Introduction To White Water
1. River Lagan, 3rd March 2007
Photos: Pete Dew
Words: Malcolm Vincent
After the pool session in the morning, and a quick cup of coffee, we met up at Shaws Bridge for our first assault on white water - the River Lagan.
There was a very good ratio of more experienced to less experienced paddlers ...
More Experienced: Pete Dew, Roy Doherty, Chris Walsh and Dave Killen
Less Experienced: Malcolm Vincent, Philip Leith, Desi Law and Claire McHale
... so we (the less experienced) felt that we were in good hands!
The first item on the agenda was to check off everybodys equipment. A quick scrabble round for some buoyancy for one of the boats and we were off.
Desi had brought his own kayak (a lovely pink color), but instead chose to use one which Pete had brought as a spare - anyway it matched his paddle much better:
Dave took us shopping for a warm up (they keep the sugar very high up where he shops), but since another group had claimed the nice tarmac just above the jetty we had to use the grassy area under the trees which was more than a little muddy. Yuk.
Once we'd washed off our boots, we launched off the jetty and paddled off upstream to get the arms moving (and the torso rotating!).
The aim of the session was to cover breaking in and out, ferry gliding, ? and ?, so the first thing we did was to drift back down and practice some low brace turns into the eddies behind the pillars of the bridge. It quickly became apparent that some more pool practice on sweep strokes was required for four of us. I'll just have to tell myself "you CAN sweep and edge confidently without going over" at least 10 times every night before going to sleep. It seemed so simple ...
- Paddle through the current to the eddy
- Sweep
- Edge
- Brace
but somehow the paddle was on the wrong side when it came time to sweep, and the sweep terminated far too quickly because of the urgency of getting the brace in.
We put in a fair amount of practice:
- Low brace turns
- Paddling in a square
- Ferry gliding across the river
- Forwards and backwards paddling
Desi and I attempted (and made!) a couple of rolls, but it was impossible to stay down for too long ... the water was freezing cold.
So off we went to apply these skills to the rapids ...
2. River Lagan, 22nd April 2007
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