Licensed to paddle - and fall off safely

By COLIN MOORE

A bespectacled, bearded and beaming Robin Judkins on Sumner Beach, Christchurch, greeting finishers in the Coast to Coast multisport event, has become an iconic image of life in New Zealand.

Judkins has welcomed the weary since 1983, when he organised the first 238km dash from Kumara Beach on the West Coast across the South Island.

The annual Coast to Coast event involving mountain running, cycling and kayaking has been one of the main inspirations for their international popularity. The races draw competitors from all over the world and inspire many New Zealanders to compete in similar events overseas.

For many entrants, taking part in a multisport event is an extension of some other outdoor pursuit, so the mere mortals can be thankful that Judkins has left another legacy - safety. You can't go kayaking down 67km of the Waimakariri River unless you can prove that you know what you're doing. It's a requirement that other multisport event organisers have copied.

Knowing what you are doing means getting a proficiency certificate from a recognised source to show that you have the skills to kayak safely in grade-two white water.

Rivers are graded internationally on a six-point scale of technical difficulty. Grade one is flat water but it can be fast; grade six is big water where a capsize may be fatal; grade two has waves breaking white but without obstacles; grade three - about average for most commercial rafting operations - includes rapids with obstacles such as rocks, logs, or stopper waves and requires good boat-handling skills.

I have come sadly astray trying to negotiate grade two and three rapids without the necessary skills, so I have an ulterior motive in joining a bunch of would-be multisporters on a grade two certificate course organised by Sue and Peter Sommerhalder of the Auckland Canoe Centre.

We have in common a lack of paddling skills on moving water. I can land a sea kayak on a surf beach, but I haven't been able to get my head around applying the same skills on a river. It seems appropriate that the course should start in salt water at Hingaia Bridge, on Drury Creek, near Karaka in South Auckland.

The creek, which reaches into Papakura from Bottletop Bay on the Manukau Harbour, surges with the incoming and outgoing tides with flows as fast as you will find on any grade-two river. And where the water rushes around a bend and is disturbed by the road bridge pilings, it creates waves "breaking white but without obstacles" and back eddies.

An eddy is created when an obstacle, such as a clump of rocks, sends the water flowing back upstream. It is where you can rest, or land and stop for lunch, but getting there can be difficult because the junction where the current changes direction is an easy place to capsize.

Paddling a grade-two river successfully is about being able to identify eddies and paddle in and out of them.

I am forced to miss the practise session on Drury Creek, which soon shows when the following weekend the course moves to the Whanganui River at Taumarunui.

We put in at Cherry Grove, the starting point for canoeists making a five-day, 145km journey to Pipiriki. From the bank the river seems reasonably tame but at water level in small white-water canoes it is a different proposition.

Our instructors, Carol Falkner, an occupational therapist and multisporter, and Andre Schoneveld, an instructor with the Taranaki Outdoor Pursuits and Education Centre, take us through the skills required for turning into and out of an eddy (eddy turns) and moving from one side of a river to the other (ferry glide.)

It all goes okay until we run a small rapid and I forget the most basic rule - which is to keep paddling. A wave hits me and I am floating down a fairly cold Whanganui River on my back with my bottom getting bounced on an occasional rock.

The need to take some photographs is a good excuse to sit out the afternoon session as I am a bit deflated.

A handsome meal in Taumarunui's Cosmopolitan Club, a good night's sleep, and Sue Sommerhalder's three-course breakfast does wonders even for an unfit non-multisporter, and I am feeling much happier when we again launch at Cherry Grove.

This time we are in long kayaks. I have a 4.1m plastic kayak that is good for estuary cruising, coastal overnighters or journeys on rivers like the Whanganui.

I feel much more at home than in the white-water kayak and the instructors say it shows.

I am enjoying the experience, but that was probably my undoing. Another dunking. But this time I take it in my stride, or should I say paddle stroke, and continue on to Ohinepane, one of the Whanganui River journey campsites, 22km from Cherry Grove.

It is another 35km to Whakahoro and I feel confident about paddling the stretch unguided. After all, capsizes notwithstanding, I have a "certificate of achievement" that I have "successfully completed the multisport grade-two certificate with the Auckland Canoe Centre".

And have I finally got my head around handling moving water? Yes. Just make sure you keep the edge of your kayak raised in the direction you are travelling, or that the current is coming towards you. Imagine sweeping the flat palm of your hand across the top of a pool of water. Tip the leading edge of your hand down - and you'll understand the theory.

All I need now is more practice.

Auckland Canoe Centre, ph (09) 815 2073, multisport grade two certificate course, $330 a person including meals and accommodation; kayak rolling, $149 for three-lesson course.

Whanganui River journeys, Canoe Safaris NZ, ph (06) 385 9237,
email: canoe@voyager.co.nz

Department of Conservation, Taumarunui, ph (07) 895 8201.

* Email Colin Moore