Late April Novice Trip 2018
| River: | Haw |
| Skill: | Novice |
| Trip Date: | 04/29/2018 |
I usually coordinate this trip the end of April because I've found that the last weekend of April is late enough to be warm, but early enough to still have water somewhere. This year, I had more water than I wanted. After nervously watching water levels all week, we ended up with the Goldilock's Solution for kayaking: the Cape Fear was too high, the Eno was too low, but the Haw was mostly right (5.8', only a bit higher than my preferred novice level of 5.5').
Coordinating across email, Meetup, Facebook, Facebook events, Facebook Massaging, and text messages made working out the details for a large group challenging. A forecast drop in temperatures, a shoulder injury, a foot injury, and me losing track of one of the attendees caused six last-minute dropouts, but almost everyone made sure I knew it. When all was said and done we had eleven: RickS, JoeS, PaulS, WayneJ, Hamish+1, IanP, CamilleW, Serina, EricR, and JoanM.
We all assembled at the Bynum Mill access (although we temporarily lost one to the Bynum Bridge access). Starting out we all wondered about the temps, but the day (and more importantly water!) warmed up nicely to make the weather awesome.
The first task of the day was Hamish's very first wet exit. After that we all proceeded downstream with only the occasional swim, but they were evenly distributed across our novice boaters, with no one overly grandstanding. Wayne had the opportunity to practice swiftwater rescue to recover a pinned boat. Other than that no particular drama. Serina, the person with the most concerns about capsizing, never flipped at all!
Reaching 64, five of us reset shuttle and ran the Lower as well. Eric managed to just barely squeeze his only swim at the exit to the Maze.
A great day of fellowship on the water.