Kayak4Ever

Tim and I had to take last weekend off from paddling because he was on call for work and we had many home projects that needed attention. But yesterday we were free to head to the river, so we loaded everything up to head to the Ocoee in Tennessee. It’s great that the Ocoee is only a 2-hour drive from Atlanta!

We met our friend Marshall at that the McDonalds on Windy Hill so the three of us could carpool. There was a rainbow of Dagger Nomads on top of our car — Tim and Marshall both have the big Nomads (yellow and red, respectively) and my short Nomad is green. Marshall brought his big boat because he wanted a calm run (minimal playing) after a late night at a friend’s birthday party. Tim wants time in his creek boat because he has his eyes on possibly running the Green later this fall. And of course I’m in my big boat because it’s my main boat.

So this time when we got to the river, I didn’t feel nervous. I was happy to be there. We ran into some more friends at the put in…Mark and Martina, McGee, and Natalie. Mark N. from Ellijay also arrived up as we were suiting up.

I picked up my boat and started the walk down to the 2nd put-in below Grumpies. This time I looked at that first rapid and thought the out-of-the-gate ferry looked doable. I’m going to run Grumpies pretty soon — probably in a late afternoon when there’s not so much raft traffic.

Each time I go to the Ocoee I try something new. This time I decided to run a new line at Broken Nose. I have been going far left to take the creeky slide. This time I asked Martina to show me the middle line — what most people call the sneak line. She showed me the big rock, that’s located kind of center right, where you cut left above the rock and then turn downstream to navigate through some bouncy water where you bypass the ledges in the main line (the main line is to the right).
The middle line was good to go

Now that I knew a fun new line at Broken Nose, I said I also wanted to take the main line at Slice and Dice! (usually I run straight down the left). So, Martina described the line to me and we headed on down.

In Slice and Dice there are several holes to navigate and on the main line you basically thread through the holes — starting on the left and first driving left to right between an upper and lower hole. Then reaching a relatively calm patch of water in the middle of the river before angling back toward river left to punch a final set of holes.

Granted there are plenty of routes that experienced boaters can take through the rapids, I’m just describing what many folks call the main line at Slice and Dice.

So the cool news is I had a great combat roll after the top pair of holes (I clipped the edge of the lower hole and flipped).

The other excitement was I scraped my jaw on a rock underwater. Aack! I didn’t commit to paddling through the lower holes and I flipped again at the hole where long boats sometimes play doing enders. Crap. I rushed my first roll, went back over in a not great position leaning toward my back deck, did not get tucked soon enough and scraped my right jaw on a rock. Ugh.

I admit, after bumping my jaw on the river bottom, my brain didn’t want to try another roll. Yep, I punched out and swam. I wish I’d held out to just set up to try another roll…since basically I’d reached the pool at that point…and I later learned Tim was right there to hand-of-god my boat and me. But I didn’t hang out. I bailed. The learning curve continues. Next time…

P.S. I came up smiling from the swim. No major carnage from the jaw scrape. Thankfully just a little rasberry mark that looks like road rash like you get if you fall off your bike.

P.P.S. While I was swimming to the eddy, somebody asked me if I hit something while I was underwater. I said, “Yeah, I hit a rock.” He said, “I thought so, I saw your boat bounce.” Glad to provide some entertainment for the folks in the eddies.

Oh! and one more thing about Flipper…

At Flipper Tim and I ran into Heidi who we originally met when we all lived in Ohio. Now Heidi also lives in the south. She was paddling with Ryan and Sarah. Tim was ahead of me in this rapid. He went down into the river left eddy below the drop at Flipper. I was in the eddy above the drop waiting my turn and making sure the way was clear of rafts.

Usually Tim will go first at Flipper and then use his paddle to point to where I want to line up for the boof. This time Tim didn’t point out the line. He figured I knew what I was doing here. That was cool!

I peeled out of the eddy, looked for my line at the ledge, and took a good stroke over the lip to drop down flat into the eddy. Sarah and Heidi
said my boof looked good. That was the nicest thing to hear right there because I used to be kind of freaked about Flipper.