Saved by local knowledge!

  The west coast of Ireland delivers the goods, if you know where to look! 

Photo by Paddlesurf

This weekend Paddlesurf Ireland ran the last event of their year, a competition, AGM and surf kayak skills assessment in Clare. We showed up at Spanish point on Saturday morning to find that the light offshore winds that had been forecast hadn't quite materialised; the wind was a fresh onshore, turning a potentially great wave into an extremily heavy close-out beach dump! It was also slightly chilly out, so we decided to retreat to the warmth and comfort of a coffee shop and hold the Paddlesurf Ireland AGM while we waited for the surf to improve! Since I'm not going to have any free time for helping out over the next few months and don't intend staying in Ireland after that, I decided to step down from the committee leaving Paddlesurf in the capable hands of Mick, Aisling, Richard and the rest of the committee.

After the AGM, if you looked really hard, closed one eye and squinted a little it looked like the surf had improved a bit. So we set up all the competition kit and got the show started. I was up in the first heat and found out pretty quickly that the conditions hadn't improved at all! It was one of the toughest paddle-outs we've had in competition, everyone took a few beatings from the set waves and there were quite a few swims. It would have been worth it if the waves were good but they really weren't! They were big and closed out as soon as you dropped in, which just resulted in more beatings! We held the two first round short boat heats and then paused the competition to come up with a new plan.

Thankfully, while we were getting beaten the tide was coming in, and thanks to some local knowlege we were able to move the whole circus to another break further down the coast which works well on a high tide, big swell and westerly wind. When we got there we were amazed to find a small, clean, punchy beach break with an offshore wind and perfect little close-out section for throwing air moves! It was one of the most fun waves I've ever surfed and everyone had a great time, flying along a super steep wall before aiming up to hit the lip! It was great for the beginners too, the predictable break and easy paddle out meant that everyone got loads of time on the wave, and people seemed to be paddling better and better throughout the day! Due to the coffee break in the morning and the time we lost moving locations in the middle of the day, it was nearly dark by the end of the waveski final and afterwards we stayed on the water until it got properly dark, playing chicken with a wall on the inside and the resulting rebound wave. In the end Richard won the longboat, with Aisling in second and Darragh third, Mick won the waveski, followed by Guillaume and me, and I won the short boat class, with Mick in second and Aisling in third. It's pretty unusual that I manage to push Mick into second place so happy days! 

As well as the top places tho, there were great performances all around. The amount that people have improved since Club Champs towards the start of the year is phenomenal, and great to see. Some people are improving too much;Bernard Walsh even had to be disqualified to keep him from upsetting the status quo! (ask him for the full story!) There were a few new faces too; Alison and Rowan both paddled really well, and are in a great position going into next year. Looking forward to next year, the main focus is going to be the Surf Kayak World Championships in Northern Spain in July. The selection for this team is wide open, in particular for womens and juniors places since there are very few of each competing at the moment! If anyone likes the sound of a surf kayaking holiday in Spain next summer then get your ass into a surf boat and figure out what this sport is all about! It's not unheard of to start surf kayaking the winter before a worlds and then go and get pretty respectable results, I did it the last time it was held in Europe! If you get onto Paddlesurf Ireland or post up on their facebook page they'll be more than happy to help people to get involved, and even have a bunch of boats and stuff  that people can have a go in if you can organise to hook up and go surfing with them sometime!

So that's about it; great crew, great surf, great craic, and the possibility of going to a world championships for anyone who gets involved in the next few months. Now get out there and find some waves, we're in swell season in one of the best areas for surf in the world, and the water is far warmer than the rivers. You don't want to miss out on that!

 

Congratulations and thank you to Aisling, Mick and Richard for putting together another year of great events. A hell of a lot of work goes in behind the scenes to keep it all going!

Photo by Paddlesurf

Best Event of the Year?

So the whitewater season has kicked off with an almighty bang with Cranafest, up in deepest darkest Donegal! What makes this event great is that it caters for everybody, regardless of experience or ability.  With beginner, intermediate and advanced competitions in boaterX, freestyle and slalom and a huge variety of coaching sessions from some of the best instructors in the country, everybody is guaranteed to have a brilliant weekend. This event has been going for a few years now and has been growing and growing, with the organisers always trying to go one better than the previous year. last year they introduced a raft race (which was a massive success; it wasn't until this year's event that some egos recovered from it!) and this year it was the Wavesport moonlight challenge, a night time time trial over the main drop on the river, the Claw.

 

This picture of Barry Loughnane sums up the weekend pretty well; good water levels, great crowds, nice weather and a great section of river...all in all a pretty epic weekend. Photo by Tom O'Donoghue.

The night time trial was brilliant craic. It was restricted to competitors in the expert boaterX but that was still 120 people, so it still took a few hours to run through everyone! There was a brilliant atmosphere at it, with everyone out having the craic and supporting each other. It was probably the shortest race we've ever had, times were around 25 seconds so every bit of the race was crucial, any kind of a stall on the start ramp or at the bottom of the claw and you would be finished! Lots and lots of big names came through and it was impossible to call who was ahead however right at the end Neil Slevin and Cian McNally hit lines that put everyone elses to shame and made everyone look pedestrian in comparison! In the end Cian won, with Shane Little in 2nd and Neil in 3rd. I felt like I had a pretty good run so I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the results!

I won't go into details about the rest of the weekend, but basically UL brought a caravan and 13 people, drove for 6 hours, went for pints, crashed at a GAA pitch, competed in freestyle, slalom, the Dagger Dash and Wavesport timetrial, partied hard, raced in various boaterXs, went to a prize giving, collected a bunch of medals and drove 6 hours home. And then slept for about a week!

The lads had some great results, Jack won the mens sport freestyle and Jemma won the womens; and Sam came 2nd in the intermediate boaterX. Pretty respectable for their first kayaking event! I came 2nd in Div 1 slalom which I was very surprised at, and 2nd in the expert boaterX which is pretty sweet! As is always the case with boaterX luck played a pretty big part all day but hey, I'm not going to complain when it goes my way!

Drama towards the end of the expert boaterX final! Despite the rock Wongy managed to hold on and take the win. Photo by Tom O'Donoghue.

Liffey Descent & MPL

Just a super quick one since I'm under pressure with college work...last weekend the Liffey Descent took place, as I'm sure everyone reading this is aware! Great weather and great water levels on the day made for a great event, and all the usual faces were there so there was some good banter in the carpark before the race!

As my first year competing as a senior I decided to try to start with a bang. I took ULKC's Gola Sprint out on flatwater for 10 minutes a week before the race and since I didn't fall over I decided to do the race in it! I had great plans at the time to get out training a few times that week to get used to the boat but college got in the way of all that and I went into the race only having paddled the boat for those 10 minutes a week before! It all got off to a less than spectacular start when I fell over while waiting for our class to be allowed down to the start line! Thankfully I was able to grab Jack's boat and T-rescue and save myself from swimming but it was a bad sign for the rest of the race!

I wobbled my way down the river and it was all going relatively well until we reached Lucan. Myself, Kev Cahill and another lad were pretty much neck and neck all the way and the pace we were setting was pretty tough! At Lucan however, everything literally fell apart! I made a mess of the line on the high drop, and didn't turn the boat sideways enough. The boat bridged at the bottom of the weir and folded in half, putting one massive crack across the hull and matching one in the deck. My first instinct was to hop out and call it quits but since the boat didn't instantly sink I decided to keep going and see how it went. The next few weirs were a bit interesting with the boat half full of water and I had to empty the boat three times between Lucan and the finish line.

With all this emptying I obviously lost the two lads, but thankfully the three of us had buit up such a big lead over the rest of the field that I was just able to hold onto 3rd! Not a bad result at the end of the day, and hopefully I can come back next year and go one or two better!

This weekend the first night of this season's Munster polo league was held at UL Arena pool. With teams entered from Galway, Dublin, Cork, Kilkenny and of course Limerick it looks like it's going to be a good competition! The Div B matches were played and ULKC was represented by a team of extremily enthusiastic and talented first years who just started kayaking a few weeks ago! They tore the place up and are now sitting in first place in the league on goal difference! Already they're moving and passing like a proper polo team so it's going to be great to see how they're doing by the end of the season!

In Div A, we achieved the remarkable feat of carrying on our 100% record from last season of loosing every game! In a tight game against Misfits, what was almost a 3-3 draw became a 4-3 loss after a last ditch shot and some shoddy refereeing that resulted in us thinking the game was over before the ball was thrown. In our other match against Kamakazi, we were comprehensively thrashed, showing that some serious training is needed before the next night of competition!

Looking forward to next weekend, Crana fest is coming up and that promises to be one of the events of the year with competitions in just about every discipline imaginable! We've got a big crew going up from UL so it's going to be an awesome weekend! Before then, I'd better get a bit of study done, 4th year of Engeering really isn't designed to let you go away kayaking every weekend! 

Surf Kayak Irish Open

As if to make up for the unbelievable conditions we got for the open last year, this time the ocean gods held back and gave us waves at the opposite end of the spectrum. After arriving at Easky early on Saturday morning to find it choppy and without a wave to be seen, we moved to a beach up the coast that promised contestable conditions. Tra Bui gave us maybe 3ft waves for the day, surfable but certainly not epic.

Awesome surf at the Irish Open last year, photo by Darren Clarke.

Around 40 people made the trip to Sligo, the biggest entry we've had in years. The standard was pretty unbelievable as well, a lot of the Irish paddlers have improved since last year and Chris, Tim and Cheesy of Ride kayaks came over from the UK to lift the standard up another notch.

Chris, making bad surf look awesome! Photo by Cheesy.

The number of competitors meant there were lots of rounds to get through before finals, which was probably a good thing. I started off badly by getting knocked into the reperchage or backdoor in both long and short boat, which is unsurprising since I have only been surf kayaking occasionally in the past year. That meant that I had lots of heats to get the feel for the boats again and I eventually made it into the semi-finals in both divisions. Unfortunatly no podium finishes this year but what can you do.

In the end Tim won the short boat, with Chris in second and they swapped places in the long boat. Third places went to Mike in the short boat and Dessie in the long boat. First place in the ski went to Marty McCann, with Kieran Davies and Mike Barry in second and third.

Mike Barry, ripping in the new Ride Zenith.

After a sunset prize giving ceremony we grabbed pizzas and beer and went to chill out for the evening. When the pub closed we took advantage of the late bar that was being provided at a wedding in the local hotel! After getting back to the house far later than we had originally planned, we grabbed a few hours sleep, hoping that conditions would change and give us nice surf in the morning.

 

Mike and Ais looking happy with how the weekend went! Huge thanks to the two of them for organising!

In the end conditions did improve a bit; the wind died down, the sun came out and the waves improved slightly, giving us a nice morning of relaxed freesurfing before starting on the drive home. All in all it was a great weekend of chilling out and having the craic with lots of cool people, with some friendly competition thrown in. Huge thanks to Mike Barry and Aisling Griffin, none of it would have happened without them! Hopefully see you there next year!

Winter is Coming!

Back at ULKC HQ the time has come to wind down from the summer and start preparing for the next few months. We are in the middle of getting everything ready for the huge influx of enthusiastic beginners that we get at the start of every September, planning pool sessions, organising weekend trips and generally trying to make things as fun as possible for everyone. Nearly all of our existing members are back from their travels to various parts of the world so in the meantime there are lots of people to catch up with and entertaining stories to listen to.

Of course kayaking has to be done too, the surf has finally picked up so yesterday we started off by heading to Spanish Point for some freestyle and surf kayaking, then we met up with the guys who are on work placement and did an evening run on Castleconnel. For the craic, we decided to do a retro trip. Squirt boats, dancers, and ancient club kit were the order of the day, which resulted in me being vertically pinned in a squirt boat while Gav got horizontally pinned behind me in a Dancer. Fortunatly we both escaped in one piece, and it was all captured on video, which of course is the most important thing! After that excitement it was time to head to the pool for our first pool session of the year, to see how much the flatwater freestyle skills had deteriorated over the summer. All in all, not a bad days paddling!

The Clubs & Societies set up here in UL is pretty unbelievable. There are over 70 to choose from, and the bigger, better organised ones are extrordinarily well equipped and funded. This means that while in UL students can try sports that they would never get the opportunity to try otherwise, and especially not without paying far higher prices somewhere else. I spent the last week camping in Kerry with the windsurfing club, fishing, surfing, windsurfing and generally having the craic. Over the last year or two the whole set-up has gone through a very American style branding and promotional exersize, like it or not they have put together some kick-ass promo videos such as this: UL Wolves Promo. So that's pretty much going to be the next few months, teaching beginner sessions, praying for rain, windsurfing and mountain biking occasionally and finding time to do some college work too. It's no Uganda but it turns out Ireland's not such a bad place to be after all!

 

Getting the hang of water starting down in Scraggaun bay

Uganda!

To whom it may concern. This post is meant to be half trip report, half guide to potential visitors to Uganda. I hope it's useful, entertaining, and gets across just how much fun the place is. Enjoy!

 

Going clean on Nile Special. Photo by Aran Kilroy.

Nearly a year ago I sat down with myself and had the annual debate about what to do for the summer. This time, I was in the brilliant position of having a full three months off and money to spend, thanks to the work placement I did last year. So I decided to do something big. I looked into several options, including Norway, and doing another European road trip. However none of them really looked like they could offer anything to match the warm water, big volume river running and big wave freestyle of Uganda. So despite not knowing a whole lot about the place, and not being able to talk anyone into coming with me, I went ahead and booked flights anyway. Since it's a long distance away, to get the best value from the trip I decided to spend a full month on the river. As soon as I had those dates tied down the summer couldn't come fast enough!

 

All packed up and ready to go. I think the message got across, Cowy arrived mostly in one piece.

After chatting to a few people who had been there before, and a few emails to Emily at Kayak the Nile (kayakthenile.com) I had a lift from the airport to the river sorted, and more of an idea of what I was letting myself in for. Everyone I talked to said the place was amazing, both the paddling and everything else that goes with it, and as the months passed by and the trip got closer I got more and more excited. I also found out that Aran and Roisin from NUIG were going out at a similar time to me, and Conor, Shane and Alan from Dublin were going towards the start of the summer. So I wouldn't be the only Irish paddler out there.

 

 The first Special of the trip. Possibly the most anticipated beer in history!

For anyone interested in travelling to Uganda, there's a lot of useful information online. Andrew Regan has put together a pretty comprehensive guide, which can be found here: Planning a trip to Uganda. One thing that seems to have changed since then is the price of living over there. The Hairy Lemon now costs $30 per night. This includes three meals of probably the best food I have ever eaten and is located a 10 minute paddle from Nile Special. It's probably the closest thing to heaven you will find on planet earth! If you can afford it then it's definately worth the cost.

 

The only way to access the island is by canoe. There are few people, the only electricity is solar, there's only phone signal if you stand on one specific rock, and the only running water is what's been pumped from the river by a water wheel. It's heaven! ...did I meantion that the food is amazing, and 90% home-grown on a small organic farm on the bank of the river beside the island?

 Since the construction of the dam at Silverback the old paddler's Mecca of Bujagali, which used to overlook legendary rapids like Widowmaker, Silverback and Bujagali falls, now sits on the shore of Bujagali lake. This is still a good place to hang out and meet people, especially if you're travelling by yourself, but the logistics of getting from here to the river are pretty complicated, and expensive. This is where the non-paddling tourists stay, and where all the raft guides and kayak instructors come to hang out. It's a pretty sure bet that there will be a party of some kind here every night, and at weekends it can get a bit wild! When you factor in the costs of food, beer, camping and lifts to the river it's actually more expensive to stay in Bujagali than at the Hairy Lemon, and you get to paddle much less. The budget way to do a trip to Uganda is to rent a mud hut close to Nile Special off a local. Bring a petrol fired stove, buy big bags of rice and beans (which aren't a whole lot cheaper than Irish prices, at 50000 shillings, or €20 for 10kg of rice) and paddle yourself silly on Nile Special rapid twice a day!

 

Sunset looking over Bujagali lake from NRE. While it's not Bujagali falls, it still looks pretty good.

The choices for flying out there seem to be Turkish Airlines, Emirates and Brussels. Turkish tend to be cheaper, Brussels will take kayaks for free when booked through Kayak the Nile. Boats and bags getting left behind is a very common occurance, it happened to me going both directions. The airlines will drop your gear to wherever you are, usually the next day but make sure you bring enough stuff in your carry-on bag so that you can survive until the rest of your stuff shows up. I ended up staying in a dorm in Bujagali for a night and the rest of my camping and kayaking gear showed up the next day. Not the end of the world.

With regards to the difficulty of the river, I heard a lot of very good kayakers talking before I went and all the talk was about severe beatings, long hold-downs and other unpleasantness. So I was pretty apprehensive before I went out, since I had never paddled a big-volume river before and had no idea what it was going to be like. It turns out that all the stories of horrible swims come from Itanda, Dead Dutchman and Hypoxia. These three rapids are pretty full on, with Dutchman and Hypoxia being another level of crazy above Itanda. Apart from those three, the rest of the river is far easier than you might expect. Sure, there are difficult lines and big holes around if you go looking for them but if you have someone who knows the lines most of the rapids are as simple as paddle down the centre of the big green tongue and then enjoy the huge wave train at the bottom. All of the rapids finish up in long flat sections so there is more than enough time for picking up the pieces in the event of a swim.The water is warm and deep, there are no rocks around so the worst case scenario is that you go down for a bit of downtime in the case of a swim. The rafts constantly paddle into the biggest holes and waves they can find and then flip on purpose, if those punters can handle it then so can you! Of course if you have a solid moving water roll then that's not even an issue, even if you flip on a wave train none of the waves will hold you and you'll probably be down and onto flatwater again before you've even got around to rolling.

 

I can't decide if Itanda looks crazier from above or below. Pictures really don't do it justice!

Since there aren't many rapids left, the majority of them are pretty easy and there are long sections of flatwater between them, for me paddling in Uganda is all about the freestyle. The are waves to surf all the way down the river, and Nile Special and Club waves are awesome. Nile Special and Club can take a while to get dialled in, Special has a fairly difficult tow onto it and they're both super fast and bouncy. Trying to control a boat on that size and speed of wave is not something that you ever experience in Ireland but once you get the hang of it you can go huge and the feeling of flying is addictive! The paddle from the flow into the eddy at Special is as difficult as any of the rapids on the river bar the big three, it's a mass of boils and whirlpools just aiming to catch you and flip you upside down before you've realised what's happening! The only solution is to sprint as soon as you fall off the wave and get across the eddyline in the shortest time possible!

 

Loving life in the air above Nile Special. Photo by Aran Kilroy.

Of course, the kayaking in Uganda is only half the story. The lifestyle over there is the main reason why people come back again and again, and why a lot of people arrive and don't ever leave. It's hard to imagine a place being more laid back and chilled out. The local people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, and how they get by on so little is inspiring. Travelling around is nearly as fun as kayaking, and far more dangerous! The roads have to be seen to be believed, anywhere else in the world they would be regarded as for 4x4s only but here they just pile up to 6 people onto a Boda Boda (125cc motorbike) and carry on regardless. The mix of trucks, minibuses, cars, motorbikes and bikes, all overloaded, is nuts but somehow it all works, most of the time. A 1.5 hour car journey did take us 4 hours, 5 breakdowns and two cars at one stage but you just have remember that you'll get there eventually, and whoever's waiting for you will know exactly what's going on as it happens all the time over here. The constant stream of tourists through Bujagali means that there's always an excuse for a party, it's incredibly easy to be out every night and almost forget to go kayaking. Eventually though your body will give in and demand to be brought back to the Lemon, where the perfect cure of eating well, sleeping over 12 hours a day and kayaking twice a day will have you feeling as good as new in no time, though you still won't want to leave!

 

We had no idea of the mission that this journey was going to turn into. But we got there in the end! 

If you do eventually get worn out from all the kayaking then no problem, there are activities on offer to suit everyone's tastes, from rafting to horse riding, mountain biking to SUP tours. This also means that non-kayakers will find more than enough to do to keep entertained. Highlights include Kayak the Nile's introductory kayaking sessions, which allow anyone to have a taste of kayaking in warm, deep water in beautiful equatorial surroundings. It's a world apart from learning to kayak in Ireland in winter! If that sounds a bit too leisurely, they also offer an extreme tandem kayaking option, where you'll be put in the front of a two man kayak with one of the expert local guides in the back and sent down some of the best rapids the Nile has to offer.

Unfortunately, a time limit has recently been imposed on all this. Plans to build a dam at Isimba, below all the normal kayaking and rafting take-outs, were recently approved and initial works on the site have already begun. This dam is due to be completed in three years time and virtually all of the remaining whitewater on the Nile will disappear under another massive lake. Lobbying and campaigns to have the size of the dam reduced to preserve at least some of the rapids appear to have had zero influence. The benefit of this development to the national economy is open to debate but what cannot be argued is that this will kill off adventure tourism in the area. What will happen to all the local people who depend on tourism for their income remains to be seen. Going by previous events, people whose land is flooded will be inadequately compensated, if at all. Unless things change drastically, the message is 'go now, and experience one of the worlds best playgrounds before it's too late'.

For more information:

Kayak the Nile have lots of useful information about travelling to Uganda and the activities available in the area on their site, Kayak the Nile.

To find out more about the proposed dam development at Isimba visit the Save Adventure Tourism in Uganda blog, Save Adventure Tourism in Uganda.

                                    

Here's a video I put together to document the trip and raise a bit of awareness about how little time is left out there, since information about the second dam doesn't really seem to have filtered up to the northern hemisphere yet. The youtube version is blocked in Ireland due to copyright so if you can't see it watch it on Vimeo here: Dammed: The Clock is Ticking for the White Nile.

 

Need a Boda? You never have to wait for very long.

 

When you call a taxi, you're never really sure what vehicle is going to turn up. This was one of our more interesting ones, a flatbed truck that threatened to bounce Roisin out over the side with every bump.

When you hear stuff running around on top of a roof, it's either rats or monkeys. Better hope it's monkeys.

 

Ugandan health food shop. Dem body builders have to get their nutrients somewhere.

 

Enjoying a beer after our last paddle on the Nile. After this we watched the sun go down and we were treated to a goodbye lightening show on the horizon.

The Alps with ULKC Part 4 - And back again!

After nearly two weeks in Slovenia, it was time to start heading west again. So we played the usual game of tetris to fit all the gear in the vans and started on the road back to Italy. We spent the journey researching the strength of different brands of condoms by holding them out the van window and seeing what speed they burst at, and since no Alps trip would be complete without spending some time in hospital we called into the one in Borgosesia for a visit while we were passing through. While we were there they were kind enough to have a look at Sinead's sprained/broken/ligament damaged ankle and tell her that although it wasn't broken she would be spending a few weeks on crutches.

The original plan we had before the trip was to spend a week in Slovenia and then another week in Italy stepping things up a bit. However we spent longer than planned in Slovenia due to the perfect water levels and that left us with just two days in Italy before it was time to keep moving on towards home. No-one should go to Italy and come home without going to the Sorba Slides so that's where we went first. We spent a solid day lapping it, trying different lines and rescuing anyone who's lines and rolls didn't quite work as planned. It was a huge step up for lots of people who started paddling less than a year ago so fair play to everyone for giving it a go!

 

Going for the flare line on the Sorba Slides. Photo by Mike Shaw.

 

Richard Daly styling the same flare line. Photo by Mike Shaw.

 

Mike got some great shots of the Slides, I particularly like this angle! Paddler is Eoin Howard, who got his level four on the trip and was styling everything for the full three weeks.

The next day we planned to do the Sermenza, and give the group a taste of Italian creeking. However when we got there the river was a bit low, there was a tree down just downstream and everyone was feeling shattered after the night before. So we had a chat, took a vote and headed to the top drop on the Egua instead. Levels there were perfect and since we had so many people who weren't used to carrying boats around river banks we set up pulley systems to hoist boats up to the road and drop them down to the get on to the river again. This meant that people got a stupid number of runs on the drop and we had a great day, lapping it and trying all sorts of silly stuff. I finally started getting back freewheels down so I was happy out, and I think everyone else had a great day too! 

 

A lot of the photos look broadly similar but Eoin Howard got this one of one of my back freewheels, delighted!

 

A last group photo before the group split up. Photo by Mike Shaw.

 After our day on the Egua there was just time for one more party before the group separated. The next day the hire van headed to the airport with some of the group while the rest of us started on the drive towards Mont Blanc and across France. While we were on the way we learned that there would be time for one more bit of excitement before we reached the ferry. Due to the days that flights and ferries happened to be on there was a spare day on our journey across France, which we would be spending at DISNEYLAND! I have never seen a group of people more excited than we were when we heard the news! 

 

The lads on one of many rollercoasters that day! Photo by Eoin Howard

 

The Disney castle before the light show and lightening storm. Photo by Eoin Farrel.

After a great day at Disneyland we hung around to watch the light show that they project onto the castle just before closing time. That was good enough but what was even more spectacular was the massive lightening storm that passed by as the light show was going on. Thankfully it stayed warm and dry and there was no thunder that we could hear. Massive bolts of fork and sheet lightening backlit the castle as the light show was going on and it continued into the night. After leaving Disneyland we cracked open a beer and sat in the carpark watching the lightening for a while. It was a great way to end an epic trip!

While looking for a place to spend the night one of the tyres on the minibus decided that then would be a great time to have a blowout. After fixing that and getting lost in the outskirts of Paris for a while we eventually managed to crash out in a truck stop for the night. We slept in the next morning and after dawdling in a supermarket for a while realised that we were on track to just miss the ferry. So we legged it, made it onto the ferry by the skin of our teeth and finally got the chance to properly relax for the first time in three weeks! We had a great time on the ferry, drinking a few beers and reflecting on what had been a brilliant trip.

 

The very end. Group photo taken by security on the ferry.

We got off the boat around mid-day and finished off the short drive back to Limerick. After unpacking the vehicles, washing out gear and finding all the belongings that had disappeared over the last three weeks we headed home only to be told that a person and a horse had gone into the river behind UL that day, the horse had drowned and the person was still missing. The search had finished for the day at that stage but we were wanted at 6 am the next morning to help out. After a morning of searching with a few members of a local diving club we heard that the divers had recovered a body. RIP. 

After that, feeling broken after all the weeks of activities we were able to go home, catch up on much needed sleep and generally work on recovering from what was definately the best paddling trip I've ever been on!

The Alps with ULKC Part 3 - Slovenia

After the week of advanced training, the next two weeks of the trip cater for all levels of paddler in the club. After the few easy days towards the end of the first week, by the time we moved on everyone was refreshed and excited for the next stage of the trip. So one morning we broke camp, packed up everything and headed for Malpensa airport in Milan, where we picked up another 15 or so people who would be with us for the rest of the trip. This was meant to be a quick 'grab and go' where we barely stop the vans before everyone hops in and we get going on the long drive to Slovenia but of course the flight was delayed, the Americans in the group got stopped at immigration and some people had checked in bags that took ages to show up. Best case scenario was that we reach Kobarid, Slovenia at around 12.00/1.00 in the morning and after a few hours in the airport, and the obligatory Decathlon, food and piss stops it was more like 4 or 5 in the morning and the sky was starting to get bright as we were pitching our tents.

 

Typical mellow Slovenian paddling in beautiful green water. Photo by Oliviana Bailey.

I had never been in Slovenia before and I woke up a few hours later to some of the most stunning scenery I have ever seen, with huge, snow-covered mountains rising almost vertically from each side of the Soca valley. The next few days were spent paddling some handy beginner and intermediate runs and generally chilling out and having the craic. It was great to have a holiday after the pretty hectic first week and the new arrivals from Ireland brought some new personalities and new energy to the trip. We had a great time in the evenings playing volleyball, having campfires and going exploring the area, which is full of things like hidden waterfalls that are well worth the walk it takes to find them.

 

Group photo from a day off at Lake Bled. Photo by Mike Shaw.

After paddling over there, now I can see why it is so popular as a kayaking destination. Unlike Italy which has many different rivers to choose from, in Slovenia there is just one, the Soca. However it is broken down into clearly defined sections which range in difficulty from flatwater with the occasional eddy line to the grade 5 Siphon Canyon. Every level of paddler will find something to challenge them out here, and even the easy boulder garden rapids create micro-eddies with powerful eddylines that are great craic to zip in and out of. Even the easiest sections have enough eddies like these to keep them interesting and leading beginner trips never gets boring, which is a great change from Ireland! All this eddy hopping is great for improving boat control and general paddling skills, and it's intermediate paddlers who will get the most out of a trip here.

 

Taking a moment to float, enjoy the scenery and take a photo. Photo by Mark Scanlon.

One of the weekends we were in Slovenia the local kayak shop held an event that involved a time trial and boaterX on a short section of river in between the two campsites. It was held at night, under floodlights which was feckin awesome! The course consisted of a deadly ramp into the water on the river right bank, an upstream gate on river left, a banner to touch on river left and a ferry over to another touch banner on river right, which was the finish line. It was dead short and took under 40 seconds if you were moving quickly. 10 ULKC paddlers took part which was deadly to see, in a field of mostly local paddlers plus all of the team Pyranha paddlers from the UK who were helping to run the event. It might as well have been a home race for us as the noise made by our 20-strong cheerleading squad on the bank completely drowned out any sound being made by anyone else!

 

Start ramp for the time trial. Photo by Mike Shaw, fire courtesy of Matt Cooke!

The event went great, all of our guys who took part had a great time, saying racing a kayak, under lights, in Slovenia, with massive support from ULKC was the coolest thing they had ever done! Cathal came 3rd in the boaterX which he was rightfully delighted with! I had a bad time in the boaterX, only two people raced at a time and the way the ramp was set up meant that even tho I got a decent start, as soon as I hit the water the other guy pretty much landed on top of me, knocking me over and destroying any chance I had of overtaking. The time trial went better thankfully! I got a decent start off the ramp, made a mess of the first gate but hit the last breakout and ferry pretty much perfectly. I ended up coming second behind David Bain of team Pyranha, with a time of 39 seconds versus his 37. Delighted with it!

 

Another free t-shirt! Happy days! Photo by Positive Sport.

After the event, a prize giving was held in the other campsite followed by music that went on until some unknown time in the morning. An otherwise chilled out, respectable gathering was turned into a pretty full on rave by 30 ULKC heads bouncing around the place while all the locals looked on and tried to figure out what was happening. In the end one or two of them joined in the craic, along with the team Pyranha guys. Those guys have it figured out, driving around Europe for a few months going from event to event. Dream summer right there! Despite the local's disapproval, it was mental craic and ended up being one of the best nights of the trip! Which is saying a lot since we did a lot of partying over the three weeks!

The water levels in Slovenia were perfect while we were there and it suited the group down to the ground. Every day we were able to find a section that was perfectly suited to the group's mood and abilities, and often the more advanced paddlers were able to do a morning or evening run on something a bit more challenging. I even got to paddle Siphon canyon on the day of the race with Rob and a german dude called Max, turns out it's a lovely section of river with lots of brilliant, steep boulder garden rapids on it. And when you do it quickly you don't get to see any siphons at all! It was so perfect that we ended up staying there for a few days longer than we had originally intended. However eventually it was time to move on...

The Alps with ULKC Part 2 - Week 1; Training Week

I intended doing a short, consise write up of the first week of the trip, only covering the important parts. However since I started writing I sort of realised that pretty much every day was epic craic and deserves a mention! And leaving anything out would mean the context for stuff that happened later on in the week would be lost. So apologies about the length of this post, but I hope I've managed to capture just how good this week was!

As I said before, the first week of the trip consisted of a training week, where the focus was on improving people's personal paddling, rescue and river leading skills. Usually this week would involve official level 4 training courses and assessments but thanks to the unprecedented number of level 4 qualified paddlers in the club at the moment we set this as the minimum standard for people to come on the first week of the trip. We had 15 people there for the first week, all either qualified level 4s or comfortably at that standard. Pretty impressive numbers for a college club Alps trip, especially considering many of them were first and second years and not mainly fourth years and OFBs.

Since everyone was at level 4 standard, the next logical step would be to put people forward for level 5 training courses. But due to the high cost, and the fact that people will more than likely have graduated from college and left the club by the time they go on to do the assessment we don't run club level 5 skills courses. Hence the need to come up with a plan for the week to train people in key aspects of the level 5 syllabus. Myself and Andrew sat down and came up with a loose plan for the week, which was pretty much to start off by focusing on people's paddling skills, followed by rescue skills and finishing on leadership/river reading stuff. In the end the weather and river levels really worked in our favour and the whole week worked even better than we could have hoped!

Thursday

After our ideal start to the week with an afternoon run on the Alpine Sprint section, we decided to dive straight into the creeks the next morning and hit the Lower Sermenza. With it's easy, flowy start leading into a tight gorge, at the water levels we got the lower Sermenza is the ideal introduction to Alpine steep creeking. We spent ages at a spot called boof graduation drop, running it many times each and trying different lines, different techniques and really focusing on getting peoples flare and boof strokes dialled in. It was a great session and people's paddling improved immensely just in the time we spent there. It was definatly useful for everyone when we moved down into the gorge, which is full of little flare lines that feel great when you get them right. Everyone managed the gorge perfectly fine and when we got off the water in the afternoon we decided we should step things up a notch.

We travelled out with the intention of paddling two rivers a day for the first week. Most of the group were perfectly content to run the Sermenza again as a further warm up and it was with some anxious faces that they agreed that everyone was paddling well and we should go up and give the Egua a go. When we reached the get on of the Egua, levels were pretty low but it was definatly runnable, a pretty ideal level for people's first time on the river. We chilled out for a while, got lunch (the first of many ham, cheese and pesto sandwiches!) and then hopped on the water. Since we had a few people who knew the lines, we broke up the group and were able to read and run most of the river, giving the lines to anyone who didn't know them and setting up rescue anywhere we knew it was needed. Thanks to the water levels, everything was pretty forgiving but we did have one or two swims. Thankfully, no damage was done bar bruised egos and robbed dignity for the rest of the night.  Although  we had expected the evenings that first week to be very quiet, all the Irish were in Campertogno at the time and being unsociable and going to bed early was never really going to happen. We had a great evening chilling out with the lads over a few jugs of the local speciality frizzante or sparkling wine, swapping stories and hearing about some great lines and dodgy swims that people had over the previous few weeks.

...while in Decathlon on the way over, Andrew had the genius idea of putting together a swim outfit and accordingly bought a bright pink, womens, small vest top, with matching shorts and wrishbands. The idea was that the last swimmer of every day had to wear this for the evening, and endure the ridicule and complete loss of dignity that went with it. It definatly added a lot of banter to the trip, and meant that we had to be careful that whoever was due to wear it that evening was never put on rescue duty!

Friday

That evening it started lashing rain, which continued uninterrupted until the next morning. The rain was as heavy as any I've seen and I spent a while before going to bed moving my gear around the porch of my tent trying to avoid the worst of the leaks. When we woke up the next day the first thing we noticed was the increase in volume of the noise of the river. When we got out to have a look at it, the river had risen several feet since the day before. It was only about a foot below the level of the land bridge leading to the island campsite and that left us with a conundrum of what to do that day since our plan to go to the Sermenza or Egua for some rescue training was obviously out of the question! We ended up heading to the raft run section on the Sesia, which is usually a chilled out, bouncy run which is suitable for all levels of ability.

It definatly wasn't suitable for all levels of ability that day! Huge wave trains and cushion waves hid monster holes waiting to gobble up any unsuspecting kayakers who floated their way. Since the river was flowing so quickly and decent eddies were few and far between, we split the group into semi-independant groups of four people who would stay close together and look out for each other and could be pretty much self sufficient if sh*t hit the fan. At the same time the groups would stay pretty close together to provide back-up to each other if needed and everyone was warned to do their very best to stay in their boat no matter what happened, as a swimmer/boat chase scenario in that kind of water could easily turn into a disaster. The group consisted entirely of experienced paddlers with solid rolls, people who could be relied on not to pull their decks unless it was completely unavoidable. Still, we had a total of seven swims that day. Some were due to deck implosions in holes, other people were pulled out of their boats in holes and some people got worked in holes where the only way out was swimming. 

 

On the bank of a super high Sesia talking through how we're going to run the river safely. Photo by Eoin Howard.

This was big volume paddling with consequences like I had never seen before! I'm definatly far more used to steep creeks than this style of river. Emer and Gav got body surfed in different holes and went for nearly 30 seconds (counted on GoPro footage!) of downtime each before being released. The other swims were less bad but still far from pleasant. Thankfully our rescue plans worked perfectly. Whenever the first group of four saw a tricky hole they would hop out and set up safety, meaning that anyone who got badly worked was roped out immediatly. Anyone who swam while on the move was looked after by their group of three others who were right on the spot to get them and their kit out of the water straight away. For all our drama, there were no injuries, all the rescues were dealt with as well as they could have been and serious respect to anyone who swam, none of them let the experience phase them at all. After the first run we went straight back up and ran the section again, which went much smoother since we now knew where all the worst holes were. We packed up that evening tired but stoked after a great day on the river, and called the rescue section of our training week finished since everyone had got more enough practise barging boats and roping and carrying swimmers to prepare them for what was coming up in the next few weeks. That night we hit the sleeping bags early since water levels were dropping back down to sensible levels and we had another big day planned for the next day. 

 

Scouting Little Canada before running it. It's pretty interesting at those water levels! Photo by Eoin Howard.

Saturday

The next day was planned to be the focal point of our training week. The idea was to head to the Egua and run it as if it was entirely new to all of us, with the intention of getting out to scout everything and work on reading the river, planning rescue set-ups and picking lines. We got up early to make the most of the day and headed to the get on, where we found the levels still 'chunky' after the rain two days before. On seeing the levels some of the group became very unsure of the wisdom of running it at all. However after much talk, a group yoga session and some more talking everyone decided to get on the water. Thankfully they did, because in the end the day turned out to be perfect! 

 

Top Drop on the Egua from a cool angle. Photo by Eoin Howard.

The high water level made the river a solid step up compared to the previous time we did it but it was still easily manageable by everyone in the group. Building on the work we did on the Sermenza everyone got some great experience planning lines based on key strokes and executing them, and at every drop we talked through what rescue set-up was needed and why. It worked great and since we were scouting everything everyone's lines were much cleaner than the previous run a few days before. We spent the whole day on the one run, and by the time we got to the bottom everyone was in great form and delighted with how it was going. Whereas the previous time we ran the river only four of us decided to run cylinder drop, this time by the time we got to the bottom the group was so stoked that nearly everyone wanted to fire it up. So we set up a dope on a rope, told everyone which rock to paddle towards and let them have at it. And it was awesome to see, almost everyone styled it! No-one completely melted it, but it was at the level where anyone who didn't nail the line perfectly was only coming out on the end of a rope. Which was fine, a few people got to practise being the dope at the end of a rope and no one swam in Cylinder drop at all. In fact, throughout the entire day we only had one swim, which is pretty good going! Everyone finished the day on a high and we headed back to the campsite and the Gene17 river festival in great form. That night a stonking great party went on till all hours and we spent the night generally running around the place and having the craic. 

 

A STOKED crew after a savage day on the Egua! Photo by Eoin Farrell

Sunday

The Sunday following the festival was scheduled to be a bit of a rest day, since lots of people were worn out after the last few days of pretty full on paddling. Some people decided to take the day off, and the rest of us decided to go for a handy chilled out run on the Alpine Sprint and keep going down to Scopello. For several reasons that plan didn't really work out. Firstly, water levels were much higher than the first day we were there and the section wasn't the easy chilled out run that we remembered! The steep sections had become pretty full on and continuous, with several holes that would easily catch out anyone who was off line. The group had several swims, which wasn't a problem but dealing with them meant that people didn't really get the rest that they were hoping for on their day off.

When we reached the eddy at Mollia falls, the rest of the group started portaging but I decided I wanted to take a look at it. After a few minutes looking at it, I decided I could make the line and started looking more closely at the individual moves in it. ...for anyone who doesn't know, Mollia is a long, technical rapid on the Sesia which is usually walked around. The rest of the lads in the group said they were happy enough to do rescue on it so we had a chat and came up with a plan for how they would deal with it if everything went wrong. After quite a while looking at it I thought I had figured out how I was going to make it through. Unfortunatly, the super clean line that I had imagined didn't exactly happen! I screwed up a flare move half way down and rolled, which left me backwards and on the wrong side of the river dropping into a little pocket with no exit. What happened next can be seen in the video. Eventually I get pulled out with most of my gear while my boat continued on it's merry way down the river.

After sorting me out, reuniting me with my various bits of gear that had floated off downstream (fortunately we had put a few guys covering another drop and pool downstream in case of this exact scenario) and paddling on down to the campsite, we decide to call it a day and scratch the plan to paddle down to Scopello. After getting dinner we go for an early night to try to recover from the days activities. ...taking an early night also meant that I had to spend less time in the luminous pink swimmer's outfit, definitely a good idea for both my dignity and anyone who had to look at me wearing it!

Monday

The plan was that by Monday morning everyone would be recovered and back in top form after their day off, allowing us to do one more day of solid paddling before our week came to an end. So we got up early and headed to the get on of the Sermenzino, another beautiful steep creek that is similar to the Egua only less technical and slightly bigger. However when we got there we realised that no-one was in the mood. Sunday had turned into another hectic day rather than the rest day it was meant to be, meaning that most people were still knackered after nearly a week of solid paddling. Forcing ourselves onto a difficult river in that state would have been a bad idea so we changed plans and headed back down the valley. Most people went back to bed and took the day off completely while a few went up to the start of the Alpine Sprint and finally fulfilled their dream of paddling all the way from there to Scopello village. I ran shuttle and took video of the guys on the water, since I really wasn't feeling it for another full day of paddling, no matter how easy the river. It was a slightly low key end to a very not low key week but what can you do, there's only so much paddling that the human body can do before it says stop!

...what did we do after our training week? What were we training for? Stay tuned over the next few days to find out! 

The Alps with ULKC - Part 1, To Italy!

Over the last few years ULKC's Alps trips have settled on a tried and tested format which maximises enjoyment, safety and progression for everyone involved. In keeping with this formula myself and Andrew Regan were asked to plan the first week of this years trip, which would involve bringing 15 of the best paddlers in the club to Italy and running a week of coaching on personal paddling and rescue skills. Fortunatly there's a limit to how much planning can be done for a week like that, with a lot depending on water levels and people's abilities which we wouldn't know until we were out there. This meant that once we had a chat and came up with the basic format for the week I was free to sit back and focus on college stuff until exams finished.

My last exam was on a Friday, that evening there was a going away party for friends who are leaving for Canada for the forseeable future. The following day would be spent packing the vans and trailer for the trip, followed by a club BBQ at the boathouse. On Sunday morning we left for Les Alps. So I headed into college on the day of my last exam with everything I would need for the next three weeks. Yes I got lots of funny looks walking into college carrying a pile of camping kit. Thankfully all my kayaking gear was already in the boathouse, that would have just looked ridiculus!

When that exam was over (Heat transfer; yuk!) I finally got to taste freedom! It was straight to Curraghbrin for a BBQ, followed by Costellos, followed sleeping in the back of a van cos we lost everyone who owned a house, followed by packing the vans, followed by another BBQ, followed by crashing on a sofa, followed by being woken up and being told to get in a van to go to the ALPS!! Pretty epic start to an epic trip! Apologies again to Bry, a vegetarian, for insisting that she tried my perfectly cooked steak on Friday night, that can't have been pleasant!

 

Practising the dance to what became the most anticipated song on the playlist, Nelly the Elephant, at the BBQ on Saturday night. I'm sure anyone who saw this in action didn't know what to think!

 ...a word on those vans, since they attract a lot of interest wherever we go. The belong to the UL Students Union, and they are there for clubs and societies to use whenever they want. It's a pretty unreal set up! Competition for them can be pretty fierce between the different clubs, with a lot of negotiation and give-and-take going on to make sure that that they are fairly shared and that they go to the right club if there's an especially important event on, for example an intervarsities. They are driven by students with sufficient driving experience who have been nominated by their club committees and have passed a specific driving test organised by the SU. They get well used, most years the van will travel to the alps three times, with us, the mountain bikers and the skydivers! The minibus gets used less, as you have to be 24 to drive it and have a specific licence, which excludes most students.

 

The Wolves are escaping! At the ferry port.

 

Mark, Andrew and Eoin loaded up and ready to go. Coming soon, the most anticipated music video release of the summer, Mark Scanlon covers 'My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard', filmed on location in the ULSU Sprinter, with backing vocals by Niall Crosbie and Emer Farrell.

Back to the trip, we made it to the ferry port at Rosslare remarkably on time and without incident, rolled onto the ferry and passed the 16 hour journey by chilling out, catching up on sleep and laughing at people getting fantastically drunk on their last Irish bottles of wine for a while. When we got to Cherbourg, after a moment with French passport control (Have you checked your pocket Rob?) we settled in for the long journey to Italy. Almost immediatly, the trailer starts making funny noises. Having had more drama due to misbehaving trailers on previous Alps trips than its possible to count, we get extremily worried, stop, think we can feel a rattle in a wheel bearing and run off to find the nearest mechanic. We find one who rattles it around a bit and then tells us through a mixture of sign language and facial expressions that it's fine and we should piss off and stop wasting his time. So we turn up the music and press on, trying to ignore the intermittant banging that we decide must be coming from the draw-bar. Thankfully, the music was a playlist made by getting everyone on the trip to submit one song which luckily were a.)  95% excellent and b.) mostly well suited to being turned up loud and used to drown out unwanted noises.

 

As you approach the Alps the mountains start to grow in front of you and the scenery gets more and more spectacular.

  Thanks to the tachometer in the minibus, epic non-stop drives across France are out of the question. The minibus is also electronically limited to 100 km/h which considerably slows progress. We make it as far as the outskirts of Lyon that first night, where we stop at a truck stop for a few hours rest. Thanks to warm, dry continental weather, we spend that first night sleeping out on the ground under the stars, with no need for any kind of shelter except a sleeping bag! Who would wish for a bed when you could have that! The next morning we get up early to beat the traffic and spin into the middle of Lyon to pick up one of the lads, Niall, who spent the winter working in a French ski resort. We get out of there and onto the road west asap, since if we make decent enough progress we might just make it to Val Sesia in time for a warm up paddle.

 

Stopping for the obligatory photo op at the entrance to the Mont Blanc tunnel. It looks even better in real life, and no, I'm not talking about Rob's tattoos!

Several hours of driving banter later we make it to Val Sesia tired, smelly and a little dehydrated but hyped up for a few weeks of epic boating. We quickly set up camp and leg it off to paddle the Alpine sprint section of the Sesia. The Alpine Sprint is a sweet few kilometers of bouldery Alpine river, which gets beautifully steep and pushy in places. It's a sudden wake up call after the days of travelling but we get down it with no drama and it leaves everyone buzzing and ready for whatever the next few days will bring. We even got to do a few sneaky runs on the start ramp that was set up for the Sweet rumble boaterX that was happening the following weekend, in case the opening paddle on the Alpine sprint wasn't enough for anyone! 

Idyllic setting for a campsite, on an island in a river in Italy's Val Verde, or green valley. Photo by Sean Murphy. The view we wake up to every morning is spectacular, and covers 360 degrees. Pictures simply don't do it justice.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for another update in the next few days giving the full story of our training week in Val Sesia, Italy. Later!

Spring Semester 2014

So as a bit of an explanation as to why I havn't had time to write anything on here in ages, here's a run down of what I've been up to for the last few months. On top of all that there were college assignments to be done almost every week and lots of work went into planning stuff for the summer. It's nice to finally have a chance to chill out and have a look back over it all!

January 26th. Freestyle Team Trials - Tuam
Baltic cold, rainy, biting wind, sheltered by trees from any hint of warming sunlight ...it could only be a winter competition at Tuam. The day saw ok water levels and a solid enough turn out of competitors, despite the miserable conditions. My freestyle boating obviously needs work, I came 7th on the day, not exactly where I want to be at. Congrats to all the guys who managed to do well, trying to throw down freestyle moves while suffering from mild hypothermia is not pleasant!

 

A bit of messing at Tuam while training for team trials. Photo by Caolinn Doran.

Febuary 15th. Ennistymon Race - 2nd behind Colin Wong.
After a scheduled race on the Glens was called off due to trees and unsuitable water levels, we moved the whole circus to the Ennistymon Falls in Clare. Ideal water levels and brilliant weather made for a great day on the water. With a big turnout, including a lot of paddlers who made the trip down from Wicklow for the day, and a short, intense race course that was ideal for a boatercross the craic on the water was mighty.

 

Great waterlevels, great turnout, great weather, great river, what more can you ask for?! 

Photo by Willie Doyle.

Febuary 21st - 23rd. Kayaking Intervarsities - 2nd in Freestyle behind David Higgins.
A medium length book could be written about this one but suffice to say it was epic! Fair play to the organising colleges for putting on such a great event. The weekend lived up to all the trash talk that went on facebook before hand. To the dismay of all the spectators, the most anticipated polo match in recent history, which would result in the losing team going swimming in the middle of the pitch, resulted in a draw between ourselves and DIT. Unfortunatly this put us out of the polo competition on goal difference, a bit disappointing considering the amount of work we had put into preparing for it. There was no time to get too upset about it tho, there was still three events and two massive nights out to get through before the weekend was out.

 

In action against DIT

The Friday night party in the Maynooth SU was deadly craic but I had obviously picked up something dodgy at polo in the canal earlier that day. I started feeling like shite that evening and was completely wiped out for the next two days. That took me out of the whitewater and long distance competitions but fortunatly the UL guys were well able to survive without me. Simon McCormac subbed in for me and I slept while the lads did great in both competitions. Even worse, I had to miss the main event of the weekend, the Saturday night party. Disappointing but shit happens, what can you do.

The next day, I decided I would be able to pull a few freestyle rides together, despite still feeling like utter crap. Especially since the competition had been moved to flatwater at the Canoeing Ireland training centre due to unsuitable levels at Sluice. In the end it worked, I got to use the flatwater Phonixes and Tricky-Woos which I had spent the winter working on in the pool. I got the highest scoring ride of the competition and came in second behind David Higgins of NUIG. Delighted. The work that the lads had put in the day before meant that we won the event for the fifth year running!




March 1st & 2nd. Galwayfest - 4th overall, behind Barry Loughnane, Bren Orton and Andrew Regan.
Another event that could well have a book written about it! I'll sum it up by saying savage whitewater race, epic night out followed by the best freestyle competition I've ever seen in Ireland! Fair play to Barry Loughnane Andrew Regan and the rest of the Galway crew, they really have things figured out and the event rightfully grows bigger year after year. This year they even got the weather and the water levels right, both of which were perfect for the weekend! The only thing that needs improving is the competition, this year Bren Orton and George Heyworth-Hill made the trip over from the UK for the weekend but wasn't enough to knock Barry off the top of the podium at the end of the weekend. It looks like we're going to have to look harder for next year but it's going to be tough, the list of better paddlers in the world is pretty small!

 

Mid Space Godzilla at Tuam, photo by Emer O'Brien

Koray McGowan put together a sweet video from the event, which can be seen here: video. As you can see, the feaure and the jam session format meant that paddlers could really let fly at the freestyle event. I've never seen moves that big thrown in Ireland, and not just the ones done by Bren and George. I really hope it's a sign of things to come for Irish Freestyle!

March 8th & 9th. Surf training weekend.
One of the cool things about the inaugeral inter-club championships was the raft of training events put on by the different disciplines in the weeks leading up to the event. Although the conditions for the surf event weren't great, a lot of people got the opportunity to try out surf specific boats for the first time and a lot of fun was had by all.

March 15th & 16th. Freestyle Training Weekend.
Same story as the weekend before, with most of the same people only in a different place with different boats. Almost 60 people showed up to be shown the basics of freestyle and with two friendly holes with easy eddy access the location was ideal. By the end of the day lots of people were left spinning to their hearts content. It was also obvious that the competition itself would come down fun moves, as trying to land any moves other than left spins in the 6 inch deep, flushy holes at Greensbride weir is extremily difficult! Unless you're Dave McClure of course, then phonixes and mcnastys are also possible. How they're possible when the water isn't even deep enough to get a full paddle blade in I still have no idea!

March 29th & 30th. Windsurfing Intervarsities - 1st in bronze fleet.
So I took up windsurfing last summer when I was stuck in Ireland with no water in the rivers and no surf on the beaches and ended up competing for the University of Limerick clup at the intervarsities. It made an interesting contrast to a kayak varsities. Numbers were much smaller and with only one discipline there was no hectic rushing around between multiple locations, making for a much more chilled out weekend. So much so that I even got in a lovely surf on Saturday evening before the party. Unfortunatly there was also far more guys running around in lingerie on Saturday night, thanks to the rocky horror theme to the party. I don't think the mental scars have quite healed fully yet...

 

Beautiful fun surf at the windsurfing intervarsities.

April 6th. Dougy surf trip
Every so often, when the weather, wind and waves align perfectly we throw all the sea related toys we can find into the van and make for the beach. This day we got perfect 4-5ft waves, light offshore winds and glorious sunshine so off went a gang of us from ULKC. In one day I was able to go body surfing, surf boarding, body boarding, wave skiing, surf kayaking and freestyle kayaking! And we played some rugby on the beach. I can't think of a better way to spend a day!

 

Unfortunatly we don't always get it right. This photo is from an earlier surf trip in the semester. I think everyone is just delighted to be off the water; lashing rain, howling onshore winds and big waves meant that paddling out was interesting and all the beginners got a bit battered! The waves were fun tho, lots of big air!

April 12th & 13th. Club Champs - 1st in Freestyle, 1st in Surf, 2nd in BoaterX but got disqualified for not wearing a bib in round 1.
Another savage event, and one that I really hope turns into an annual or biannual thing over the next few years. The recipe, taking the intervarsities and enlarging them to include all clubs and all disciplines is an excellent one, but it takes a complex event to organise and turns it into a monster. Thankfully Benny, Shane, Kris and everyone else up in the Canoeing Ireland office were well up to the task and the coordination of all eight events went perfectly. Too much went on to try and write about it all here but UL entered all disciplines and did respectably in all of them. In the end we came third, behind Galway kayak club and Wildwater kayak club which we're delighted with. Its a pretty savage result for a club with no juniors and no masters. The plan for next year is to refine how we enter people in each discipline, get more people into more disciplines and possibly go one better in the final rankings. Wildwater kayak club look almost untouchable in the top spot, with world class paddlers in juniors, seniors and masters categories in almost every discipline.

 

A delighted looking crew at the prizegiving for the Club Championships.

April 26th - Clare Surf Comp & AGM
Yeah, it happened, the surf was rubbish, my boat was leaking, I think the less said about this one the better! I did come 1st in IC tho, which is some consolation. There were a few new faces there which is great to see, all paddling impressively well. A few east coast Sluice rats even showed up. Much to their surprise, the salt water didn't burn them and the people don't bite, so hopefully we might start seeing them at a few more events in this part of the world. ...Ye hear that Bernie and Adrian? Ye should bring some friends next time too, it has to be good to wash that Liffey water off the skin every so often!

May 7th - Exams Start
After the surf comp it was time to knuckle down and get come college work done. Exams started on the 7th and lasted for three weeks. I think they went pretty well but I'll find out just how well in a few weeks time.

 

Finally the day that sometimes felt like it would never come arrived. Exams ended and we headed down to the river to drink a few beers, say goodbye to some friends who were leaving after their time studying in Ireland and look forward to what the summer promised to bring. Photo by Eoin Farrel.

 As soon as the exams were over the real fun started, I'll get a write up of how that went up here in due course. Stay tuned to find out what happened next!

Thanks for reading!
 Keyes