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Xref: news.doit.wisc.edu rec.boats.paddle:135448
This weekend I was planning on heading up to the Ocoee Friday night to pick
up a Kix and a Nyami Nyami (Slate River Kayaks new two person ww kayak) for
some friends of mine and then heading to the Green Narrows for Sat and back
to the Ocoee to watch the rodeo finals and paddle the river.
The Kix was stolen on its way to the Ocoee so that boat was not available
for pickup.
Friday Joe and I got to the Ocoee half an hour late but the Slate River guys
where still there patiently waiting for me. I have never seen one of
these before. It is BIG. 125 gallons of big beefy boat. We started
unloading it from the van and I discovered it weighs more than it has
volume. This thing is HEAVY. We loaded it up and after finishing up the
jokes comparing it to the two 007's which where already on my roof we took
off for the Green.
Sat morning we discovered the Green was not running :( I was shocked
considering the amount of recent rainfall. We decided to head back to the
Ocoee. We watched some of the Thru the Rapid competition then decided to
head to the put in to test the Nyami Nyami.
I have briefly sat in a Topo Duo and paddled one into Flipper (rapid on the
Ocoee river TN USA) a few times but never really paddled a tandem kayak
before and since Joe is a C1er and not a Kboater this should prove
interesting. I was smart enough to get in the back seat and off we went.
This is one big boat but it handled surprisingly well. Joe in front
powering forward and me in back controlling the boat and hitting Joe in the
back of the head whenever the urge came upon me. Entrance rapid was a
piece of cake. This boat is really stable. As we blasted by Grumpy I
thought about the boof on river left just above North Shore. They claim
this thing will creek. Well lets see about that. We paddled forward as
hard as we could and nailed the boof. I couldn't believe it. The boat was
still parallel to the water when I placed my last stroke on the lip. Joe
was way up in the air. We actually landed completely flat. Joe turned
around and had this big ol grin on his face. He said the feeling of being
airborne that long was very cool.
Hmmm this boat was starting to be fun. We paddled down to North Shore and
eddied out. I am not going to mention that I almost missed that HUGE eddy
because my slip stroke that I use with such success in the 7 does absolutely
nothing in the Nyami Nyami. I did recover by making a hard sweep stroke
and putting the boat on edge. Thats when we discovered handling point
number two. This boat loves to be leaned into turns. It really corners
well when aggressive leans are used. We missed North Shore the first
couple of times. I was letting the nose get turned by the current and was
unable to correct it. The third time we had a decent surf. Nothing
spectacular but we where on the wave.
We tried some 360's at staging eddy but the boat was to long and we where
grabbing to much current. We did try our first roll out. We decided
the back person initiates the roll and the front person just goes with it.
We rolled up 4 or 5 times without missing so we felt fine. Not to far
above Broken Nose on river left is a good 360 hole. We hit it and where
able to link several 360's very cool in a boat this long. The person out
of the hole is out of the hole by 8 or 10 feet. It is very weird to be
stuck in a hole and be past the boil line at the same time.
Next up is Broken Nose. You can guess how it got its name :) It is a fun
rapid with a bunch of eddies. Some tough to catch and some easy. We
wanted to see how many we could catch. The first one is really above the
rapid so not much difficulty in it. The Second eddy went very smoothly. We
ferried over and down into the second eddy. As we sat in this eddy a bunch
of other boaters started bombing through. It gave me more perspective on
how people with a little less control feel around a bunch of boaters being
reckless. One guy kept sitting in the eddy below and not doing anything so
we decided to go ahead and go. We peeled out and nailed the eddy. I was
rather proud of this one because the guy in the Vertigo was taking up the
middle part of the eddy so we had to pass him and pull up on the inside of
him. To avoid Mr Vertigo we peeled out low. I figured the extra power we
had would let us make the next eddy. I screwed up and let the nose get
caught again. We ended up in the middle of the current facing downstream so
we went ahead and ran the rest of the rapid.
We where discovering the handling characteristics of the boat. It is VERY
fast and powerful. It turns easily if you use the correct strokes and body
lean. The only difficulty we ever had with control was if you let the nose
get caught in some current and it gets momentum going somewhere it is going
there. Correcting for mistakes like that is very difficult.
We paddled on down and hit a few more play spots. We did get a couple more
360's in Moon Shoot and had a couple pretty good surfs.
Double Suck was coming up. We decided to see how well it punched holes so
we took the center line and went right through. The funny thing was Joe
cleared the boil line and stopped paddling. As soon as Joe stopped paddling
the boat felt like it hit a brick wall it stopped so fast. I was surfing
Double Suck and Joe was looking back at me very amused. He promptly paddled
forward and pulled us right out. We then decided to switch seats.
The front seat is cool. I didn't want to sit there because I like
controlling the boat and being above water during enders. I am glad we
switched. The person in front gets one wet ride. Every little wave comes
crashing over the front of the boat. Makes the river seem bigger than it
is.
Joe was having the same learning curve I had in the back seat and so when we
pealed out and tried to surf Double Trouble the nose got a little sideways
and we missed it :( I really wanted to surf that wave in the Nyami. We
tried a Splat at the pyramid shaped rock where all the rafters swim. It
didn't go very well :)
Flipper was fun. I was in the front so I don't know what happened except I
was under water :). I want to go back to Flipper because we never got
vertical but it was still fun.
Hollywood hole is the next playspot. We got in line behind two rafts. A
third raft came down into the eddy a couple minutes behind us. The second
raft was surfing and Joe and I where getting into position to get into the
hole when raft guide number 3 yelled all forward. He plowed into me and
bounced us off a rock. I calmly told his guest how incompetent a move that
was. That all of us on the river are here to have a good time and for him
to intentionally run us over demonstrated how incompetent he was. He glared
at me and the other raft came out of the hole. Joe paddled us forward and
we had another fun surf. I can't get over how much fun it is to tandem
surf. Trying to communicate what we want to do to get 360's ect. We got
several nice ones here and peeled out for the doldrums.
We switched back to me being in back and Joe in front in the Doldrums.
After the switch we decided to try hand rolls. We where able to hand roll
up on both sides. This boat is VERY easy to roll. We had a fun line in
Tablesaw and blasted on into Diamond Splitter. We tried for the micro eddy
behind the Diamond but I blew the line. We where able to get back and over
to Witch's hole to catch it on the fly. That was fun. We tried a bunch
of stuff in here. The thing that keeps sticking out was the fact we had not
flipped yet and we where playing as hard as we could think of. This boat is
rock solid stable.
We boogied on down and surfed a few more holes ect. We finally got to Hell
Hole. I thought the rodeo was finished for the day but it was still going
strong. The rodeo was temporarily paused as a line of rafts went through.
Joe and I decided to tail them so we could clear the hole and not interrupt
the rodeo. We where about 50 feet behind the last raft in a big purple
tandem boat. As soon as the last raft cleared a competitor jumped in the
hole! We frantically tried to catch an eddy because we didn't want to mess
up the competition. We where past the last real eddy but Joe was able to
grab ahold of shore while I kept paddling to keep us close to shore. We
where not very stable so when we heard the announcer say come on down guys
we peeled out. No sooner had we turned back downstream than a competitor
jumped into the hole. We where to close to change course without
broadsiding the hole and sweeping everything out so we paddled hard forward
and managed to get to the right edge of the hole. We did not collide which
I was very glad for. Even though the rodeo boater should have been paying
attention I didn't want to screw up somones chance.
From here out it is basically flatwater to the take out.
I have not had that much fun on the Ocoee in a long time. This Tandem
thing is a blast. Joe and I are going to take it down Section 4 a few
times and then paddle the Narrows in it.
I can't really compare it to a Topo Duo as to which is better. I do know
this boat boofs very well, was very controllable and basically a complete
blast.
Oh Chuck, If you are reading this please disregard the rest of the post.
The only part that matters is after this point......... The Slate River
guys never showed. I don't know where your boat is :)
Scott Bristow
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