Another Epic Weekend!

Ok, long story short, early start Saturday, Clare, Caher river x4, Ennistymon Falls x4, Munster Polo League, night out in Bunratty, Tuam! I'll let the photos do the talking, it was a great weekend!

 

Boof on the Caher in the Exo XT. Photo Eoin Farrel

 

Myself and Andrew happy out after the 4th run! Photo Eoin Farrel

  

Clean drop on Ennistymon Falls. Photo Eoin Farrel

The Falls look pretty good from this angle! Photo Eoin Farrel

   

In action against Galway in MPL. Photo Lorcan Keyes

 

Loop at Tuam. It was at a high, flushy level but still great craic! Photo Jarda Pavlicek

 

Lots of tired, cold and happy faces after a day at Tuam! Fair play to Brianne, Zaria and Dana who only learned to roll in the pool last week, they're flying! Photo Jarda Pavlicek

Video by Andrew Regan of our last run on the Caher. It's a gem of a river, about 2km long with no real eddies, just one grade ~3 rapid all the way!

One more week of work left and then I'm into two weeks of paddling over Christmas and the new year. The next date for the diary is the Flesk race on the 29th of December, keep up to date with the plans here: Flesk Race Event Page

Busy weekend & Glens video

So, last weekend was a busy one! It started off on Friday evening with a go-karting session with the rest of the ULKC committee, which was intended as a 'team building' exersise. That we're now better able to work together after crashing karts into each other for an evening I'm not sure, but it was great craic!

Saturday afternoon was the Curragower freestyle competition/ round 1 of the national freestyle league. I made a small miscalculation of the tides which meant that everything ran about an hour behind schedule but apart from that it ran off pretty well. The standard of paddling was nuts, with Len Kelleher hitting huge moves with a lovely, fluid style, Barry Loughnane landing even bigger moves and several of the guys who have recently graduated from juniors not far behind them. It was great to see and hopefully it's the start of a great year for Irishfreestyle.

Here are the results from the day:

Paddler                Position
                       
Sport                       
Mairead Barnwell        1
                       
K1JM                       
Tom Galione               1
Calvin O'Brien            2
Craig Cummins           2
                       
K1W                       
Muireann Lynch        1
Aisling Griffin            2
                       
K1M                       
Barry Loughnane      1
Len Kelleher            2
Dave McClure         3
Eoin Keyes              4
Shane Little              5
Ronnie Brennan        6
Conor Macken        7
Matthew Cassin       8

On Saturday I was playing in the first round of the Munster Polo League with ULKC. One of the other teams didn't show up so we ended up playing our main team in Div 1 and also entered a beginners team in Div 2. We knew we were going to be completely outclassed in both of them but we gave it a good go all the same, and it was really good to play against much tougher opposition than we're used to. We were definatly playing much better towards the end of the night than the start as people got the hang of zones and tactics, which is what we were hoping to get from the night

...and on Sunday I went downhill mountain biking at fairymount farm. It was the first time I'd gone biking and not had to pedal back up the hill every time and it was brilliant craic, even with several kgs of mud sticking to everyone and their bikes at the end of every run! The mud made it horrifically slippy on the course, with lots of low speed falls and sliding out on corners. It was great fun all the same, and I'm mad to go back sometime it's dry.

Gavin Sheehan put together a great little video from Rob Guerins footage from the Glens the other week. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZZNwelWSSQ&feature=youtu.be

Cranafest & the Awakening of the Glens!

Don't you love it when a plan comes together! After what seemed like years of waiting, on Sunday evening we got back from a weekend kayaking in Kerry to find it lashing rain here with plenty more forecast to fall overnight. So the following morning we went to check out what the levels were doing and were delighted to find it around .65/.7 on the old gauge, or around .95 on the new gauge! We had a savage day on the river, starting with 11 people for the first run which we took nice and slowly since there were a few people out who had never run it before, dropping to 5 people for runs 3 and 4, which were done at a much less leisurely pace! It was great to get out on a real river again, and it was the first chance I got to properly test out the Exo XT. The boat went even better than I was expecting, it really responds well to being driven forward and kept on the surface of the water where you get loads of control from the rails, exactly what I was hoping for. I thought it would be a bit of a nightmare to flare because of the hard rails at the tail but they don't cause any problems at all, boofing goes great for something with so little rocker and I even managed to freewheel it on the first attempt, so all in all I'm very impressed! Now, lets just keep hoping for more of those days over the next few months!

Go back a week or two, and we get to one of the best kayaking events I've ever been to! The Crana Kayak Festival was a brilliant weekend, with competitions in pretty much every discipline except surf which attracted the most diverse crowd of people of any competition I've been to. It was great to see all the whitewater, freestyle, slalom and wildwater paddlers at the same event for the first time. I had never been to Crana before, the length of the drive up always put me off, and I really didn't know what I was missing! As well as catering for every discipline, they also had something for every level of paddler, with novice slalom and boaterX events which were perfect for almost complete beginners right up to 'the Claw' and the playhole, which tested even the most experienced paddlers! There was even a rafting competition, a first for Irish paddling. Everyone was invited to make up a team of 6 people and enter, which led to some great banter between the competitors!

I competed in slalom, freestyle and boaterX and I was delighted with all of them. I came 3rd in slalom, behind two long-time slalom paddlers. In the freestyle I had a few great runs and landed a bunch of moves that I'm normally 50/50 on. I havn't seen resuts yet but I was happy coming off the water which is the main thing! And in the boaterX I could really feel the benefits of all the training I did over the summer. Apart from one small slip up, when I came second in a 1/4 final race and ended up in a 'b' final rather than a semi-final, I won all my races and hit the line on the main feature, the 'Claw' perfectly every time. I'm looking forward to the start of the national whitewater league events now, hopefully they'll kick off pretty soon now that it's started raining again!

More results are up here: http://www.cranakayakevents.com/index.php/results . If anyone hasn't been to Crana before, make sure you go to it next year! Between the huge range of competitions and coaching sessions available, it's well worth the drive up no matter who you are!

Northern Ireland Surf Kayak Trip

After a long summer of working, flatwater kayaking, mountain biking and the occasional surf kayak and river trip the competition season has finally kicked off with the British and Irish Surf Kayak Open Competitions. Since they were only a week apart and I hadn't taken any holidays over the summer I decided to take the week in between them off work and spend it chilling out and surfing on the North coast.

So back on Friday the 13th I packed up the car with all my surfing gear, camping gear and, thankfully, some books and started on the drive up to Portrush. When I got there we were told by the competition organisers at the briefing that although the forecast for Saturday was ok Sunday was going to bring gale force winds and uncontestable conditions. The decision was made to try to run the competition off in one day, no small task when there was around 60 people competing between all the different categories and it meant we were on the beach from 7.30 in the morning till 8.30 at night! It was a really long day, especially for the organisers and judges who were on the go all day trying to keep everything running smoothly but it all ran off in the end. The lack of surf back in Clare over the summer showed pretty badly, my surfing was all over the place and I came away with no results worth mentioning. It was a great event all the same though, it was good to get back into the surf boat in some decent waves and surfing against some of the guys who were over from the UK was a real eye opener. And thankfully a meal in 55 Degrees North had been included in our entry fee so as soon as the prize giving was finished up we all headed off for a well earned dinner.

 

 A well deserved meal in 55 North. It was great to catch up with everyone again, especially the Irish and Northern Irish paddlers that I hadn't seen for a long time.

 

 Yeah, it was a long day!

 

Working on the slashed top turns in the IC boat.

As promised, the next few days were a complete write off with gale force winds and no decent waves to be had anywhere. We spent a few days hiding from the weather in hostels and coffee shops, and doing the tourist thing and driving along the coast and visiting the Bushmills whiskey distellery before the wind died down marginally and we headed for Donegal. When we got to Magheroaty on Tuesday there were great waves and we were delighted to get on the water after the few days of doing nothing. When we paddled out we were quickly reminded of the small/far away rule! The waves were surprisingly big with a very steep and heavy take off.  It's difficult to put a number on how big the waves were but I'm going to guess at at least 10ft plus faces! Anyway I got some great waves in the HP boat before I got caught in the wrong place by a big set. I tried to roll under the first wave but the lip landed directly on the hull of the boat, giving me a heavy beating and splitting the seam of the boat for around 4 feet along the rail! I had the paddlesurf IC boat with me so I was able to get back on the water and make the most of the session but that's the last that boat's going to be surfed untill I manage to do some major repair work to it. Big thanks to Mickey and Aisling for being there to make sure I got to shore ok, I wouldn't like to have been in the same situation and with just myself in the water! Unfortunatly we got no pictures or videos of the waves that day, everyone was way too eager to get on the water for that kind of rubbish!

The wind came up again for the next few days which meant that was the last surf we got untill Easky on Friday. We travelled down to Easky for the Irish open on Thursday and when we got there the wind was so strong that you could lean pretty far into it and it would easily support you! Luckily the wind dropped on Friday and we got two great sessions in small, clean waves. I had a go on Paddlesurf Ireland's new KS One beginner Waveski which persuaded me to enter the waveski division in the open. This meant that I was going to be competing in all three divisions in the competition; waveski, long boat and short boat; it was going to be a busy weekend! I had another nice surf in the long boat too, although it sucks that I broke my HP boat it meant that I paddled the long boat way more than I would normally and that definatly let me figure a few things out in it. 

 

We had some great waves on Friday, I made the most of it paddling the ski and IC boat.

All during the week, when we didn't have great access to the internet for forecasts, we were hearing rumours about an all time swell that was meant to be hitting on Saturday but we didn't really believe them. When someone said that Dessie McGlinchey was predicting double over head waves at Easky we took a little bit more notice but still didn't really think that we could get that lucky. But sure enough, we arrived at Easky bright and early on Saturday morning for the competition and it was epic! Perfectly clean, light offshore winds and head and a half high sets coming through at regular intervals, what more could you ask for!

 

Epic!

The event started off with the HP first round heats and mine was a complete disaster, I was paddling a borrowed boat that I'd never been in before and I just wasn't in tune with it at all, so it was into the reps for me. The IC and waveski first rounds went better, the KS beginners ski is definatly not designed for those conditions but despite some dodgy take offs and sliding out on steep take-offs the first round heat went pretty well and I made it through to the next round. And I had a brilliant time in the IC heat. The waves were perfect and after paddling the IC a few times before the competition I had got to know it pretty well. I got some great waves and was feeling so comfortable that I even attempted to helix the boat a few times, not that it ever actually worked! After borrowing a different HP boat that I got on slightly better with and a morning of being on and off the water in the various divisions I was through to the IC final and the waveski and HP semi finals. However all day the swell and wind were building drastically and by the afternoon the waves were double overhead plus and the wind was gusting 55/60 km/h offshore! The wind meant that trying to paddle into waves was extremily difficult and because of the spray in your face you couldn't see a thing! The whole thing definatly went way past fun and into scary territory! 

 

 Andy McClelland just visible on one of the monsters! Photo by Ian McClelland. 

I took off slightly too deep on one of the bigger waves in my borrowed HP boat in the semi final and thought I'd just about be able to take a high line and make it around the section. However it turned out I was wrong. According to the judges afterwards I got barreled, and made ground in the barrel, before I slipped too low on the wave and the lip landed on my head! The paddles instantly got ripped out of my hands and it turns out I can't handroll a Mega Merlin, so for the first time in 6 years I was swimming. Thanks to Chris and the lads for getting me to the shore fairly quickly but by the time I was back in the boat it was too late to make up the deficit and I was out of the HP. And although I had made the waveski semi final the long boat final was on directly afterwards, and the beginner ski had barely been able to handle the smaller, less hollow waves that morning so I made the tactical decision not to paddle out.  The long boat final was challenging! Huge waves, crazy wind, solid opposition, I got some nice waves and paddled fairly well on them but Chris and Andy are some tough competition and I ended up coming third. I'm happy enough with the result, and after we held the prizegiving and cleared up all the competition paraphernalia we headed back to Enniscrone for dinner and several well deserved pints of Guiness! For Sunday and Monday the wind dropped off, the swell died down a lot and I had a few more great chilled out sessions at Easky before I drove back home. 

 

It feels like flying!

 

Managed some sweet roundhouse cutbacks in the HP boat before it all went wrong!

 

As I said, some of the IC heats were fuuun!

 

Scored a sweet trophy for taking 3rd in the IC. Huge thank to Morgan O'Sullivan for organising the Open for the last few years. Unfortunatly family committments have forced him to pull out of organising events for the moment. He'll be missed!

This week has been spent recovering, settling back into work and assessing the damage on my HP boat to see what it'll take to fix it. The college paddling season is in full flow too, with what feels like hundreds of first years and foreign students showing up to pool sessions every night mad to learn to paddle. So it's been a great week of going through the basics and having the craic with a new generation of paddlers. This weekend is the club trip to Lahinch, an annual weekend of paddling and partying. It's going to be epic, I can't wait! Plans are also in the works for this years freestyle and whitewater race leagues. Keep an eye out online, it looks like there's going to be a jam packed calender of kayaking events over the next few months, starting out with the Curragower freestyle competition that I'm organising on the 9th of October. Keep an eye on here or on facebook for updates on that one, it's going to be good! 

Clifden Freestyle Weekend

At the weekend the Galway lads, led by Barry Loughnane, hosted a great event up at Clifden. Two days of camping, kayaking, drinking and generally chilling out in glorious sunshine makes for a pretty perfect kayaking event! The hole was working in the afternoons too, so there was no need for an crazy early drive to get there like with most kayaking events! The general plan for the weekend was to show up on Saturday afternoon, have a paddling/coaching session followed by a flatwater freestyle comp and then head to Dun Loughlin beach for camping, bbq and beers. Sunday then there was the main competition followed by the traditional inflatable class.

The flatwater competition went really well, even though I havn't done much flatwater freestyle recently I think the training I'm doing is helping me hit moves more consistantly than I was a few months ago and I managed to get second place behind Barry Loughnane. Unfortunatly the actual competition on Sunday was nowhere near as successful and I finished the heat feeling like I had done nothing. I came sixth in the end which although it's not last is not where I want to be. Oh well, more work to be done obviously!

On Saturday evening we had a bbq, the Irish Freestyle AGM and a small session. Since the AGM I am now secretary of the Irish Freestyle Committe. Any suggestions on what to do for the year or advice on how to do a  secretarys job is more than welcome! Another advantage of the hole only working in the afternoon was that we got a nice long lie in on Sunday morning. That's another rareity at kayaking events, and a nice change! The less said about the competition the better but paddling the hole afterwards was good craic, my paddling started to kick back into gear and as the hole got faster and more retentive it was entertaining watching people to keep some kind of control over what kind of ends they were doing. Eventually we got sick of getting beaten every time we went into the hole and called it a day, and headed back towards Clifden for the prizegiving.

Next weekend I'm heading back to Clifden with a gang from ULKC, it should be a good chance to get the place properly figured out and hopefully improve the results at the next comp. I'm looking forward to that now, it should be another good weekend. Bis Bald!

1st place, Brian Boru polo competition in Killaloe!

Last weekend the annual Brian Boru polo competion was held in Killaloe. It took a bit of work to find people who were available but eventually we managed to bully enough people into playing so that UL could field a team. Saturday went well except for one small hiccup when we lost to UCC in one of the first round matches. We made the most of the day, using all the matches as a chance to teach the people on the team who had never played before how to play polo before the important matches started on Sunday. All of our other matches went well and we qualified for the semis in second place, leaving us playing the 3rd placed team from North Wall in the semi final. Saturday night was great craic. A quick trip home to pick up food, beer and a tent and I was chilling out for the evening with lots of cool people from UCD and UCC. It also let me have a valuble lie in the next morning compared to all the rest of the UL team!

The next day was the big one, we had one first round match left to go before the semi's which was our only chance to introduce another batch of polo virgins to the game before the finals. That went well, Rob and Dean learnt most of the rules and then we had a great match against a solid North Wall team in the semi. This gave us a chance to restore some damaged pride in the final against UCC. Sean Mullens suggested playing 10 minutes a side in the final instead of the usual 8 but thankfully he was overruled by the players on the pitch! 8 minutes is plenty when you're playing at that kind of intensity! Everyone on both teams was really fired up for the final and everyone gave it their all but eventually we finished up a few goals ahead. Delighted with the result! Hopefully the win will kick a bit of momentum into ULKC that we can keep up over the summer and into varsities training in September.

I also played as a sub for Galway A in division 1 at the weekend, and we won that too! Div 1 is a whole different story to div 3! It was great to get the chance to be a part of it and thanks to the lads for letting me play with them. Fair play to Rob, Dean, Emma and Mike who all had their first taste of polo at the weekend, they all got the hang of what they were doing incredibly quickly, and we couldn't have done it without them. And although the weather was a massive help in making the weekend as fun as it was, most of the credit has to go to the organisers. Everything ran like clockwork, not an easy thing to coordinate when you've got 15 teams playing in two seperate divisions.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty good, next weekend is a combined surf kayak/windsurfing trip with the UL windsurfing trip and the following two weekends there are events in Clifden, starting with a round of the Irish freestyle league. So lets hope this weather sticks around for another while!

Team ULKC; Rob, Dean, Gavin, Jack, Me and Donie after winning the final on Sunday. Missing Mike, Emma Porter and Emma Ryan.

EXO XT

How often do you hear manufacturers plugging their latest creek designs as 'giving soft landings off big drops' or 'resurfacing under complete control' or 'punching through big holes with ease'. Well that's all great news if you're off on some dream tour to lands of big volume and big waterfalls but what about the other 49 weeks every year, if you're lucky? I know we spend all our time watching the weather forecasts and praying for the Glens/Flesk/Glenmac to come up but realistically the majority of our time on the water is spent pissing about on rivers like the Castleconnel and the Annamoe, getting that fix any way we can.

Now I'm on work experience at the moment for eight months, and at the end of that I'll be going into what's meant to be an extremily tough semester of college so realistically I'll have an entire year of making do with whatever water the Rain Gods send our way here in Ireland. So I decided to have a look around and see what boats might be a bit more suited to the paddling that I'll be doing for the next year than the Habitat. The Habitat was the perfect boat for what I did last summer, big and forgiving with a bit of rail there for when it's needed. It's tough too, it took some pretty good abuse day in day out for 3 months with no problems at all except for a broken backrest strap, which can be forgiven considering what I was doing with it at the time! But take it out on the Castleconnel and you're left looking for something that'll just carve that bit tighter, and be a bit more responsive, and surf a bit nicer.

From that it sounds like what I need is a river runner like a Dagger GTX or Pyranha Inazone but I still plan to be on the Glens every time it works and the Flesk as often as possible, and I've taken a GT down the Glens before and lets just say it's not ideal! So over the last few weeks I've been paddling a few different boats, getting an idea of what's out there. Over in Italy last year I saw all the local lads paddling Exo XTs and they looked odd, but functional. So a few weeks ago I got a demo off Saor Uisce to see what it was like for myself. Up close it looks interesting. Completly flat hull, hard rails the full length of the boat, vertical sidewalls, and big volume (300l, same volume as the Habitat 80.) Out on the river, it instantly made Castleconnel infinitly more fun! You can feel the boat grip every time you cross a small eddyline, which makes it possible to enjoy so many more features on the river than in a displacement hulled creeker. The faster and more defined the eddyline the better it feels, it feels like you're sitting on a wire guided missile going over some of the better eddylines on Castleconnel! And the first time I went for one of the more difficult s-moves on the river I burst out laughing because of how good it felt when caving through the turn! It's keeping me on my toes too, edge into a turn too late out of lazyness and the edge will catch. Not enough to turn you over but enough to remind you to cop on and paddle properly! Do the same thing in the Habitat and you wouldn't even notice you had done anything wrong. Great when the mistake would mean getting a beating in a massive hole but it does make smaller rivers a bit boring, and lets you drop the ball with your paddling technique. The Exo also feels nice and quick, I havn't got a chance to do a direct comparison with the Habitat yet but over a 2.5 minute course it went 3 seconds faster than a medium Mamba.

Everything isn't perfect with the XT. Somehow, when you go to empty water out it all flows either side of the cockpit and doesn't actually fall out, meaning that x-rescues are a bit of a pain in the arse and you pretty much have to use the bung every time you want to get a small bit of water out. The grab loops run longtitudinally which isn't ideal, especially when pulling the boat up steep hills and stuff like that. And the rachets seem to consist of more parts than neccessary, and feel a bit more flimsy than some other systems so they're not the most confidence inspiring out there. They do work perfectly tho. I also don't really know how it's going to go on bigger stuff like the Glens, the flat hull and hard rails will probably affect flares and freewheels, and might make it a bit twitchy when punching through stuff. There's only one way to know for sure tho, and those minor issues and question marks weren't enough to turn me off it. It's got enough volume and hull speed to get it though most obstacles anyway, and I had so much fun in the short time that I had the demo boat that I decided I had to get my own one. So the next time you see me on a river I'll be paddling a sharp looking red and black Exo XT! All going well I'll have a few words to say on how it handles in bigger water soon. As always, pray for rain!

It's that time of year again...

...the time of after work surfs! Once I finished work yesterday evening I headed to Dougmore with some of the lads from ULKC. The waves were nice and punchy and we were on the water till the sun went down, since the weather was completly clear we even got to see a class sunset! Hopefully we'll get plenty of evenings like that as the summer goes on.

In other news, since my last post on here I've been through a few weeks of exams and started work experience, or co-op, with Analog Devices in Raheen. This week's been pretty hectic but as time goes on things should calm down and hopefully I'll be able to get out kayaking a few evenings every week. It's no 4 month trip to Europe but I'll try to make the best of it!

Paddlesurf Ireland Comp 1

Last weekend Paddlesurf Ireland held the first surf kayak competition of the year in Spanish point. There was a great turn-out at it. I dont know was it because of Paddlefest a few weeks ago or what but it was great to see all the new faces! We got good conditions for it too. The first rounds were held in the morning on Spanish Point beach in fairly weak, dribbly, maybe two foot surf. No one was airing in it but the conditions were perfect for everyone who was trying out a surf kayak for the first time. The new plastic boats that Paddlesurf Ireland recently bought from Exo kayaks got their first outing on the day, coming straight out of the packaging into the surf. I didn't get to have a go in one but loads of people had great things to say about them, and as an added bonus we won't have to be fixing them all the time like the composite demo boats! These boats will be around for the foreseeable future so if anyone ever feels like having a go in a real surf kayak give me or one of the other Paddlesurf committee members a shout and we'll sort you out!

After holding a quick AGM over lunch in the middle of the day (Aisling Griffin is now leader of the known universe, Mick Barry is her assistant and we're selling the composite demo boats. They're the highlights of that) we moved over to the reef at the Armada hotel for the finals of the IC, HP, Waveski and Junior classes. We got some great waves on the reef, 4-6ft faces with some nice steep walls. There was a pretty strong rip tho and there were some heavy wipeouts when people got caught slightly out of position when the sets came through! I had great fun in my heats and got some great waves, and ended up coming first in both IC and HP. Happy days! I gave waveski a go too, paddling the RTM Slide belonging to ULKC. I spent most of the heat having a disagreement with the ski over which way was up but we managed to resolve that for long enough to catch one wave in the 20 minute heat, in which I managed to pull a sweet off the lip top turn on a close-out section. It wasn't much but it was enough to persuade me that I want to paddle it a bit more over the summer and learn to air it properly!

We're properly getting into exam season here in UL now, but after that it's into a summer of working and paddling. I can't wait!

Glens!!!!

After all these months of waiting, watching weather forecasts and getting excited and then disappointed every time a bit of rain was forecast the Clare Glens finally came out of retirement yesterday, completly out of the blue! I don't think anyone had any idea it was going to work, I just checked the gauge in the morning like I often do, not expecting anything to be happening and it showed that the levels were shooting up! So the word went around, lots of people were stuck in college but four of us made it out for two runs at sweet levels. I think it was around .9 when we got on, dropping to maybe .7 by the time we got off, I still havn't got the hang of the numbers on the new online gauge so it'll take another few runs to get everything dialled in. Anyway, we had a great day, in warm weather and sunshine! Hopefully we'll get another few days like that over the summer!

Eoin

Tuam freestyle event

As a follow-up to the first freestyle event of the season at Sluice a few weeks ago, Barry Loughnane and Andrew Regan took advantage of the water that had been around for the week to run a combined coaching/competition event at Tuam yesterday. Apparantly water levels there were perfect all week and there was rain forecast which would keep it up for the event.
I've been mad to take the Stealth out there since I got back to Ireland in August and havn't had the opportunity so far, so as soon as I heard 'perfect water levels' all thoughts of taking a plastic boat just in case were out the window. Bad decision! The water that had been promised failed to show up and when we got there the levels were pretty low. Still paddleable, but too low and flushy for loops and definatly not ideal in a carbon boat!

We had a pretty good day anyway, most moves went if you picked the right spot in the hole and the event started off with some great coaching from Barry and Andrew. I think everyones paddling definatly improved during the day, both from the lads tips and as they got used to the feature and by the time the competition started everyone had it pretty much dialled in. The competition was great craic; lots of fun moves, lots of moves that were questionable if they were in the hole or the eddy and people trying to 'improve' the feature by standing on top of the weir!

I know the day was more about the craic than the competition but the results weren't bad either, with Barry beating me into second place and Aran Kilroy coming in third. Full results are up here: Irish Freestyle League Standings. The plan is to have a few of these events over the summer to keep things ticking over. I'll start looking into organising a Gower comp as soon as my college exams are over.

...As soon as I got back to UL I realised that Gower would probably be working, so I went out for a look and ended up spending two hours surfing it at perfect levels! I'm broken now, between Tuam and Gower, I havn't been this sore after paddling for a very long time! Hopefully the ESB will keep releasing like that into the summer, it would be great to have a sort of consistant spot to play on!

That's about it for the moment, exams are nearly here so things will probably quieten down for a while, and then be back to normal around the end of May.

...keep up the good work with the rain dancing, it looks like it's working!

ULKC River Cleanup

Even though there wasnt enough rain to bring the Glens up the weekend wasn't a complete disaster. On Saturday myself and a few of the lads from ULKC went out on the Shannon behind UL to clear out some of the rubbish that had accumulated in the islands there during the winter floods. We had planned to go all the way from Kilmurry beach to the UL boathouse but there was so much junk there that we ran out of rubbish bags after about 200m! There was an endless supply of plastic bottles and the like and we also accquired a fridge, an electric scooter and old bike. Along with a toilet and a car wheel that looks like it'll be a perfect fit for our small trailer, and is in better condition than our current spare!

Jack, Tori, Anna, Caoilinn, Cathal, Eoin, Elaine, Orla and Simon with the mountain of rubbish that we gathered!

...and playing with the new toys!

Glens Race update

The rain seems to be a bit later coming in than was originally forecast, so it's hard to say what's going to be happening on the river tomorrow. What we're going to do is call it in the morning. If this gauge: http://waterlevel.ie/0000025309/0001/day/ is reading over .7 in the morning we're going to go to the Glens and have a great day on the water, and if it's not then we can all go back to bed. To give people some more time to get things organised in the morning we'll meet up at the Glens at 11.00 instead of 9.00 if it's working. Hopefully we'll get a solid bit of rain overnight, it's been way too long since I was out on the Glens!

Clare Glens Race!!!!!!!!!!!

It's back, it's the one everyone's been waiting for! As of now the tempermental highlight of the Irish whitewater racing calenter is on for this Sunday, the 14th of April. Registration will be from 9 till 10 at the Clare Glens carpark, with racing starting as soon as possible after that. Entry is €10 which will go into prizes at the end. Be there or...! General plan is write everyones name down, half the group goes and sets up rescue while the first group races, then everyone swaps places. Obviously this all depends on the water levels playing ball! I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days and make the final call on Saturday. I'll also have to make sure that no new trees have come down since the river was last running (quite a while!)

A bit about safety; everyone entering must be 100% clear that they are completly responsible for their own safety at this event! Rescue will be set up and they will do their best to help if anyone does get into trouble but they, and I, will not be held responsible if anyone does get hurt. I will however reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone that I think isn't able for the river on the day. The Clare Glens is a different level to the other rivers in the race league, with the possible exception of the Flesk, and anyone entering must be confident in their ability to race on grade 4+ whitewater for around 10 minutes. I would  also suggest that anyone entering should be familiar with all the lines on
 the river before race day.

I'll keep ye all updated with what the story is over the next few days. Start the rain dances please!

Eoin

Wacko, National Whitewater League and other stuff!

Last weekend everything came together for a great weekend up in Wicklow for Wacko on the Jacko. The lads from the Shackleton course were helped out by Brian and the lads from Total Experience and they had everything organised down to a T. They even booked the rain for the Thursday night before the race! The schedule was a long distance race and then BoaterX on Saturday, and then a team race on Sunday. When we showed up on Saturday there was a savage amount of water coming down the Annamoe and a rumour went around that the Glenmac might be running, so me, Dave, Barry and Andrew went for a quick spin on that instead of a practise run on the race course. It turned out that the rumour was wrong and that any water that had fallen on the Glenmacnass had well run off at that stage but we scraped our way down anyway since it beat walking! Never mind that it resembled a rocky ditch more than a river, I have now paddled the Glenmac :P

The race run went fairly well, I did the best time I could have and I didn't really get caught up on any rocks or anything but all this college work and lack of paddling is definitely affecting my speed across the flat sections; the best I could do this weekend was 10th place. After the individual runs were done it was time for the real highlight of the weekend, the boater cross! Heats of 4, 1st two from each to touch a banner at the end go through to the next round and physical contact is strongly encouraged! People racing through Jacksons 4 at a time provided endless entertainment for everyone on the bank and local lad Dave Holden came out the deserving winner in the end. Unfortunately I went out to ridiculously tough competition in the second round, after a rugby match in the bottom eddy for the finish banner!

Photo by Aidan Dunne

 

We were well looked after on Saturday night by Diarmuid Ryan and the rest of the UCD paddlers, who must have the comfiest sofa in a student house in the entire country! So a massive thanks to them for that! Sunday morning brought the team race, falling water levels and baltic weather conditions! I was on a team with Eoin Farrel and Ethan O'Brien and we had a smooth, clean, but unfortunately not particularly fast run. In the end the team title was taken by Eoin Rheinisch, Dave Holden and Paddy McGovern. I haven’t seen the times but I doubt that any other team came close to them! By the time we were leaving for Limerick it was snowing, with the weather only forecasted to get colder over the next couple of days. ...I can’t wait for spring to arrive properly!

Wacko was the penultimate event in the inaugural Irish white water race league/ national extreme race league. First place this year went to Mickie Brennan, who had the title sewn up from his results in previous events. The league has been dedicated to the memory of Colm Johnson, an Irish, UCC and ULKC paddler who passed away in Norway last summer. Unfortunately the event that I was meant to be organising, the Clare Glens Race, didn’t happen this year due to the lack of water but hopefully over the next few years this thing gathers momentum, preserves Colm's memory and promotes white water paddling and friendly competition like it was intended to do. The numbers at the last few races, especially Wacko and Galwayfest have been huge, so hopefully that's a sign of some more great leagues in the future! A big thanks to Orky too, who has put loads of work in behind the scenes coordinating events and scores and generally making the league happen.

I'll be starting co-op, college work placement, in May so there won’t be any big summer trips this year, but since I'll be finished at 5 every day hopefully I'll have time to get some serious training in. The plan at the moment is to come back in much better shape for next season's races. The slalom Irish Open and team trials are on in two week’s time too, so I must get a decent bit of time in the slalom boat before they come around!

Anyway, that’s about it for the moment!

Keyes

 

Galwayfest

Last weekend saw the NUIG crew put together a phenomenal event for the second year in a row! Galwayfest was a great event last year and the lads managed to make it bigger and better the second time round.With 120 people entered in whitewater it was definatly the biggest event of the whitewater racing calender and with those kind of numbers the Boluisce was the perfect location for it. It's even dam controlled, which makes it one of the few Irish events that you can be certain won't be called off at the last minute! The standard of the competition was extremily high, with virtually everyone who competes in whitewater races in Ireland at it. Unfortunatly I only came in joint 7th place which I was slightly dissappointed with and just missed out on the boaterX final, which was meant to be an 8 man event, but was changed to a 6 person race since there were 3 of us tied for 7th. Oh well, I'll just have to paddle faster next time!

 

Dropping into Poll Gorm in the WW race

The party on Saturday night was pretty epic! Many paddlers, started in a hotel bar, migrated to a night club; your imagination can fill in the rest! One thing that was great to see at the weekend was the amount of college clubs who were represented. Loads of people that I'd ony recognise from varsities were there, people that I've never seen at a freestyle comp or whitewater race. Hopefully this is the start of a new trend, with college clubs coming along to other kayaking events besides varsities. I think college clubs are some of the most active in the country and have huge numbers of people paddling regularly; but they often tend to do their own thing and not interact with other paddlers outside of the intervarsities every year. It would be really cool to see all those people get to know each other at some of the other events and possibly start cooperating and paddling together a bit more.

 Unfortunatly the we weren't as lucky with water levels for freestyle on Sunday as we were for whitewater. Dry weather for a week or two before the competition meant that everything had to be moved from Tuam to Clifden, which although it's good as a training spot isnt great for competitions because the hole is constantly changing as the tide comes in. I had really been looking forward to getting some practise runs in Tuam, since I havn't paddled in a hole since I got back from the summer. All the hole boating I did over the summer definatly counted for something tho, in the competition I did the best I've ever done in a comp in a hole. I was particularly pleased with the entry move I landed, since that was something I put a bit of work into when I was training in Austria over the Summer. The hole was working at it's best for my heat which can only have helped and I ended up coming 5th in the competition; happy out :) Just to top it all off after the competition there was some great food handed out while we were waiting for the results! At the prizegiving there was some great swag given out courtesy of the likes of I-Canoe, Great outdoors and Palm Ireland. Fair play to all the winners, after that scale of competition anyone who came out on top well deserved everything they got! Full results are up here; Galwayfest Results.

Warming up before freestyle

This weekend the plan is to head up to a slalom competition on the Inny. I'm bringing a few of the lads from UL up to it too, my new role as disciplines officer for ULKC. I'm looking forward to it now, hopefully it'll all go well!

ULKC - 4 In a Row Intervarsities Champs!

The intervarsities ran off brilliantly last weekend! In the end all the plans came together, the competitions went without a hitch and the parties were epic! It was great to see the entire University of Limerick Kayak Club pull together and put in a huge effort to make sure that everything worked out. No matter what was asked of people they stepped up and got the job done, even if that meant getting up at 5.30 in the morning after a big night out to go and set up a whitewater course or standing at the side of a river logging times or whatever. They also rallied together in support of the paddlers competing in the various diciplines too, making sure that everyone was well supplied with food and water and anything else they could want which definatly helped towards the performances that people put in!

 

The preparations started getting hectic back in the middle of last week when jobs like putting together the whitewater courses and picking teams had to be done but the real madness started on Friday evening when a couple of hundred students turned up to the Arena pool expecting a polo competition. Bar a few minor delays and hiccups leading to a late start to the after party in the Lodge the polo event went perfectly. Unfortunatly the competition could have gone better for ULKC but we played really well in two of our three games and even though we only won one of them we're still pretty happy with it. At the Lodge nightclub after the polo we got some indication of what the banter list was going to do to the weekend with lots of beer spilled, club captains chased away from the venue and other harmless antics like that!

 

The next morning dawned not at all bright and awful early with lots of people cursing at me for organising the whitewater event to start at stupid O'Clock in the morning! Everyone met up at the UL boathouse at 6.30 and thanks to the cooperation of most of the competitors we were ready to head to Castleconnel pretty soon after. After a short delay due to some clubs -not mentioning any names- thinking that they were too good to help out with rescue we were ready to start timed runs. We had to change the course slightly a few days beforehand because of really high water levels and in the end we had a really nice section to race on. Still not too difficult but some of the gates we put on it were really challenging and there were definatly no competitors on the water who would have called it easy! In the end the event went perfectly, no one got hurt and everyones time was logged without incident. We even finished up on time!

 

When we got Castleconnel cleared up after whitewater we headed back to UL for the long distance races. With a live band and around 500 people milling around the UL boathouse there was a great vibe going on there when we got back. The aforementioned banter list also led to more entertainment like people regularly going for naked dips off the pontoon into the river! The course was around 6km overall; 3km downstream, around Corbally bridge and back upriver for another 3km. What made things even more awkward was having to swap around all the people who were staffing the event to let them compete in their own races. We thought this would mean that peoples paddling performance would be compromised when they came to racing but it turned out we were wrong! Everyone put in a massive show in their respective classes and we ended up with competitors doing well in virtually all of them!

Since this was an intervarsities competition, the highlight of the weekend was naturally the party on Saturday night! Hosted by the Stables club, the evenings entertainment included Banterstar Galactifunk and it was an epic night of hardcore partying! Coming to the party it was easy to tell the different colleges apart thanks to the different costume themes, including the army from DCU, the romans from LYIT and other groups like crayola, pokemon and our own crews attempts at disney themed contraptions! :P I won't say much else about the party except that it was epic, and it was also great craic seeing and catching up with loads of people that I havn't seen in years, and of course all the usual faces that appear at all the kayaking events around the country!

 

The final event of the weekend was freestyle which was planned for Curragower wave in the middle of Limerick city. Unfortunatly because of all the rain there's been recently the wave decided not to show up to the party, however thanks to some quick thinking by Conor Bredin we had a pretty sweet flatwater and downriver freestyle competition. Thanks in part to the atmosphere provided by the Red Bull truck with a massive set of speakers in the roof we had a great morning on the water before we headed back to UL for the prize giving.

 

In UL we acquired a venue, added up the results, sold a few more t-shirts and got ready to announce the winners of the national kayaking intervarsities 2013! As all the individual prizes were given out the tension slowly mounted in the build up to the announcement of the overall winners. As things went on we knew we were in the running since we were doing consistantly well in all the individual events. I finished up 1st in whitewater, 2nd in freestyle and 2nd in long distance gp but we didnt know if it would be enough to give us the overall title. We were genuinely shocked and delighted when it was called out that we had won the event overall! That's 4 years in a row that ULKC has won the intervarsities which is pretty serious going! At the captains meeting before the awards cermony it was decided that next years competition will be hosted by a combination of 3 Dublin colleges. I wish them all the best with the organisation and hopefully we can make it 5 in a row next time round!

 I want to thank all the sponsors of the event, including the Castletroy Park hotel, Brookfield Hall Student Accommodation and Red Bull for their support over the last few weeks and months. The Irish kayaking industry also got 120% behind the event which was very evident at the prize giving! Wavesport Ireland and I-Canoe donated an amazing amount of goodies as prizes for the events and 'college of the best craic' competition run by the Great Outdoors in cooperation with Pyranha also added a really exciting aspect to the weekend, which was a great encouragement for everyone to make the most of the weekend. Especially for smaller clubs who wouldn't generally have the people to compete on the river but are more than capable of holding their own on the dancefloor!

Intervarsities help!

Ok, I'm organising the whitewater race at the intervarsities on Saturday and I still need a few independent volunteers to help officiate. If anyone's up for helping out can give me a shout at eoinkeyes@yahoo.com?! It'll be an early start but there'll be tea and sandwiches at the UL boathouse afterwards for anyone who gives me a hand! Thanks!

Snowy trip to Wales!

The last week of the christmas break was spent in Wales with ULKC. We knew when we were planning the trip that it was going to be cold but I dont think anyone predicted what was actually in store for us! We rolled off the ferry with about 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground and blizzards and chaos on the roads all the way from there to North Wales. Of course we were Irish people in a snowstorm and thought it was brilliant craic, jumping out of the van every so often to help push stuck cars and throw snowballs at each other.

Long story short we made up for the lack of liquid water during the week with lots of snowball fights and sliding down snowy hills on everything we could get our hands on. And we got a few days paddling in on the river Dee; which was perfect for the beginners on the trip to push themselves on a bit. Unfortunatly even that was getting awful low by the end of the trip, and there was no water in any other rivers around, but sure what can you do. We had a great trip nonetheless, the hostel we stayed in was great ( Jesse James' bunkhouse for anyone who's looking! ), the owners were dead on and didnt mind lots of occasionally bored paddlers hanging around and causing trouble! We got back to Ireland a few days ago to warm water and good water levels so everything's looking good for the next while.

 Instructing on the river Dee. Brrrrrrrr!! It was still a sweet river for coaching and practising basic moves on, the less experienced paddlers on the trip made great progress over there, and I dont think they'll ever feel cold in Ireland again! Photo by Tessa Kingston.

The scenery around north Wales was something else with all the snow around!

This Friday is d-day for the kayaking intervarsities, starting with polo in the UL Arena pool on Friday evening, then moving into whitewater and long distance on Saturday and freestyle on Curragower on Sunday. The finishing touches are being made to the preparations and all going we'll have a pretty epic event! That's all for now, the next post on here will probably be a run down on the varsities, fingers crossed that it's all good news! Clean lines and happy paddling!

Eoin

Kayak intervarsities 2013 Captains and Safety Officers Weekend

This weekend we ran an event for the Captains and Safety officers of all the clubs who will be competing in Varsities in a few weeks time. The idea was to show all the lads around the locations where we'll be competing and generally have the craic! On Saturday morning, after having a quick look at the long distance location out the back of the UL boathouse, we headed to Gower where little Gower was working class! I've gone on enough here about how much I love paddling little Gower so all I'll say is we had a savage session with the tow line before the main wave started working! When the main wave did start working it was big, fast and steep with a tricky but do-able paddle on. Everyone had a great time on it before we got tired and hungry enough to call it a day.


Mike Shaw got some savage photos from little Gower on his shiney new camera: 

After we had refuelled we went to check out the location for the polo competition in the UL Arena pool. Since there was a round of the div 2 Munster Polo League on at the time all the captains got to have a game of polo as well as see the pool. We got some badly needed game time too which will help us get the UL team into shape for varsities. We're not at the standard yet but we're definatly making progress, hopefully with a few weeks practise we'll improve another bit before d-day!

After a cool party on Saturday night everyone headed slightly hungover out to Castleconnel to check out the whitewater course that I've spent the last few weeks putting together. I'm really happy with it, I think it's got a cool mix of poles, banners and bouys to navigate around and it's not too over the top with just 6 gates. There are cool moves on the entries to some of the gates like surfs and s-moves which should really seperate the competitors. The course combined with the rule changes that we're implementing mean that all the colleges seem pretty happy with the plans for the whitewater event. All the plans are in the final stages of coming together, with a bit of luck and effort over the next few weeks we'll host a weekend to remember!

I think during polo on Saturday I did too much paddling with funky feathered paddles and my wrists are feeling it now so I think the plan is to take some time off the water for the next few days. On Thursday we've got a club safety training day and then at stupid O'Clock on Friday morning we're heading to North Wales for a week. I cant wait for that now, last years trip was epic!

Anyway, that's it for the next few days, clean lines and happy paddling!

Tipping Away

Things have been fairly dry here recently but that's been no reason to stay off the water! There hasnt been enough rain  for the Glens to run and there's been so much rain up the country that Gower has been washed out for most of the past week or two. We did get one savage session the other day tho, when the ESB released enough water to bring little Gower out of hiding! We set up a tow line and had a savage session before the water dropped off again. I love little Gower when it works, it's a steep, fast, retentive wave which takes less than a minute to get back onto when you flush off. Pity it only works once in a blue moon!

The rain that has been falling has been enough to keep the Deel pretty high for the last few weeks. I've had some fun runs on it with Limerick Canoe Club and UL recently, the gorge section in particular is great craic at the levels we've had, even if the holes after it do make collecting swimmers a bit interesting! The guys from UL are making great progress. From beginners to potential instructors/leaders they're a solid out group for running rivers with. I did a non-stop run with a few of the lads from Limerick Canoe Club a while ago too. 10 minutes is the benchmark without pushing too hard, at race speed I'd say around 5-6 minutes would be possible!

Unfortunatly we've had to postpone the Glens race for a second time since there isnt much rain forecast for this weekend. Dissappointed but I guess that's kayaking in Ireland! Myself and Orky will figure out what to do now and we'll put the word out as soon as we decide. We might end up running a race on the Deel instead if the levels on that hold up for a few weeks.