned to canoe through the Boy Scouts when he was seven years old. He is an active member of the St. Charles Canoe Club.

Fortunately, the team has not encountered too much turbulent weather so far.

“The weather has been relatively conducive to us so far, knocking on wood,” Werderich said.

The trip has already taught him some things about the Mississippi River.

“It’s just a teeny river where it starts,” he said. “It twists and turns and then it goes into some marsh land and some swamp land where it starts to get a little bit bigger, but no wider than a two lane road. And then in the headwaters it goes through relatively large lakes. One of the three lakes is a very, very big lake. It’s called Lake Winnibigoshish. That’s probably one of the most dangerous parts of the Mississippi River, the reason being is that when you’re crossing the lake, the potential for weather to get really bad is high. And you’re very far away from the shore so if anything were to happen, it could be catastrophic.”

In order to keep on schedule, Werderich and his teammates eat, sleep and yes, do their business, on the canoe.

“Our goal is to keep the canoe moving the whole time right down the Mississippi River,” he said. “There’s four guys in the boat and three of them are paddling right now. And we go through a rest schedule so we get some time to rest.”

The trip has been physically and mentally exhausting.

“In the last 48 hours, I’ve probably had about five hours of sleep,” Werderich said. “I’m literally sitting in the bottom of the canoe right now in a sleeping bag. It’s a 23 foot long canoe. There’s four seats in the canoe and two of the four seats we can take out so paddlers can sleep in the boat. We rotate through with two people sleeping, sometimes with one person sleeping or just resting to give your body a break.”

To see live footage of Werderich and his fellow paddlers on their journey, go to mississippispeedrecord.com.