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KAYAKING
DANCING
WITH WAVES
Get into kayaking to see the world from the river
Kayaking has been compared to
snow-skiing: it has the same individual thrill and
challenge. You rush swiftly down, lean into the turn, spot
the oncoming hazard and twist gracefully away. The water
splashes in your face and you are exhilarated by speed and
movement with fresh air filling your lungs. At least, that's
the ideal. You can fall over, knock your head (wear a helmet
at all times!) or end up swimming for your life. Paddles and
boat go one way, you go the other. The river teaches many
lessons.
Like any natural phenomenon, the river
is bigger and much more powerful than you will ever be. You
can't dominate, you must adapt. The paddler isn't pitted
against the forces of nature. Rather, one adapts one's moves
to the power of the river and plays with the hydraulic
forces.
There are many kinds of kayaking, from
the mass sport of K1 and K2 racing in long thin fibre-glass
boats with rudders, to lonely ocean kayaking in sealed
Eskimo-style 'yaks that knife through the waves, to
playboating on growling foam piles boisterous rapids. You
can get a sporty sit-on-top boat for paddle skiing or a
wide-hulled sit-on-top for recreationally lazing about on
inland waterways. Still, whatever you choose, water always
has a trick up its sleeve and you had better know what you
are doing.
CLASSES AND TRIPS
 If
you want to start kayaking or develop your wilderness
paddling know-how, with a bomb-proof Eskimo roll and the
right equipment for tripping, join a kayak class. I run
kayak trips myself and will impart techniques as we go
along. For more formal lessons at the cutting edge of
kayaking today, I can put you in touch with various
trainers. Trips can be run near or far, on our backyard in
the Vaal for a few hours, or for several days in faraway
places where you must really be self-reliant, such as the
Oranje Gorge. Every trip is a learning experience.
Ask for info.
You can dance with the river, but
you've got to know the steps!
So said one of South Africa's greatest
paddlers, Jerome Truran, who helped me to establish The
Rivermen, the first touring operation in South Africa, in
the early 1980s. Jerome paddled the world's rivers including
the Amazon and the Zambezi, and was a member of the British
whitewater racing team. But his first love always remained
the inaccessible and virtually unknown rivers of this
country. He and other kayaking pioneers like Dave Walker and
Bruce Yelland put many of our greatest routes on the map,
including Deepdale to Hela Hela on the Mkomazi River,
Thrombosis Gorge on the Mzimkulu, and the Howick Falls
stretch of the Mgeni.
STILL PUSHING
Later pioneers have pushed further and further into the
headwaters and
dark coastal gorges of our rivers. Few American and European
paddlers have ever heard of South Africa's rivers and they
don't know what they're missing. Our biggest problem, of
course, is that rainfall is unpredictable and the rivers can
be bony beyond bony, wet rocks as someone once described the
Duzi in a bad year. But then there can be epic floods too,
and flood can succeed drought in just a few hours. So you
are never quite sure what you are going to meet when you
push off into swirling current and seek what lies around the
next bend.
I'm no death-defying kakayer although
I have done the odd first descent - such as the
Senqunyane (Little Orange or Senqu) in Lesotho. What I
helped to do was popularise the more accessible routes and
develop the rafting and kayaking techniques for the average
paddler or paying client to get down the river safely. Years
of route development left me with a sober appreciation for
the risks, but also a yearning to keep pushing for new
discoveries.
 I
suppose it was this spirit that prompted my son Corran to
become a leading adventurer and top kayak designer on the
world stage. He started with me at age 6 and has never
stopped pushing the limits. It was really he that
revolutionised kayak design in the 1990s by building the
first really short, chunky playboats starting with the Fury
(a prototype in fibre glass) and then the 007. Other
designers followed suit. He now lives in Montreal, running a
kayak and river surfboard factory and shop,
Imagine.
For myself, I just kayak for the fun
of it, and if it's spiced up with a bit of danger that's
well and good.
There's a world of whitewater out
there. Get into it!
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