Orari

Kayaking
Personal
Group: Me, Lana, Emma, Tim, Brad, Parfitt, Quintin (third years), Lily, Rachel, Tash, Kieran, Matt and Richie (first years)
River: Orari
Flow: gauge said 28, but there was double the water from when we paddled it last time when it said 30, so we guess around 50-60 cumecs
Grade: 2 (+?)

The whole outing was a bit more exciting than we planned. Starting with the drive in, the fords where flowing pretty high themselves and the last one was really deep and rutted. Tim got his car over but the others weren't going to make it so we ran shuttles up with the one car. Some of the boys ran the Andrews Stream drops, the rest of us ran safety. Brad was in a play boat, went too far right and went really deep, coming up against the wall, got worked and swam, Lana throw bagged him out. The others got down ok.

Then it got time for everyone to get on the river. Third years go in first and went down to the first couple of eddies to wait for the first years. And I didn't realise how shaky the girls were, Lily, Rachel and Tash all had very little control of their boats and were very wobbly. Tim, Emma and I were the only third years in river runners, the rest were in play boats. So the run went very poorly really and we didn't organise it at all well. Rachel swam first, lost her gear. Her boat was found, paddle got chucked into a tree upstream and we were all downstream after her boat. She ended up walking out with her boat. Tash swam not long after, got her paddle, chucked it into an eddy and her boat was chased for ages, unfortunately it didn't have air bags, wasn't floating and we lost sight of it. We all got a bit spread out at this stage and Lily took a swim. Tash had no boat or paddle so she walked out as well. Got everyone else safely down the last of the river. Went for a boat search to no avail.

Learnings: Take river runners when taking first years out. Ask the first years how they are paddling, this was not meant to be an instructed/guided trip, but we would have made it so if we'd found out more. Keep tight together and make organised plans. Make sure first years have blown up air bags. Perhaps the girls were not actually up to this run. It is a really cool class II to learn on but at this flow it was quite boily for them and its very continuous. A couple of us could have bombed the run to check it out while the others where doing shuttle and running the stream.