Flesk Race

T-wave rodeo was a great success and spurred Colin Wong to organise the next event down in county kerry on his local run the flesk.

Kerry has some amazing rivers and the flesk is one of the best Ireland has to offer. The race took place on the middle Flesk, from the gates to the eddy above pollgorm bridge. This is 2km of class 4-5 whitewater and was most definitely going to be a challenge.

December 3nd came and the levels were right making the race a good to go. Toby Orky and I loaded up the van and headed south.

We arrived at the flesk a little bit late but still got to fit in a practice run. This was well needed, to brush up on the memory of all the lines as it had been quite some time since I was on this river.

There was a great turn out at the race with over 30 paddlers on the water and over 14 competitors of Ireland's top paddlers. With all the safety set up the first heat got under way, paddlers who weren't in the first heat had to do safety.

This gave me a chance to get in a second run.

I was the 3rd up in the second heat and Colin was the last to race. My run went pretty well with only one small cock up. It was the first time running this river solo which was a bit intimidating but all the main rapids had safety so there was nothing to worry about. I made it down to the end and across the line.

There was very little between the times but at the end of the day Neil Slevin was crowned king of the Flesk with an impressive 12minutes and 7 seconds, closely followed by Colin Wong, only a second off the pace. full results are below.

1st - Neil Slevin 12.07

2nd - Colin Wong 12.08

3rd - Toby Fischer 12.15

4th - Paddy Mc Govern 12.16

5th - Barry Loughnane 12.25

6th - Eoin keyes 12.30

7th - David O Sullivan 12.32

8th - Sean Mc Ternan 13.04

9th - (John) Orky O'Rourke 13.10

10th - Andrew Regan 13.29

11th - Dave David Glasswell 13.35

12th - Andre Brodkorb 14.26

13th - Colm Johnson 16.29

14th - Brian Cahill n/a

The race (and after party) was a great success and hopefully will inspire more events like this around the country.

Thanks again to Colin Wong and Snax for organising this event and hopefully we will see this happen again next year.

T-wave Rodeo

Over the past few weeks Ireland's water levels have been pretty high but this was the perfect opportunity to hit the road and travel up the country to one of Ireland best waves in Roscommen called T-wave. A couple of friends had organised a fun rodeo when they heard the levels were up, a great way to kick start the winter sessions. It was a long drive up and one of the coldest mornings I've seen this year.

We arrived at the car park to find a fantastic turn out for such small notice with over 30 competitors. The wave wasn't at a particularly ideal level but it didn't really matter as it was my first time back in a boat in over a month and first time back at T-wave in over two years so it was a great way to get a break from the books.

The wave forms just at the bottom of a 13gate weir on the Shannon river. It can vary fro

m a nice bounce wave to a large trashy hole, on the day of the rodeo it was a mixture of three holy waves. The best thing about this feature is its large eddy that acts as a huge conveyor belt that will take from falling off the wave right back up to the start.

With a quick briefing and a few practice runs the competition got off to a start with the juniors.

The competition was a 15min jam session, 6 people per heat

I was in the second heat with Colin Wong, It got off to a good start with a helix and a few blunts but wasted a good bit of time trying to catch the wave on the far bank. Colin also started off well laying down some blunts and back blunts putting him in and 4 others into the finals.

The final saw a range of hole and wave moves been thrown down from phonixs to donkey flips but at the end of the day Tom Dumphy took first place with some impressive pistol flips. full results are below

Senior Mens prelims Expert: Tom Dunphy 2. Barry Loughnane 3. Ronnie Brennan 4. Colin Wong 5. Andrew Regan 6. Eoin Keyes 7. Concy Bredin 8. Dave 9. Adrian Durrant 10 Orky 11. Eoin Farrell 12. Bosco 13.Snax 14.Mark Carrol 15. Kevin Niland 16. Colm Healy

It was a Great day - fair play to Barry and Andrew for putting on a good show and Adrian Durrant for judging! hopefully it will come back again next year, and it was a great way to spark off talk of other shotgun events that will be taking place around the country. Next up the flesk race.

some of the photos of the comp here

gopro mount mark 2 and Flesk video

After making my first gopro mount I was asked to make another one for my friend Barry. So I decided to make a mark two version, with a few minor adjustments that I thought might be useful..To start off I got an old metal extendable painting brush, I took off the head and cut it down to size, judging the height by placing it on the back of my kayak and taking a picture.

I simply drilled a few holes in the pipe,

3 at the bottom for the bracket and one at the top for the gopro fitting.

The last mount I made I

milled out the fitting for the gopro but this time I just simply used the

top part of a gopro suction

mount and screwed it onto the top of the pipe. It basically took less than a half an hour to make and is very easy to do. The mount is secured onto the kayak by placing the metal bracket underneath a grab loop and the bolted on by a metal plate. For this mount I have used wing nuts to bolt the mount on. It makes it a lot easier putting on the mount and it saves you from brings spanners on the river.

The pipe is extendable so you can adjust your position of the camera.

I used thinner brackets on this mount which I wouldn't recommend because they bend easily, the last mount had 5-6mm thick metal bracket which was solid, It hit off a few rocks and only bent back a little bit. I also wouldn't recommend using the mount for freestyle, trying loop with this thing on your back is hilariously bad but cartwheeling is ok.

This set up works for Wavesport boats, I'm not too sure if it would for many others but its just some fuel for thought.

After a long wait, it finally started to rain again and just enough to get the rivers to a good level. Colin Wong and I headed out to the flesk in Co. Kerry after work. the river was at 1.2m, a great level. We put on at the upper flesk and rain it all the way down to just before Poll Gorm. It was a savage day on the river and probably the last for a while with the lack of rain. have a look

Plattling wolds wrap up

From Jun 13-26, 2011

Nearly three weeks have passed now since the world championships have finished and I find myself sitting in front of a desk still not quite settled in. This was my first worlds and first international event as a senior competitor and I was very excited about this. I had arrived out a week before team training started. The level was at a nice 160-180 when I first arrived and I got to know the feature quite quickly. Training was going well, getting in 2 sessions a day in between the peak hours, morning and evening, to avoid the huge queues which gathered up to 20 people or more. This was great because this also meant the water parks where quiet too....

The week passed very quickly and before I knew it we were into our team training. The levels had been changing a lot, going from 140 to 230 in just a few days.... This made the hole very different and it was something I struggled with for the whole of the team training, with most rides consisting of a one trick and a flush bonus!!!.. Things weren't going well. To make it worse the running order was posted up where I found myself at the very top of the list, to kick start the seniors off at 9am Wednesday morning (well at least I got to be the world champion for a short while :) ) in the first heat with Tom and bartosz....

A team captains meeting was called on Tuesday over fears that not only would the feature be washed out so would the camp-site which at this stage was home to over a 100 people. they decided to press on with the competition but to get it all done in one day meaning my 9 o'clock start was changed to a 7 o'clock start bahh!!! but i didnt really mind at that stage. Tuesday finished up with a quick 2 ride session in the evening that finally went well, putting me in a good mind set for the competition.

From Jun 13-26, 2011

So the morning of the competition I got up a 5:30 am, time flew and before ya know it it was time for my first run. It was pretty exciting going first and I was delighted to see all of the Irish had gotten up to wish me and Tom well.

The first run went alright, which you can see below. only scoring 198.

My second run didn't go as well as the first but ended up getting scored more for it,

My final score was 405, putting me into 44th out of the 81

The rest of the Irish put in solid performances classes with the top placed Irish paddler Billy Brett making it to the semi finals of the Junior Men and coming away with 8th place. Conor Macken and Robbie O'Shea placed 21st and 22st respectively in the Junior Class. In the Junior Women's Class Caoimhe Farrell and Niamh Cleary placed 17th and 19th.

From Jun 13-26, 2011

In Senior Men Barry Loughnane came in 30th with a solid 660point ride making it the highest Irish score. Thomas Dunphy took 39th place with Brian Cahill and Ronan Brennen taking 47th and 54th place respectively. Orky took very respectable 13th place in C1 just missing out on the semi finals.

With all the Irish (except billy) knocked out in the prelims it was time for a few well deserved beers.

I have to say the most exciting part of the whole competition was watching the quarter finals,

which took place the Wednesday evening, after dark. With a very big turn out, every paddler battling it out and more drama than a soap opera it was hard to say freestyle competitions are dead, you could feel that each paddler wanted a place in the top 10 making it one of the most spectacular freestyle competitions i have seen..

the day of the finals attracted an even bigger crowd that the quarters+semis and Barry and I were lucky enough to get a front row seat to see all the action. Everyone put in a solid performance,

Pringle, James Bebbingtion took top spot in the senior men's class with a 1070 point ride to leave Peter Csonka in second place with 1020 points. Stephen Wright finished off the podium places in third. Claire O Hara took two gold medals at this year World Championships successfully defending her Women's Squirt Title and adding the Senior Women's Title defeating Emily Jackson with a 660 point ride and congratulations to them both.

I flew home Sunday with a round tripe of 12 hours and made it home for work in the morning..

I just want to give a big thanks to streamlyte for the fantastic new blades they really helped a lot,

Lir child for the lovely clothes, the university of limerick for their support, all involved with the team and friends and family for all the good wishes...

World Championships Plattling

With only 3days to the start of the World Championships the campsite is starting to fill up with boaters from all around the world, the area surrounding the wave is developing more and more everyday in preparation. Everyone is trying to get as much as they can out of the time they have on the water during team training but it has been difficult as the levels have changed drastically, it has risen from 150cfs on Thursday to 230 this morning. With more rain dew its will rise even more for the competition. At this level McNastys are becoming difficult to do and the hole becomes less steep and more like a wave.

One of the major advances at this competition is the emergence of home made or prototype carbon boats. There have been quiet a number of new boats floating about the place and rumors of more to come. Its fantastic to see so much more new designs on the market, pushing the sport even further, giving people a choice. Last week the carbon seemed to be a bad idea as broken boats were a common site but with the higher levels people are less afraid of kissing rocks and are just going big.

Tomorrow the opening Ceramony begins and team training ends. Hopefully the levels wont change too much more but it is certain this will be a very interesting World Champions.

You can watch the event live at here

gopro mount on the glens

Here is a few pictures of the gopro mount I made.

It was very simple to make and is very durable. the slot for the gopro is made out of plastic that was milled into shape thanks to the help of Donal my lecturer. this is fits straight into a hollow pipe which has a bracket bolted onto the end.

So far I haven't got much footage with it yet, it seems like every time I turn up to the river with it something goes wrong (but not with the mount). But one Wintry evening in November I got a chance to test it out on the Clare glens. the river had rose to .65 on the gauge and we had a solid group so it was a perfect chance to get some sweet footage. It had been really windy the night before and Peter suggested we take it hand for the first run to scout for trees and then have a blast down on the second run, so i decided to hold off on the footage until then. Ironically the first run turned out to be the quicker of the two.. So we made our way back up to top drop, the river was still tanking, I bolted on the mount and off we went. The mount works like a dream. Its very sturdy when bolted on properly and it even sustained a pretty big hit of a rock, which only bent it backwards on the bracket.

January boating

Just a quick video from some early January boating at Curragower with the Galway crew. thanks to Conor Mc Comb for the great vid

More updates to come soon including a guide on how to build a cheap gopro camera mount for an over the shoulder view