Father-son duo completes grueling kayak journey down the Chesapeake Bay

By Stetson Miller

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    OCEAN CITY, Maryland (WJZ) — A father-son duo just completed a 200-mile journey down the Chesapeake Bay, all to raise money for a good cause.

Hearly Mayr and his son Andreas landed in Smith Island, Virginia on Friday.

“It was two weeks of a lot of grueling work,” Hearly Mayr said. “Long days and you know just facing a lot of challenges.”

They started back on July 16 up in Elkton and then went all the way down to the point where the bay meets the Atlantic Ocean over 15 days, stopping in different beaches and towns along the way

But it was a difficult feat for them to take on, getting stuck in storms while on the water and paddling for 15 to 20 hours a day.

“It was actually a bit more mentally exhausting,” Hearly Mayr said. “The physical part, you get used to it but every day, your mind wants to find a million ways for you not to continue.”

Andreas, 13, is now the youngest teen to paddle the entire length of the bay. But he spent some good quality with his dad while taking in all the natural beauty the waters around him had to offer

“Looking around we saw some dolphins, some bald eagles, saw a lot of jellyfish,” he said.

They made the trip to raise money for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency to get food to hungry families hit hard by the pandemic. They helped the group surpass its fundraising goal.

“We wanted to do this kind of to push this over the finish line, if you will, so we were really happy and just excited to hear that the campion reached its goal and surpassed it to $3.2 million,” Andreas said.

The pair is now recuperating with an Ocean City vacation, taking a well-deserved break from kayaking.

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