Flesk Race

Inspired by the Tarmonbarry rodeo last weekend Colin Wong decided to organise a boatercross race on his home run, the river Flesk just outside Killarney. Its a sweet river, about 2.5k of grade 4-5 water which is pretty sweet for a boatercross. Its a huge improvement on the Colligan and the Annamoe where boatercrosses have been held previously anyway! The format was simple, we divide into two groups and in the morning one group does rescue while the people in the other group take it in turns to do timed runs down the river, and then we all swap over, the person with the shortest time at the end of the day takes the prize money. I've only paddled the river once or twice before so luckily I managed to get a few practise runs in to try and memorise all the lines before the race.

This went well enough, I made all the major lines on my timed run but it was all the sections inbetween which were where the problem was and I kept hitting rocks, slowing my time down loads and pushing me back into 6th place, again. In the end Neil Slevin surprised everyone and took the top spot off Colin by 1 second, delighted for him! Paddy McGovern came 3rd and Toby Fischer 4th, and the rest of the field were just as solid paddlers, making it a pretty impressive field for any race. Afterwards everyone headed back for food and beer in Killarney, huge thanks to Snax for laying on a never ending supply of chicken nuggets, sausages and wedges!

Towards the end of the first gorge

The weekend before that we headed down to Kerry with ULKC to run the upper Carragh and the Owenroe. Even though the levels were low we had a good day out, and all the beginners did really well, with no swims all day! It made a nice change from the tedium of the ICU agm the day before, which was 6 hours of utter bull with one 5 minute toilet break in the middle! Katie Butler got some nice pics from the end of the Owenroe, which for future reference should not be paddled unless its raining and everything else in the area is tanking... 



Slide on the Owenroe

Get-off of the Owenroe