Gettin' Spanked

There are several folk here now, but plenty more to come. With 31 nations expected we currently have Aussies, Brits, some Seppos, Belgians, a Kiwi and a Swiss, so we can expect this little river to get a lot busier in the next few days.

The river was still very high this morning, although a bit lower than yesterday. I have kept off the most exciting bit for the last few days waiting for it to drop, but today my patience ran out (what if it doesn't drop??) so we did a run down the classic. Andrea did a great job down the the very, very continuous first third, but had an unlucky swim in 'Angel Falls'. At this point we were reminded of the power of this river at this height- while she was able to swim to shore after only a few hundred metres, her boat went for at least a couple of kilometres followed, grabbed and bulldozed by Ben Oakley, Foo and myself. We just couldnt't get it to shore! The river is so fast and there are almost no eddies, so it just keeps on going. The damage done is pretty considerable considering this was a brand new boat this morning. It's repairable, but will never be a race boat.

In addition to Aussie carnage, the poms had a big day out. Every British team member here swam today except for Hannah Brown. The culprit has been the great big grabby hole just after the finish of the sprint course. At this height it is evil- you race as hard as you can possibly go for about 100 seconds, and then about one quarter of a second after crossing the finishing beam you drop into the meatiest unavoidable stopper on the course. A stopper is basically a broken wave. This one can stop an 80 kg paddler with 11 kg of boat travelling at 25 km/hr and pull him or her back upstream and regurgitate them in an upside down fashion, which often means a swim at the end of a sprint race where your breath hold ability is not as good as normal. It's fine at normal levels, but we haven't had them lately and are wondering if we will get 'normal' levels at all. At least in the race there will be rescue teams there, and it is after the finish line after all.

Hamish and Gen have gone to Cradle Mountain for a few days, so there will be no Club Penguin for me. I will miss Hamish! Having good communications via Skype and something to do together has made it easier for me, and I hope for him.

Ben and Stew get here tomorrow from Austria so we will have a complete Australian team. It's likely that most of us will do a couple of full length runs in the afternoon, which I'm looking forward to. It's way more fun doing runs with other people around.