'Sluice' Rodeo

Last weekend the biggest freestyle competition of the year, the Wavesport Sluice Rodeo, was scheduled to take place at, of course, Sluice. However a few days before hand the ESB said that they couldnt guarantee a release on the Liffey for the day so the whole event was shifted to Stackallen, a sweet little wave/hole on the Boyne. When everyone saw the feature I think everyones first thought was why did I travel for a competition on this, especially Claire O'Hara, Paul King, Sam Anderson and Kim Aldred, the crew that had travelled over from England especially for the competition! The wave was a lot better than it looked from the bank tho, since it had a shoulder on each side with a retentive foampile in the middle hole moves and wave moves were both possible on it.

We had a bit of a mission to get up to the competition in the first place, me and Neil got the bus up from Limerick at half 5 in the morning and then spent a few hours standing around on O'Connel bridge corner waiting for the Donegal legend that is Lee Doherty to find us and give us a lift out to the Boyne! Pretty much as soon as we got there we jumped on the water and spent the day on the water trying to figure out the spot.

 The competion itself went really well. The format with 15 minute heats and 5 people in each heat was great since it meant you could try any moves you wanted without worrying about flushing, and since only everyones 5 highest scoring moves counted people were really pushed to try to throw the biggest moves possible. Watching some of the English lads was something else. Watching Claire, current womens world champion, and Sam Anderson throwing moves like they were on a feature 5 times the size of Stackallen really showed that Irish freestyle paddling has a lot of catching up to do! Some of the Irish juniors are really coming on tho, Billy Brett especially seems to get better with every competition!  I was happy with how the competition went too, I managed to stick enough moves to get me into 3rd place behind Sam Anderson and Adrian Durrant. Just have to keep improving like that over the next few years and see how it goes!



Results:

Junior Men: 1st Billy Brett, 2nd Conor Macken, 3rd David McClune.

Junior Women: 1st Kim Aldred, 2nd Niamh Cleary, 3rd Caoimhe Farrel.

Senior Women: 1st Claire O'Hara, 2nd Aisling Griffin, 3rd Muireann Lynch.

Senior Men: 1st Sam Anderson, 2nd Adrian Durrant, 3rd Eoin Keyes.

C1: 1st Orky, 2nd Paul King, 3rd Kev McCabe.

Video from the day by Conor Macken:



A few pictures by outdoorcommunity.ie:

Surf Kayak and Waveski Irish Open

After one cancelled weekend in October due to the lack of surf, last weekend we finally managed to run off the Irish Open in brilliant surf on Easky Left in Sligo. We headed up on friday afternoon so that we'd have time to surf that evening When we got there the waves were big, choppy and onshore which would have been rubbish except for the fact that the wave faces were 3+ meters, which always seems to make things more fun! The few hours on the water that evening were great craic, especially cause its been so long since I was out in decent size surf. We spent the evening watching waveski videos and generally having the craic, and looking forward to the next morning since the forecast was sweet and only looking like improving as the day went on.

The next morning the surf had dropped, and the wind had died down and swung off shore, leaving us with perfect conditions for the competition. The surf was forecast to pick up in the afternoon and everyone was keen for a free surf so the comp was run off as quickly as possible. The first round of the waveski comp was first on the water, followed by HP, IC, waveski finals and then it was freesurf time. I was delighted with how the IC comp went, I eventually got the hang of surfing without fins again, got some sweet waves and ended up coming first! The HP didn't go so well and I only managed to come third behind Dessie and Gerry but sure theres always next year!

The full results from the comp are:
Waveski: 1st Marty McCann, 2nd Morgan O'Sullivan, 3rd Marc Taylor, 4th Dessie McGlinchy.

HP: 1st Gerry McGahey, 2nd Dessie McGlinchy, 3rd Eoin Keyes, 4th Anthony Coyne.

IC: 1st Eoin Keyes, 2nd Dessie McGlinchy, 3rd Anthony Coyne.

And a video from the waveski competition:


That afternoon we all headed out for a freesurf and, as promised, the surf kept building as the afternoon went on. I have no idea how big the sets were exactly since when they came along I wasn't hanging around to measure them but they were definatly something over 4 meters! Between difficult to make take offs and a few clean up sets that came through and caught everyone out of position there were a few heavy wipeouts had! The waves more than made up for it though and the afternoon was definatly the most fun I've had in a surf kayak in a long time! Unfortunatly no one got any video from the afternoon, the waves were breaking so far from the carpark that there was no chance of getting any decent footage with the cameras we had with us.

All these surf kayak events are open to anyone with a roll and theres a few club surf boats specifically for people to try out, if anyones interested in giving it a go then keep an eye on paddlesurf.ie for details about the next event and just show up or ask me for more info about getting started!