I started my 450 km journey.
Everything was going well.
Then on day 3.
Day 3.
By 1.00pm I approached a ford, it looked harmless, there was about 8 centimetres of water running over the road. Big boulders lined each side of the banks making it too hard to get out, but the ford looked safe enough to beach the kayak on the road and then get out. I approached the crossing slowly and carefully, readying to beach
the kayak. With a little speed as I got close my bow lifted onto the concrete, but stopped abruptly after half a metre. The kayak wouldn't go any further due to its heavy weight but that wasn't a problem so I thought.
Within a split second the current and the suction from the underwater culverts pushed and sucked the kayak sideways and capsized it. Before I could think of a strategy and how great my life had been, I was sucked out of the cockpit and dragged inside one of the culverts by the amazing suction force of the water. I was completely helpless to do anything.
The culvert was
dark and full of water with a little light streaming at the end. As I was dragged along there were no air pockets, just a slide into the abyss. I remember thinking, “what if there are bars or timber or something stuck at the end of the pipe, I could end up like grated cheese” or in reality held there until I had no breath left.
I have paddled in some dangerous situations, but I had more time to evaluate what to do,
here I was sucked out of my kayak so quickly I had no time to re-act. The suction pull of the water was amazingly powerful. There was no way to fight it and luckily none of my clothing got caught, which would have been certain disaster. I was like a crumb being sucked down a plug hole.
Although I could have been experiencing a near death experience I felt calm with no sense of panic
and my short journey, sliding through the concrete pipe into the abyss felt quite surreal. I just let myself go, held my breath and although I knew death could be near, dying this way didn’t seen unpleasant.
Then there was a little light and suddenly I shot out of the tube into daylight, bumped over a cluster of rocks and into a pool that washed me downstream with the current. It was
like taking a ride on one of the water slides at Adventure World, and I didn’t have to pay for the bruises!
Now I knew a little of what novices went through after each capsize down a rapid, and it really didn’t feel good. It had been a long time since I had capsized in white water so it took me by surprise and after that experience, I hope it never happens to me again for another
15 years.
