DCUCanoe.ie

Was a good day all-round. Myself, Ashling Conway, Aisling Doherty, Ronan O’Hart, Ronan Dolan, Fiona Devitt and Ger Gleason headed out to the mighty Liffey. Levels were as high as I’ve seen them. We started of at the Sluice at Lucan, but it was fairly washed out. We managed to impress those attempting to play there with our supper paddling and rescue skills! A few swims later, we regrouped bellow and headed on downstream, our only loss being one of my booties which I had kindly lent to Ronan D!

Arriving at Lucan weir the boxes looked a little less than friendly with a nasty looking hole in the bottom one. Ronan O’Hart decided to go ahead anyway, telling us that the rest of them were fine and it would be easy enough to get around. He proceeded to spin around in the second box and end up sideways in the hole. The rest of us decided to stick with the chicken slide! But the fun wasn’t over yet, we decided to go for a play in the friendly looking hole on the left. It wasn’t bad, got some nice spins, but it didn’t want to let go. Ever. Even after a capsize it held us in. it didn’t help that it was just over a foot deep, so rolling was tricky. After some rather unusual rolling methods from myself and Ronan we decided to let that particular hole be.

Next stop was Annalivia weir, nothing to write home about here. The normal slide had a hole at the bottom which is probably wroth noting, we all ran it straight through without any bother! On to Wrens nests and things got a bit interesting again. I stayed above while the rest ran it all through on the left. After that I went back for a run down the centre. What I didn’t know was that in high water the line moves a few feet to the left (yes really it does! Honestly!) and I dropped straight onto the stopper. Surfed it down a bit before bashing myself of the fish slide before being able to paddle clear of the stopper bearing a rather sore jawbone. It got better though as there was some good playing potential on the left side.

And for the important part, the Billy award goes to Ronan D whose last swim was at Wrens, he also leads the count with a total of 3 swims. Ashling C makes up the count with a swim at the sluice. Well done for going back around and making it through without bother on the second time of asking!