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!