The Big Water Makes for Tricky Swimming

On the Sunday I had arranged for Jeramy. A local Kayak guide to meet me at 8. Tired and a bit jaded from my night out in Bryson City, we loaded up the truck with the latest 2006 kit and head off in search of the Ocoee River..

I have not been paddling for a while and told Jeramy quite clearly, that although I am very comfortable in a kayak, my enthusiasm for this kind of activity often out weighs my skill level by quite a big margin. I am going to ignore all previous comments from friends back home, as to the authenticity of the photos posted earlier.

So, me and Jez got to the ‘put in’ point. We were fortunate to have two cars, so the usual carry on, of putting a vehicle at the ‘get out’ point, shuffling the safety gear around, a bit of car park flashing and squeezing into lots of black rubber gear was done easily. Then it was time to go and just get on with it.

The Ocoee river level is controlled by a dam release system. This was just by the car park at the ‘put in’ and had me terrified before we started. The volume of water was a good percentage higher than I have paddled before.

A cursory look at the first rapid section caused a bit of arse clinching. The choice offered up by Jez was, an option between getting in just after the first rapid or having to do a very committing ferry ( a traverse across river by paddling up stream)to hit the safe flow on river left…Some of this might loose some folks, sorry about that.. The option of skipping it, entered my mind but the rapid just went on into rapid two and so on, so I decided that we should just go for it.

Like a duckling, (Yellow boat) instinctive but inexperienced I intrepidly followed mother duck!

Break out from the eddie, river right, paddling like fury not to loose ground down stream towards the jaws of death bellow, ducked in, safely to a tiny eddie behind a rock, catching breath for the second part of this river crossing. Then boom… we leant off down stream and caught the flow. I was just following the line of my instructor, which I was doing well until major rapid three.. The drops and holes were enormous, great fun to shoot. Too huge for me to play in. I was just surviving at this point. On the first part of rapid three with a name tag, like black hole, serpents teath, or ‘Don’t do this you nutter, you are almost certainly going to die. I shot past the USA ‘Dagger’ rodeo team who were merrily training in a ‘Hole’ the size of jesus. They were cart-wheeling, spinning, looping and every other ing that they could do. Distracted of Brighton, also managed a full reverse Loop. This would have been very cool if I had managed a successful Eskimo roll. At this point my protective helmet was being tested to its breaking limit by the local sub aquine geology, as was my second attempt at rolling. Needless to say, it was time to part company with the said, yellow boat and try my hand at swimming. Now then. Swimming and Kayaking are two things in this life that I can do with reasonable effect. However.. Rapid three, was crazy and had already found thelimit of my kayaking skills!!! Not to mention as well, that rapid three is about 400 meters long.. I had managed to skilfully navigate up right, about 60 meters, up side down, about another 30 and then the swim. The Ocoee river is wide! And it is moving at quite a clip. Normal swimming techniques do not apply, especially when clutching a 2 meter long paddle. Feet together is a good idea, knees up to chest and sculling one handed whilst being bounced of huge rocks was making my swimming efforts look more like drowning. My sense of humour was also suffering some terminal problems. I managed to get into an eddie after about a 150 more meters. I was then almost simultaneously joined by the whole ‘Dagger’ team asking jovially how I enjoyed my swim… (they were still in their boats..) the rest of whom were assisting my guide lower down the river with a yellow boat.

I won’t continue to bore you with my day on the Ocoee river. I enjoyed it though! I will have to admit to another swim later in the day but only after an incredible display of skill and dexterity that even, my slightly over cool instructor was forced to comment on. He said, “ shame that you ended that move with the swim!”

I had enjoyed it though and will be returning to do it all again soon!

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