River Teith with Masha - 3/3/2007

Bram's niece Masha came to visit for the weekend. Bram booked well early, weeks ahead of time, to make sure I could go paddling with them. The night before, we couldn't access the Where's the water? site so we guessed and decided to head for Angus and the upper Isla with a lazy 10am start to the day.

In the morning, after 10am, Bram, Amy and Masha came to pick me up and at the boat shed, Bram told me the revised plan was the River Teith in Callendar. He and I were still going to paddle the open canoe together. Amy and Masha looked at boats to decide which one each wanted. Once it became clear that Masha didn't want to paddle the Jackson, Amy's eyes lit up with excitement. Often evicted from it at the pool, she knew no one was there to tell her she couldn't have it for this trip.

Fitting an open canoe and two kayaks on an estate car was the next puzzle, which they solved by the time I finished locking up the remaining kayaks. The Jackson went in the boot and separated Masha and I in the back seat. The open canoe went on the top as far to the right as possible. Masha's 222 went on the left, barely, and I tied a stern line for my peace of mind. And we were off.

We dropped a bike at the get-out and headed for the get-in car park. The drive through Callendar put everyone in the mood for a tea room and the cold rain outside made us consider it slightly seriously. We unpacked anyway. WTW said the Teith was at medium volume so I guess now high and very high mean spilling into the car park to various levels of severity. The real water level was only a centimetre or two below spilling onto the footpath, which translated to high a year ago. Whatever the details, I knew it would be a good level.

I also knew that Bram would paddle way too much, so I put him in the stern. Conventional wisdom suggests I should have put him in the bow and just let him wear himself out, but I thought I would get very frustrated just dragging a rudder in the water all the time and only seeing half the river. Amy picked a small tunnel, regular keyhole skirt for Masha which meant the tunnel fit her but the keyhole didn't fit her boat very well. It was a three-person job getting her into her boat, but we managed it and set off to dodge fishermen and play in eddies.

I had a difficult time explaining to Bram the need to lean the canoe in order to get it to turn quickly, and we both did a sloppy job getting to the right place at the right time, so our early break-outs and break-ins were quite sloppy, comical at times. A break-out that beached us on a pile of rocks decided lunch stop for the day.

At lunch, the sun visited us for a few minutes. After lunch, Amy attempted to surf the wave across from lunch stop and got thrown around a bit in the wee boat. Being at the upper end of the weight range of a short, stubby kids boat has its disadvantages. She had a hard time getting out to the wave and once off, found it impossible to get back to it. The large barge that Bram and I were paddling behaved exactly the opposite. We had a nice surf there. The river right part was a nice wave hole where we could park the open canoe and surf forever. The river left part was not as friendly and we worked too hard to not really surf it. We found a swarm of fishermen along the banks of the nice place with all of the eddies so we had to hustle through instead of stopping to play. Saturday river trips have their downsides. At least no one was rude to us like our Saturday on the South Esk.

Bram and I had better luck with his offside break-outs and break-ins. When I'm in the stern of the club's open canoe and edging the boat properly for the turn, my paddle can't reach the water very well. Bram had the benefit of height, so he could reach a little. He committed to the lean which meant I could, too, and the turn was beautiful. The subsequent break-in was equally lovely after Bram and Amy gave Masha a brief tutorial on ferry gliding.

With the river at medium-high, the second half gets slightly big and bouncy. We passed the big boulders and bounced our way through several good wave trains. I enjoyed practicing my last-minute backstroke to keep the water out of the boat. I was successful about 75% of the time, not bad considering.

Bram and I tried again with his onside break-outs and had better success with edging the boat. I could hold the lean better, but slid around a bit with the lack of outfitting. Masha caught the eddy below us, lost her balance and shrieked at she swatted at the water with her hand to stay upright. She succeeded in staying upright but not in keeping the rest of us from laughing at her.

The next two rapids were the last. Bram and I ran the first one on the right to stay out of the stopper that filled up nearly all of the left hand bit. I'm surprised Amy didn't want to surf that. We regrouped in the river left eddy above the last rapid so we could explain the line to Masha. It was more a courtesy than a necessity. The basic idea was to stay left and paddle, which we were well set up to do. Bram and I went first, Masha followed us and Amy lurched along in the back. In the wee waves that followed, Bram enjoyed watching me get splashed and thrown around a little. The get-out eddy came far too quickly.

Amy had no difficulty hitching a ride into Callendar so it wasn't long before we were dressed, loaded and heading back into Callendar for that tea room that none of us had forgotten.