From Jennie: Whoopee what a wonderful way to kick off the new year on this awesome river! The Highveld Croc race organized by Dabulamanzi Canoe Club took place yesterday on Sunday 8 January from near the Lion Park to near Hartebeespoort dam a distance of 33kms on the water with some 8 kms of portaging included to toughen up those training for Dusi, although a paddle only option was available for the woesies, like me, who love to paddle but don’t do the portage thing! Also a great opportunity to get to know this wonderful river we have in our back garden which is so seldom enjoyed by local paddlers.
It was certainly a hot and glorious Highveld summer day and the portages must have been quite a task but no worse than can be expected at Dusi so excellent training was provided and although we had less rain in the days before the event so the water level wasn’t as high as hoped, it was still manageable and from the confluence onwards, very enjoyable!
No doubt however that K2’s needed expert skills to manouvre the tight technical stretches in the first quarter of the river race and the word is out that there were numerous swims at the first couple of technical rapids – there were also some 11 withdrawals through the course of the day due to boat damage or running out of time! One boat nose did go under a slab of concrete at the input after the broken Rambo’s bridge which reinforces the decision to make this a compulsory portage as the debris, rebar, shards of concrete spread around under the water can possibly be extremely damaging especially in the event of a possible swim – and lets face it – you can never say you will never swim!! The Pelindaba weirs were at a very safe level to shoot and swimmers had no problems as they jokingly blamed each other or the camera for their miscalculations!
The water was clean from regular rains in the preceding weeks and those who finished were satisfied and pleased with themselves and had a wonderful time. A visiting paddler from Natal although still a novice planning for his first Dusi was pleasantly impressed with our little Jukskei/Crocodile/Hennops river stretch after learning canoeing only on the Dusi river, coped very well and had a wonderful time…..!
We saw monkeys peeking at us through the tree branches and our resident Fish Eagle circled for a while to check out the action although the legavaans stayed out of sight with all the activity going on! Marshalls in position along the river at broken bridges, low level bridges, weirs etc battled to stay awake in the hot sun while waiting for the paddlers to come through in dribs and drabs with huge gaps inbetween – the sight of an approaching boat and paddles created some excitement that rippled down the groups of helpers! With only 29 Dusi race finishers and a further 12 paddle only finishers, the long stretch of over 30kms of river was not very busy in any one patch at any one time, but the race was certainly well organized, well marshaled and should have had many more participants!
Congratulations to Guy Potter who won the K2 put up as a prize by the race organizer and sponsor Malcolm Stothard of Kayak Racing.
The winning boat on this K2 event was Sub Vets Piers Cruickshanks and Michael Stewart (Dabs/ERK), certainly expected to fly the flag for Gauteng at the upcoming Dusi event, finishing in 3:12, with the second finisher being the first K1 participant also a Sub Vet now, Shaun Maphanga (FLCC) in 3:21 9 minutes later, while the second finishing K2 brought in Robert Crichton and Stuart Dring (DABS) another 9 minutes later in 3:30. Rhys Foster and Guy Potter (CROC/DABS) worked hard to catch the second K2 finishing in 3:43 while Anthony Bown (DAB) finished as the second K1 in 3:56.
James Tutton and Donna Winter (Kin) were next in 6th place and the first mixed double partnership finishing in 3:59. Adolf Joubert and Marie Rencken (CEN) finished as first Sub Master K2 in 4:30, and the first Master was Brian Bader (ERK) in 4:36 in a K1 but there were no K2 masters so we’ll give him the credit! The longest time for the race was recorded as 5:34.
Although the paddle only race category was not the official category of the event, it was won by Lee Hawkins (Crocs) in 3:17, with first K2 Chris Brown and Vaughn van der Merwe (DABS) finishing in 3:23.
Well done to Malcolm and his team of helpers on the day as well as for all the weeks of planning and organizing, scouting, dealing with landowners, worrying about water levels and pollution etc – a great success and definitely a race well needed in Gauteng to help prepare our paddlers properly and it really is a beautiful valley that the river winds through with fabulous rapids and wave trains which make it very enjoyable and such a welcome change from the straightforward Klip river!
Jennie Dallas
For: GCU
082 857 857 1