Professional Documents
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Newsletter 124 Summer 2009 02
Newsletter 124 Summer 2009 02
Downstream from Cricklade the Thames is still very much a river, rather than
the „navigation‟ it becomes around Lechlade. Very natural, very peaceful;
and unfortunately very rare in our part of the country. Our picture shows
Richard (as „ED‟) Williams and Rob (as „DREW‟) Norris paddling downstream
not far from the start. A full trip report can be read on pg.19.
Photo taken by Lee (as „LEWIS‟) Niven.
Thanks to John and Tim and all the team for their patience with me……….and I never
needed to do a self rescue nor even got my hair wet! The High Arctic here I come!
VACANCY
A position has become available within the club for a
coach of around L3 standard. The current incumbent has
decided to take up a job offer in New Zealand, and who
can blame him for that.
Applications for this unpaid but not unappreciated role will
be considered by the committee from any genial Scots
person (who can speak English) willing to enthuse the
current membership such that they might achieve what
they didn‟t think possible. An ability to quaff a pint and
have a stab at all things involving paddles (on the water)
will go a long way to acceptance.
Tom Westwater has not been with the club for very long
but many have benefitted from his skills and teaching in
the short time he has been with us. We saw quality – the
NHS saw a saving. Tom will probably be best
remembered for helping a no. of our members gain their
UKCC 3* WW award toward the end of last year. He also
came to the fore when we needed a stand in for a 1* coach.
„MCC has been THE best club I've ever paddled & coached for. The plus point is paddlers
for paddling and NOT internal club politics. The salubrious club house helps with this
matter. I really enjoyed being able to coach with an open minded club, not the old, "We
don't do it that way!" I really did learn so much from the MCC mindset. Thank you to
EVERYONE from MCC and if you're coming in my new direction come and paddle with
MCC NZ.’ Once again, many, many thanks and hope to see you on Wed 25th March.
Nottingham PADDLEFEST (stand alone entry – free) was put together by the same team
that put on CANOEXPO. There the similarity ends. For those that have not been to
Nottingham (the National Waterspouts Centre) I‟ll put you in the picture. It has a rowing
straight and a recently revamped whitewater course („looks good‟ says El Presidente even
though it was to cold for him to go on it). Using a natural drop in the adjacent River Trent it
looks the business. I‟m told it does what it‟s made for very well, however it‟s not an
exhibition centre. Under cover displays took on the appearance of a market stand, albeit
under a wobbly marquee. The Brookbank stand had all the appeal of a paddling
poundstretcher. But there were some good sounding lectures that I wanted to hear.
Richard Cree on packing a sea kayak had some very good tips. The RNLI followed this
with a general presentation that would have been more useful to me had I not just recently
Back to the display. Purchasing a sea kayak, delivered by a L5 coach from a new OBAN
based outlet. He knew his stuff, but it was pitched at the beginner and a little low to be of
much use to me. Rob went to the Student Rodeo which was so well run that he didn‟t
realise this was what he was looking at.
We both finished with „Riding the Celtic Tiderace‟ – a presentation by Patrick Winterton,
perhaps best known for coaching the delightful Kate Silverton in the BBC whitewater
programme of August 2007. This was about his ultimately ill fated attempt to paddle to the
Faroe Islands, starting from Wales and going around Ireland. Good slides and film clips
and an amiable chat were enjoyed by all who attended and both Rob & I thought this was
possibly the best part of the day. A big tent and line of cubicle dividers made it hard work
for all those delivering a lecture. The wind, threatening to bring the whole ensemble
crashing down made it worse.
You can tell I wasn‟t overly impressed, but there was some good here. For £5.00 you
could book a „wet‟ ticket and try out a wide selection of boats in a small lake. Canoes,
tourers, WW, and sea boats were all available and the OBAN people even put on a sea
kayak intro. on the Trent for those that wanted to try. I believe there was also an
opportunity to try the whitewater course in the morning as well – under supervision. And to
be fair my report would be a whole lot nicer had the wind dropped, the sun come out and
maybe it was a little warmer.
Would I go again? Unless there was something specific I wanted to see or do I‟d have to
think twice. I‟d happily pay a little extra for the facilities at CANOEXPO and I‟d probably go
to the Outdoor Show every few years. My suggestion would be to make PADDLEFEST
bigger and put it at Stoneleigh Park. My gut feeling, though, is that it will be a little while
before we find a canoe specific show again. I just hope I‟m wrong.
ADDENDUM
I was asked what I thought of the show by Peter M, a paddler I’ve met through the South
East Sea Kayakers group. Peter went to the show on the Sunday, when the weather was
much improved and booked a ‘wet’ ticket, enabling him to try out several boats. A
colleague of his tried a no. of Canadians and overall their experience seemed to be much
better than mine. The lake, whilst a little on the small side, offered the chance to test a
boat’s manoeuvrability around some left over slalom poles though flatwater left it to the
imagination as to whether the sea boats would perform the same on the salty stuff. Maybe
I will go next year, if it’s on again, just got to get the weather fixed first (and a ‘wet’ ticket).
As preparations for a major endurance race go, they don‟t get much weirder than ours.
We trained pretty hard right through the fiercest part of the winter, getting the hang of the
club‟s condor K2 the hard way, by capsizing repeatedly on days where splashes froze
instantly on our paddles and clothing, and you could have ice-skated on the lock cuts.
These unplanned swims resulted in ice cream headaches, lungs so constricted it felt like
you‟d had a good punch in the guts and paddles home shivering uncontrollably thinking
this was all a very bad idea. However, we were just starting to feel like we were getting
somewhere, when my job decided to send me away for the two months leading up to the
race. In that time, while everyone else on the DW was putting in four or five sessions a
week, my training consisted of thrashing a blow up dinghy up a whitewater river in New
Guinea, and one paddle in a dugout canoe 20 odd miles down the Amazon with pink river
dolphins playing alongside me. And that was it. I finished off my expeditions with a
scorching set of tropical diseases, and arrived back in the UK five days before the start
day with churning guts and ferocious jetlag. I have never been so badly prepared and so
scared before a race in my life.
The DW is a bit of an animal. We set off at 8:30am on Easter Saturday, having timed our
departure in the hope that we would arrive at the tidal part of the Thames some 20hours
later, just as the high tide was receding and would therefore speed our way to
Westminster. Get this wrong and you end up having to carry your boat through London
over your shoulders as some pals of ours did a few years back. It‟s an odd race in this
respect; there‟s no massed start, no hordes of people together at the beginning or indeed
anywhere else on the race. In fact for the most part we cruised through the Home Counties
and Thames Valley towns with their inhabitants totally oblivious to our passing. It‟s not a
race you do for glory, but for smug self-satisfaction! Our self-satisfaction was however
marred right from the start when congratulations came over the tannoy for Len Funnell and
Nick Courtaux of Marlow Canoe club who had raised over £17,000 for charity doing the
race. Stuart and I (having raised precisely nought pence) slunk away quietly onto the
Avon, feeling unworthy, sheepish and a little bit sick.
The first fourteen miles of the race is just an „orrible slog. Throughout the DW you have to
portage 77 locks, and they become like a shining beacon ahead – a chance to break up
the race into achievable portions, and an opportunity to put down the paddle and drop the
shoulders for a few precious minutes. On this first section there are no locks at all. It‟s
Big events like this are all about small victories. No one is capable of saying to
themselves; „right, 125 miles to go, let‟s rock!‟ You have to break it down, boost your
spirits at every turn, and keep resetting the clocks. For us, we did this by overtaking
people between locks (they‟d go past us again straight away as we took fifteen minutes to
neck a Cuppa Soup – but then I guess we got to overtake them again on the next stretch).
We also had a guardian angel bringing a boost to morale in the dead of night. Andy
Cooke from the canoe club had offered to keep with us through the night; an offer we‟d not
set much store in, as he was also supporting the other Marlow crews and we were all
stretched out through the field. However, every selected stop we‟d roll in, and Andy would
be there shouting us in to the correct portage point and with exact instructions as to how to
proceed. As we funnelled cake and hot tea down shivering gullets, he‟d chivvy us along
by telling us how he‟d got through the entire race (in 19hours!) with just one kit change and
food stop. What a remarkable dude! After hours and miles of panic and hopeless
disorganisation, it was as if Obi Wan Kenobi had appeared at the lock side in the early
hours to bring us DW wisdom. Chastened and encouraged we stopped being such utter
jessies and got back in the boat for the final hard yards.
Andy set us on our way at Teddington and the tidal Thames around two hours behind
schedule, but with spirits passably high. We were going to finish, it was just a case of
when. However, the tidal Thames is not to be taken lightly. We‟d missed the main flow of
the tides, and it actually didn‟t seem to be running at all. That last 17 miles may as well
have been a thousand. It‟s another yomp with no locks, turbulent waters, and speedboats
creating huge washes that threaten to overturn you several minutes cold swim from either
bank. We pulled in to Putney Bridge where my mum and dad were waiting, and appeared
to them as phantoms, walking like our bones had dissolved, just wanting it all to be over.
Mum applied cold spray to Stuart‟s agonised backside (she swears she didn‟t look) and I
The last six miles was probably our strongest paddle of the whole race. We didn‟t rest
once and did it in well under an hour, scorching past Battersea power station and other
London landmarks we really couldn‟t have cared less about, yelling at the speedboats who
seemed to be deliberately trying to capsize us with their wash. Three miles to go, two,
one, and then there it was, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. In a cruel twist of fate,
this last mile was the most difficult of the whole race, churned up and unpredictable. It
flushed more than one fatigued set of finishers, but not us. We pulled up to the steps at
the embankment, elated, exhausted, and more than anything relieved that the evil
nastiness was over and would never have to be repeated.
And there was Andy, waiting with warm clothes and a camera to preserve the moment for
posterity. God bless him. 25 hours and 50 minutes was way more than we hoped to finish
in but probably about what we deserved. We were well behind Pete and Rich of Marlow
CC who managed a credible 23.25, but a lot faster than the slowest finishers who took
over 50 hours. It makes me feel ill just thinking about it.
Both Crews booked into a bed and breakfast close to the start at Devizes.
Len and Nick started at the earliest time of 7am and Rob and Simon opted for an 8.20am
start. Timings are important to ensure you arrive at the tidal section of the Thames when
the tide is going out. If the tide has turned when you get to Teddington you have to wait
for the next tide.
The boat is taken into the Marshall's area and a kit check is carried out before going to get
your race number sticker for the boat and both crew members getting crimped wrist tags.
We were ready to go at 7.45 in the marshalling area waiting to get in at 8.15am. James
Cracknell was there with a film crew and we were looking to see the type of boat he had
mastered. We also saw Owen Peake, the favourite to win the race. At the speed he
paddled, I reckoned he would not be getting in until 1pm or 2pm.
We got away at 8.16am. We were apprehensive about what lay ahead but glad to get
underway after all the training and preparation.
The Pound was first. Fourteen miles of nothing. After about 10 miles we had to stop for a
wee. I'm told real racers do it in their boats .... No Way!! James Cracknell went past us at
this point and we heard "They have got a speedcoach - I could have brought mine", before
he was gone. The Speedcoach is a speedometer that has a tiny impeller stuck to the
bottom of the hull to measure the speed of the boat through the water. By keeping the
speed of the boat at 5mph we were at a good cruising speed without burning ourselves
out. The second piece of technology we were using was my Blackberry. This was on my
back in a clear waterproof wallet with line of sight to GPS Satellites. Our support crew
could log on to Google Latitude with a laptop or another Blackberry and get a real time
position for us with an accuracy of about 50m.
On the river section we had planned for 1mph of flow and as there was very little flow our
times started to drop off steadily. Also we were walking at the locks in the dark. It was
fine to Cookham Lock at the 75 mile stage and then we started dropping back substantially
from our planned times. We first started to feel tired at Old Windsor Lock at the 87 mile
stage.
For the three miles between Sunbury and Molesey and then the 5 miles from Molesey to
Teddington we had to dig deep. We comforted ourselves that once at Teddington we
would float down to Westminster on the tidal flow.
At Teddington we were shattered. We should have stopped and had a substantial meal to
prepare us for the final 17 miles, but we didn't. The Marshalls took the mickey out of our
clothes - "matching colour co-ordinated gear guys - very nice". All in orange we were
getting known as the "Tango Boat" and the "Happy Crew" as we had been smiling nearly
all the way earlier in the day.
Our support crew knew we were pooped at Teddington so they sweetly encouraged us by
shouting "Death or Glory" at us as we joined the tidal section.
This is where the mental game began. Think of 17 miles and you cannot do it. Think of 3
miles to the next bridge and you might just do it. We got to Putney Bridge, 6 miles to go
and our support crew were cheering from the bridge. I was at my absolute lowest. No
energy whatsoever and I had no idea how we could cover the next 6 miles. We had
stopped drinking so we didn't have to stop on the tideway for a wee. Once I took a big
slug of the energy drink I felt better within a couple of minutes. I told Rob we had to drink
and he told me that we should enjoy the scenery because it would take our mind off things
When we saw the bridge, we couldn't believe that we had made it. Devizes the previous
morning and now Westminster. The Childhood Eye Cancer Trust banner was hanging
from the bridge and we had a fantastic welcome as we arrived.
We were helped out of the boat at the bottom of the steps in front of County Hall. Our
medals were presented to us at the top and we were welcomed by our supporters.
Nick and Len were behind schedule and stepped up the pace on the last few legs to
Teddington and made it to the tide window with only minutes to spare. The tide was
coming in as they approached Westminster making their final leg even tougher. A
magnificent effort in a boat 7kg heavier and slower than ours.
A big thank you to the support crews. You cannot complete this race without very good
support and you did a fantastic job..... all through the night.
Finally, thanks to each and every one of you who sponsored us to raise funds. During the
times when we were at our lowest it was the thought of letting you down that drove us on.
A glance at the Charity logo on the boat and then thinking of all those who had faith in us
finishing the race reminded us we had to finish.
Following John‟s enthusiasm for sea kayaking I decided to try the same course he
attended and wrote about last year. The coach was the same, John Domeny and very
good. The other attendees, Andre, a big bearded South African from Kent, who paddles
around the Thames estuary on a sit on top although he had been in “proper boats” before
but wanted to learn more. The other three lads originated from the West Midlands had
paddled Bala lake and similar. So unfortunately there was a shortage of basic skills to start
with (not a star amongst them) which took time out of the schedule to redress.
Day one, sunny blue sky, glassy Menai Straights, select boats, sitting on the grass the
Capello fitted me best, all sorted and up to North West Anglesey, Cymyran Bay, launch, 10
seconds before we had the first swimmer (“these kayaks are more tippy than my sit on
top”), first lesson in rescue, a sheltered cove and plenty of rock dodging as we moved
along the coast for manoeuvring skills. Into a calm sheltered inlet, second swimmer,
another lesson in rescue, so back to basics on skills. Later heading further North we
started to get used to the chop and wind, then a sun kissed inlet for a very late lunch. Then
straight across the large bay we had been paddling around, the wind in our faces and
plenty of chop “to keep us interested”. Making landfall again we nearly had another
swimmer due to shock as a black creature climbed onto the rocks, a diver! As we neared
home those who had never experienced a deep water rescue were put through there
paces (I rescued but thought it was a bit chilly for swimming).
Day two, another sunny blue sky, glassy Menai Straights, John said the wind forecast was
South East so we would go to the north side of Anglesey. (Andre passed on his sea kayak
and took a sit on top!) We arrived at Bulls Bay to find a north easterly blowing into the bay
This was a cracking week-end where we also covered tides, charts, etc; a great learning
experience. The weather was good, clothing wise no need for anything different than a
Sunday at Marlow in Spring. Everyone improved, no unscheduled swimmers on Sunday, I
only got my feet wet. I stayed overnight, coming back on Monday.
On Monday evening we travelled across to Glenmore Lodge. If you have not stayed at
Glenmore, I strongly recommend that you do, it is very well equipped and they have
everything you need from bath towels to cranked paddles to compasses. The
accommodation was hotel standard and everything was provided. Just as well since we
never got back early enough to go out on the town.
During the course we did:
Spey down to Knockandoo grade 2 – quite an easy section and we spend quite some time
working on skills and rescues
Perthshire Garry grade 2 (3) (4) (5) so more portaging, the grade 3 was runnable but only
one ran and one swam this because we were short of time (I‟m not saying the swim was
any quicker). This was a very good section for our poling since it had fairly shallow
sections but with plenty of flow, just the sort of this which warranted poling.
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