Who turned down the heat?

Brrrrr. Back home and yesterday it snowed (that doesn't happen all that often in this country). It seems that East Africa is not the only place lacking in water, the South East of England is having its driest winter since the 1920's... not much paddling to be done at the moment then.

I had a good last few days on the Nile. We went to check out a wave that Steve Fisher had found on the left hand channel of Mulalu. It was a wave-hole, much slower than Nile Special but still handed out a few trashings if you got into the pile in the middle. Right hand blunts went well but you had to be aggressive. It was really difficult to paddle into the eddy after flushing and on too many occassions I had to get out of my boat and clamber over the rocks to get back into the eddy. The wave was good for a change to Special, but obviously not as good as Hurley :))




After our paddle and the hike up to the nearby village we were stranded for a while waiting for our transport (a local truck which had been ordered to pick us up at 6.00pm). By 6.30pm we had spent 1/2 hour too long with the local children poking us bizarre looking Muzungus (white people) and sitting on/in our boats. My rendition of 'heads,shoulders, knees and toes' only distracted them from poking us for a few minutes. By 6.45 we were starting to get cold, the sun was setting and we were, to say the least, a little bit concerned that we would be stranded in this African village 1/2 hr drive from the Hairy Lemon with no transport to get us there. Ed pulled the short straw and was nominated by Jon and I to see if he could find any kind of bikes to get us away from the enquisitive locals, his quest was successful. Thankfully though, just as the local cyclist thought his monthly wage was going to be earned in one go, the truck came hairing round the corner 1 hour late, phew. On future missions to Mu2 (as we later named the wave) Ed will be taking his mobile phone and the number to contact Rob at Hairy Lemon.

For a few hours on my last day Hairy Lemon was just how it used to be. 3 of us on the whole Island. Fantastic. Unfortunately the silence was broken when an overlander truck containing 30 people turned up. Oh well, I guess I have to accept that all things have to change.

My last few surfs on Nile Special were great, in between a whole load of aerial front surfing I got a couple of big pan ams and managed to retain a couple of helixes. A good way to end the trip.

I am going to overhaul my website in the next few weeks, I will probably use a different programme to design it (if I can work out how) so that it is easier to update in the future. I am also booked in for quite a few days of supply teaching (I can't wait to get back to work, no really... :(( ) to earn some well-needed cash for my next trip, wherever that may be.


I am going to be updating the gallery pages soon, but in the meantime here's a few photos of me surfing Nile Special. Thanks to Matt Tidy, Ed Smith and Jackie for taking the photos.

Surfing Special

Have spent a few days staying at the Lemon and surfing on Nile Special. The low water levels have meant a really flushy wave which you can only get on by tow rope, or by dropping on from above. I am not retaining many moves but it is still possible to go big and still good fun. The biceps in my left arm are getting a good work out from the tow rope and I'm sure it will end up longer than my right arm. I had an interesting time yesterday when I let go of my paddles instead of the tow rope, thankfully my hand roll worked - even in the boils!

I'm trying to work on new moves, but it is hard to do when I have not worked out how to retain my blunts.

There are lots of Brits and Canadians out here so the wave can be busy at times, but it is good to watch the others on the water. The pistol flip seems to be the move to go for - I have only just figured out what one is, and am not at all confident about being backwards on the wave so I'll be sticking to practicing the donkey flips and pan ams for now.

Only a few more days now till I'm heading back to cold damp England.

Back on the water

A mellow couple of days were spent at NRE following the incident. There was a nice memorial for Marc on the river bank on Wednesday evening, (his body was recovered and has been sent home) lots of people turned up to pay their respects, Marc had met a number of people out here and even those who hadn't met him came along to support their fellow paddlers. I will pass on all of your kind comments to Marc's friends.

We were all affected by what happened and it was hard to get back on the water again, especially to paddle past where he went under the water. I needed to paddle again though to get my confidence back up and to remotivate myself to go boating, so yesterday we did a few runs down left and right lines of Bujagali and down to Silverback, it was good fun, and still some big water even in the low water levels.

We ran the day 2 section on Wednesday, although the water is low there are still some great playwaves around but nothing very easy to set up on or learn moves on. It was good to do a section of river away from Buj though. Nile special was still handing out the occasional big move (generally one move and off), but it involved getting out of the boat and walking back up to the top to try again. Some of the Canadian paddlers have set up a tow-rope system so you can surf onto the Nile Special from the eddy, I haven't tried it out yet but I hear it is working quite well.

I'm off to the Lemon for a few days for some sunshine and surfing. Laters.

Sad News and Bad News from the Nile

Very sad news yesterday, as we were returned from our day trip down to Itunda, we were told one of the French paddlers had swum on the standard 'hump' line (the holes are quite sticky at these low levels). He was swimming towards the eddy and then disappeared into the seamline between the water flowing from ribcage and the water coming out from the hump (not a major eddyline by any means), he did not resurface. It is thought he had a foot entrapment. Our thoughts are with his family who received the news last night, and with his friends - particularly those who were with him and were helpless to do anything to help. Some of our group later went to see if they could see him in one of the eddy's, there was nothing else we could do to help. Some of his kit was found but sadly his body has not yet been recovered. It seems it was a very unlucky accident (the first of this kind on the Nile) and is a very sobering event, although the Nile River is generally friendly it is still a serious piece of water and needs to be treated with respect.

The water level situation seems very trivial after what happened yesterday, but the water level of the lake is now so low that they are releasing 40% less water out of the dam. This means that all of the traditional playspots will no longer exist, although there may perhaps be some others that turn up. This again seems trivial as we are not the ones that are really affected by this, as all of the businesses and residential areas in the Kampala/Jinja area have to exist with very little electricity - it is switched off for 12 hours every other day. Very few people can afford to buy/run a fuel-run generator. Everyone is hoping the rainy season will kick off soon.

Surf and sunshine on the Nile

Having finished my teaching job in December, I have spent a few weeks remembering how to paddle again. The water and work situation together did not allow for many days on the river, however I am now making up for it! After Christmas I spent several days on Hurley on a good two, trying to get my blunt back and get my boating muscles back into use.

I have now arrived in Uganda and I am spending 4 weeks on the White Nile. There are 7 of us who travelled out from England together. We didn't all know each other and are all of different abilities, but we have been paddling well together - the Nile is a great river for both novices and experienced paddlers alike.

The first few days were spent staying at NRE and paddling down to Silverback, the water level is really low so the rapids were different to the last time I was here (Oct 2004), generally a lot smaller. There are also some different play features that aren't about at high levels.

We paddled the Day 2 trip down to Nile Special, unfortunately the water was too low for Vengeance (nice green wave at medium levels), and 'hair of the dog' (fast wave) was really difficult to get on. We finished at Nile Special, which has also been frustratingly low and very difficult to get onto (but very easy to flush off!). My Weather Witch ability may not be working for the guys at Hurley but it is certainly working for this river!

We have now spent a couple of days at 'The Hairy Lemon' campsite just near to the Nile Special. This place has grown a lot since I was last here - I previously loved the remoteness of it and just 4 or 5 people staying on the whole Island, although it is still pretty and remote there are currently around 20+ kayakers staying there!! Good business for Rob and Erin (the owners) though, so I'm happy it is working out well for them.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the water level will be going up to high levels any time soon, so we won't be getting our late afternoon surfs on a green Mulalu wave (it is currently a hole). Hopefully the water levels will go up a bit though, it has been doing so for a short time each day, so we can at least get onto the wave for a few surfs! In the meantime we will be doing some more silverback runs and a day trip and hopefully a few back channels up at NRE, and of course some chilling in the sunshine!