Message 1 in thread From: Wilko van den Bergh (wilko@stack.nl) Subject: On the Erft with a newbie (Trip Report, long!) Newsgroups: rec.boats.paddle View complete thread (8 articles) Date: 1998/04/20 Our canoeing club chairman, Ron, still hadn't paddled WW, although it wasn't his fault: a car crash, a cancelled trip, and two swims in cold water (upper thirties) in the first hundred meters (300 feet) or so of class III WW had prevented him from participating in a real river trip. Therefore we went to the Erft on sunday, with the rest of the board (the two of us :-) ) as his coaches. The Erft is a small stream, I would rate it as class I and maybe II at the "difficult" spots, with all the nice characteristics to be a great beginners river. There are surfing waves, a few small holes that are just sticky enough to learn in, and some small drops with a couple of waves. It also always has (warm) water, due to water being pumped up from the brown-coal mines further up-stream. All this is interspersed with stretches of a couple of hundred meters of slow flowing water between each "difficult" spot, i.e. ideal for the rescue of newbies. When we arrived, the sun was shining, there were only a few paddlers and everything looked great. While Steven drove the car to the put- out, I went over the eddy-in and -out technique, and had him ferry across the river. Because this was Ron's first time in his new boat (a Hurricane) on real flowing water, the look on his face was tell- tale: horror and concentration! After a while he started to get better, although it became pretty clear that he wasn't paying too much attention to tilting the boat when it was necessary... resulting in a couple of _very_ close calls. Steven showed up, and we explained to Ron what was behind the drop under the first bridge: a small hole on the left, and a very nice surfing wave on the right. I got down first, getting ready to rescue Ron if necessary. He came down all right, caught the eddy, and looked a little less scared already. We started him on the ferrying again, because there are a lot of waves of all sizes under the drop, easy to slowly improve the difficulty. While Steven and I took turns teaching and surfing in the wave under the bridge, we could see some German paddlers doing tricks in their small play boats. This was the first time in four years I saw Germans paddling Pyranha boats. They looked fairly new to me, and, as it turned out, had rather new paddlers as well: they were clearly still learning, although they managed to pull of some impressive moves at times. With some swimming in between :-) After a while more paddlers showed up, and we went further downstream to the second nice playspot: this is an artificial hole across the entire river: great to play hole-tag. I showed Ron how to get in and out, and told him to get in, while I would get in besides him to keep him up if things went wrong. After a few tries we got in, with Ron staying up fine by himself. He got out and we talked about some of the techniques like low and high bracing. A couple of Germans were playing there as well, with one of them in an RPM with a curved up nose (I've only seen pointed "flat" nosed- RPM's before (?)) doing flat spins and enders. Of course I had to try those as well, with a surprisingly nice back ender at the end (normally the hole isn't deep enough and I hit rock with my stern before I'm vertical). The girl in the Germans party decided to take a swim, so I helped get her boat out into the eddy. Ron was getting a little example of what could happen here... We told Ron that he should do one try by himself now, with me surfing close at the top of the hole, just in case. He did great! Although he was surfing backwards at one moment, and we thought he would undercut his stern to the other side (and inevitably bracing at the wrong side...), he didn't. After a while he wanted to get out, but he didn't think about tilting the boat enough, with a roll as the result... and he rolled back up!?!?!? We couldn't believe what we just wit- nessed: a newbie on his first river trip rolling up in a hole??? Okay, the undercurrent helped him, but still... We played some hole-tag with the Germans, with Steven or me being the last one in most of the time :-) One of the Germans got real fanatical at getting me out once, although he smiled all the time, he just couldn't get me out. I had to rescue him, after I had pushed him under me in the hole, he flipped, lost his paddle and was close to swimming, so I pulled him back up: the bozo was still grinning when I got him back up! That was a lot of fun! Ron was getting tired, so we decided to go downstream to teach him to eddy-in and out in a much stronger current. There is another thirty centimeter (1 foot) drop, with nice smooth waves, an ideal spot to learn to ferry and do back-enders. Ron still wasn't paying to much attention to tilting his boat enough when he got out of the eddy, so we figured he would learn it here... the hard way. Indeed he flipped at one of the first tries, but he remained calm, tried to roll on the upstream side and finally put one hand in the air. I caught him, but I was thinking about letting him swim: after all there was a lesson to be learned... The second time he tried, he lost his balance real quick, and we ended up pulling him up again. I wasn't going to do that, but he seemed to have taken along the wrong attitude from our pool-sessions. The third time, he clearly wasn't in control any more, and he flipped in one direction, was pulled up and pushed into an eddy, and immediatly flipped in the eddy again. I let him swim on purpose. Steven, (who has been paddling almost swimless last year!), decided to try to surf on the smooth wave, while I tried to do a back-ender on the wave behind him. He lost his balance, and was pushed of the wave at the moment I got under him. I tried to move away so I wouldn't spear him, but ended up hitting his boat, just once... but he flipped nonetheless. Wierd thing being, he didn't come up! I could see him calmly getting into the starting position to roll, but he didn't notice that he was lying sideways on the water, with only his head and right shoulder under water. Inevitably he missed his roll, and he ended up in the turbulence of a very strong eddy, with his boat turning violently in every direction. I was getting so close that I could grab his hand, but I heard "Plop, blup, blup!", as a sign that he had pulled the deck... We have made the bet that if one of my regular paddling buddies (Cornelis or Steven) has to swim, he pays the others a drink. Steven can hand-roll up, so why he missed this one is a mystery to me... I know quite a few people who wouldn't believe that Steven had taken a swim on the Erft! Unfortunately I had left my camera in the car :-( After this double swim we decided it to call it a day. Ron had greatly improved some of his skills, but he was getting too tired to pay attention any more, so we quickly paddled the last stretch to the put-out. Ron showed his clownish tricks once more, by throwing his paddle on the river bank before he had found a steady position to get out of his boat. I warned him not to do that, and told him I wouldn't help him if it went wrong. He said it was all right, he would make it, immediatly lost his balance, and ended up landing between the boat and the bank, with most of him under water :-) I couldn't have helped if i wanted to, because I was laughing so hard! It was a great day on the water, with me being the only one who still had dry ears. As we put it: If you haven't flipped, you haven't explored your limits. So it seems I haven't... but I sure had a lot of fun! -- Wilko van den Bergh Wilko@stack.nl Sociology Student at the Tilburg University, The Netherlands Whitewater Kayaker AD&D Dungeon Master Secretary of the Eindhoven Canoe Club "De Genneper Molen" -------------------------------------------------------------- No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. Charles Colton --------------------------------------------------------------