NEVER let go of your T grip!

So, one of the days rafting I was in a boat with Pat and Luke. What a fantastic combination! It was by far my favourite day of rafting and I absolutely smashed the guiding, which is an amazing feeling!

I cant give a blow by blow account of the day but I will relay in a somewhat disjointed fashion my favourite parts of the trip.

The day started out with the funniest error of judgement that I have seen in a long time. We (me and Pat as crew, Luke guiding) were floating on some flat water above a rapid and Luke decided that he needed to get a better look at the rapid so he stood up on the pontoons (blown up edges of the boats). Its not hard to balance on these as long at as no-one is paddling. So Luke decides on the route he would like to take and calls a forward paddle. Pat and I respond with one strong forward stroke and hear a loud splash. Luke had forgotton to sit down! Now he was bobbing in the freezing water furious at his own stupidity. Pat and I couldn’t help him back in because we were debilitated with laughter. So we sat a roared with laughter while Luke ungracefully seal flopped his way back into the boat.

So when it was my turn to guide I was having a wonderful day! Nailing every rapid (It is important though, that I give lots of credit to my super strong, in sync, wonderfully funny crewmen.)

The following encounter demands a little prior knowledge on the readers part.
So the rapid is called the gobbler. It is aptly named because it you fall out on the gobbler then the big arse stopper will gobble you up and funnel you under an undercut rock and once you are there it is all bad news. When approaching a rapid you can either you backwards, or forwards. Don’t EVER go sidewards! It is a one way ticket to spectacular flipping footage.

So Myself, Pat and Luke are heading for the gobbler basking in the immense success of the previous rapid called waterfall (fairly self explanatory). When I accidentally hit a submerged rock. At this point it is worth mentioning that we are really quite close to going over the gobbler. So we hit this rock and it spins us backwards. I had two options: A, call a left turn to try and make the boat go forwards down the fast approaching rapid which probably wouldn’t work because the time it takes for the crew to react would mean that we would go down sideways; or B, Politely inform the crew that we would be completing the rapid backwards. I chose option B- Terrifying but slightly less likely to get us killed. Despite being the guide and thus maker of all decisions I addressed the crew in a very democratic manner..

“CAN WE TAKE THIS BACKWARDS??!!”

Luke was fairly opposed to the idea and responded succinctly with what we were all thinking

“NAH FUCK THAT!”

And we all simultaneously did the most powerful left turn I have ever seen and proceeded to fly down the rapid forwards, whilst screaming like 12 years olds at a sleepover (well, I know I was and I couldn’t hear anyone else.)

Once we were safe out of the Gobblers clutches Luke apologised for his momentary mutiny (a mutiny which I wasn’t at all opposed to) and blamed it mostly on the fact that he was too chicken to go down backwards. Thank goodness is all I can say, I personally was excreting bricks from my rear end at the thought of going backwards.

Previously in the day Pat was guiding us down a boulder garden when we hit a rock. The raft tipped sideways up the rock and, seeing that it might wrap, I jump/fell away from the boat to try and stop it wrapping (don’t question the logic, as I'm not sure I was right about it). So as I white water floated I managed to grab both Luke and My paddles, then I tried to swim to towards the eddy where there were other boats waiting. Do you know how immensely difficult it is to do an effective freestyle whilst holding a paddle in each hand.? Very very difficult, is the answer. So I somehow got to the eddy and was pulled up into the boat and a minute later a very shaken Luke also got pulled in. Pat, the bastard, had somehow managed to stay dry in the boat and we saw him raft on by to the next eddy with his abandoned ship. What happened during this incident that I wasn’t aware of at the time was while I jumped away from the raft, Luke got trapped between it and the rock as it started wrapping.* By the grace of god Pat managed to manoeuvre the boat off the rock before it wrapped and, in doing so, set Luke free. Had he not been so lucky.. sorry I cant continue that train of thought, my psychologist told me I’m not allowed to indulge in thoughts of ‘what if?’

Anyway, Everyone was safe so It was all ok.

With that in the back of your mind tune into the next story:

I was guiding and the boys thought it would be a fun Idea to stand up down a rapid, Being the guide, they asked for my permission. I was all for the idea- it is a nuts amount of fun standing up whilst going down a rapid. So we hurtle down this gorgy wave train and get to some calmer water at the end. Luke enquires as to how deep the water is. It wasn’t that deep and we continued to tootle along. At one point I ask if they want to sit down, (being my minions they have to follow orders until I relieve them of their obligations) Luke enthusiastically suggests we continue to stand. At this point we have arrived at a deep open pool of water. We stand around soaking up the serenity and waiting for the other boats to come down the rapid when Pat observes how deep the water is. “oh. Yeah.” Says Luke and he steps across the boat and pushes Pat out. Such a provocative act was so calmly executed that Pat had no defence. The other boats, who were following on behind us, came down to the scene of the crime and started yelling and demanding to see an act of retribution. Pat, with the help of his attacker, climbed back into the boat and told the hopeful onlookers that it was a perfectly legit move considering that he, Pat, had almost killed Luke a half hour ago.

And so the score was evened and we harmoniously continued (STILL standing) down the river.

That is all that I can write at the moment and Hopefully it has sated your desire to know how my holidays were.

*When you think about a raft wrapping imagine getting a rock, now get a little raft made out of plasticene. now carefully mould the plasticene raft around the grooves of the rock. That is what the water does to a real raft. It is a very painful, time consuming process trying to get it unstuck.