I was to be the K1 paddler in team Pam Golding. Met the team the night before and we planned the days proceedings with Scott, our team leader who had secured the sponsorship. Although everybody claimed to not take things too seriously I got the feeling that every member was or had been a competitive athlete. On the actual morning the quality of the team started to show since by the time our road biker came in we were sitting in the top thirty. Things were looking good, very good. Our road runner put in an excellent time so by the time he handed over to me I was ready to deliver my personal best. Nikki Mocke set off about 5 min ahead of me and she was sure to have been on a good team.
So having gotten the arm band I hopped into my K1, put the juice hose in my mouth and tried to secure the splashy. Almost decided to leave the splashy as other guys were leaving it but I had also done my holiday training on the very same lagoon in a surfski and the wind regularly picked up to the level where wind-driven white horses would make things uncomfortable, and thats on a surfski. I didn't put the splashy on properly, there was a gap at the back, but felt that would be fine.
So off I went. Things were looking good and I caught up to two surfskiers who had to hop off to de-weed their rudders. The wind started to pick up though and with the increasing size of the mini-swells the surfski paddlers managed to pass me. The swells seemed to be at exactly the right frequency for the nose of the K1 to constantly slap up and down, breaking the speed of the boat. I felt a bit of water at my feet and this was a bit worrying but I told myself that all I had to to was turn around the buoy (a police ski boat) and all would be good. I got to within 500m of the police boat when I realized that things were getting exponentially worse. All the water accumulated in the nose of my K1, so I would submarine deeper and deeper with each mini-swell. Things were looking bad, the water had to get out or I would sink.
With sinking being almost certain I looked to see how far I was from shore, sadly I was at least 1.5km from shore. I knew the distance from my training paddles across the lagoon. There was no way I could reach shore. So my only hope was to push on to the police boat. They already had another K1 on the boat and were trying to tip the water out of that boat. All I had to do was reach the police boat. As I got to within 20m of it though my K1 did its final submarine dive and sank. It was completely filled with water but the bouyancy inside the boat stopped the boat from going down to the bottom. Thank God for the bouyancy! I tried to sit in it and paddle it submarine style but this wasn't working so well. A random paddler gave me advice on how to paddle the submarine but I didn't understand what he was on about, so I kept trying to ride the submarine to the police boat. There was no way I wasn't going to finish this race, two team members were waiting for me.
I had only been busy perfecting my submarine riding style for a few seconds when my only hope of getting going again went down in front of my eyes. All the police men on the buoy decided to stand on one side of the boat while tipping water out of the K1 they had aboard. With yelps from the crew the back corner of the boat started filling with water and with everybody falling further to the submerged side the boat went over. Great. We now had about 7 people in the water. I felt that was it, race over. It was raining now and one couldn't see all the way back to the start which was about 6km away. We had to get rescued, the police guys didn't have life saving jackets on and were clinging to the ski boat. As it turns out the only other flare in the group wasn't working, so I opened my pencil flare case (which I had never expected to have to use) and fired off a salvo of three and then a last one aimed at Fisherhaven for good measure. I had no hesitation if firing my flares, especially after reading
this article on www.surfski.info
As I straddled the submarine I tried phoning Scott to give him the bad news but I couldn't operate the joy-stick on my phone through the plastic cover. I would have to wait. Surprisingly few paddlers came to find the turning buoy, most hadn't even started the race, this made me feel even worse, we had really been doing well. After what might have been 10 minutes a ski boat approached from Fisherhaven and soon after another two rubber ducks. Things were looking up. The guys in the one rubber duck knew what they were doing, they must have been the official rescue crew. They delegated work to the boats and said they would help me just now. In order to lighten the load I drank some of my juice and squeezed the remaining liquid out.
Well they had me going in no time when it was my turn, the K1 was emptied on one side while I was instructed to swim to the other side and mount the craft. Once aboard I sheepishly asked if they would let me continue and that is precisely what they had been thinking. Great. They helped me in and this time my splashy was properly secured. Off I went, finally! I paddled hard and fast but still submarined quite a bit. The odd thing was that I still saw a few guys without splash covers on the water. My K1 must have been the problem. I had picked it up for R 480 on an auction and it was quite beat up, but it never sank before.
Upon getting to the finish I charged through the mud and handed the arm band to Scott who was very happy to see me. Everybody was freezing at the finish, the rain and wind taking its toll. We emptied about 2 litres of water from my boat before carrying it, mmmm, I had another leak then.
All in all we lost 20 - 30 minutes and still finished with a respectable 7:30min. What a race! Despite rain at the finish two commentators kept things lively. The hot food and beer on offer helped as well. I couldn't believe how many top sports people took part, even Bruce Fordyce made an appearance. Overall the organization was first class. Near sinking aside, being part of a team made this one of my best paddles ever. Cheering each other on at the change-overs, the team briefing, a team picture, it was fantastic.
