Day 1: Getting Underway

Sept. 18, 2006: Our starting point was Woolen Mills dam in Charlotte- sville. As mentioned in an earlier post, we had no car to get our kayaks to this point. Luckily, this area is only a couple of blocks from my house, so we were able to carry the boats to the launch site. B.I.L. had a nifty set of wheels that strapped to his boat. We made a little kayak train down the road with one of us at the bow of my boat, the other carrying the stern with one hand and dragging the larger yellow boat on its wheels. When the person acting as the coupling between the two kayaks became too exhausted to hold the boats, we would switch positions. Most of the injuries for the entire trip occurred during this carrying phase. It really sucked big nuts.

At one point on our way to the river, a young Hispanic couple stopped and asked me for directions. But, they didn't "ask". Instead, they handed me a map that had a star marking their intended destination. I asked if they spoke English, to which the woman replied, "poquito"(sp?). "Shit" was my reply. Then B.I.L., who like I have said earlier, always comes through in any situation, came over and started speaking nearly fluent Spanish to the people! I forgot he used to live in South America and together, we got them turned in the right direction. While we were talking to them, some guy came out of his house and said, "You guys lost?" Then he looked at the two heavily loaded kayaks laying on the ground and said, "The rivers that way" and pointed in the same direction the kayaks were facing. No shit? Gee Willikers, thanks Mister!

Here are some pictures that help explain why it sucked so bad to carry the boats by hand to the river. On the bow of my boat, seen in this picture, is a dry bag with all the food I will have for the trip (minus a bag of M&Ms and a Dr. Pepper that I will acquire later on). Inside the bow, between my knees, sit three gallons of water. The stern storage area is covered by my PFD in the picture, but that is where my sleeping bag rode, along with a pair of flip-flops and assorted odds and ends that I tossed in there along the way. The next photo details the cockpit area.


One of the three gallons of water is visible in this picture. The red thing behind the seat is my backpack with the rainfly pulled over it. The backpack carried dry clothes, a rain coat, one fleece pull-over, duct tape (an essential item), extra batteries, a compass that I completely forgot about until the last day, a cigarette lighter, and all the charts that we would cover(a total of 8 charts were covered on this trip). This backpack has been with me since I lived in Juneau, AK. I have taken it on all of my hiking and mt. biking trips, and it has served as my carry-on when flying. Now it has ridden with me in the kayak. Tucked behind the seat with the backpack is a diving flashlight(extremely bright and water proof), sun block, and something else that I can't recall at the moment. To the left of the seat is a diving knife and my sleeping pad(rolled up blue thing). On the right is my GPS (Thanks, Mom!) and a bag filled with snack food because I eat a lot. The black pole on the right of the seat is my paddle and I have no idea what the blue thing is behind the cockpit.

Here is B.I.L.s boat, the workhorse of C.R.A.K. He is carrying everything I am, plus more water, the tent, stove, even the wheels that we rolled it to the river on! The kayak was very nearly loaded to its limit. With B.I.L. sitting in it, the boat only had about two inches of freeboard! But it lost weight everyday as we drank more water and ate more food.

I got home from work at about 7:45 Monday morning. By the time we loaded our boats and carried them the distance to the river, it was 11:30ish before we finally departed. The Rivanna River was flowing very well. Even with the yellow boat as heavy as it was, we never had to get out and carry the boats. Only in one area did we get out to scout a route through some rocks.

We had a nice route picked out to river right that looked shallow, but the flow was an even, straight line. River left hosted a wild looking spill over some rocks that took an abrupt left turn through a small rock garden. It was definitely passable, but not what we were looking for with the amount of weight we were carrying on our boats. B.I.L. went first down the right side without any hitches. I began to follow when I heard a voice hollering, "Red boat!" I looked around and saw an older gentleman standing on the left bank. Puzzled, I paddled closer to him to see what he wanted to say. We hadn't seen anybody, not even other boaters, all day. Now out of nowhere, an old man shows up and starts telling me to take the route on the left. I was shaking my head "no" and pointing to the right when he challenged me with, "I did it the other day in my canoe." Oh, it's on, old man!

I steered my boat to the spill and paddled off it, bouncing off the rocks at the end. No harm done, I looked back and waved with a smile to the man on the bank. When I looked back in front of me, that's when I noticed the next drop that couldn't be seen from our scouting area up stream. My kayak fell off the drop in perfect form, bow first. I paddled like mad to keep from tipping as the standing wave at the bottom of the short drop gushed into the cockpit and gave me a good soaking from my neck to my toes.

B.I.L. was already at the bottom laughing at me as I spilled down the rocks into the more calm water where he was waiting. "What the hell are you doing?" was his greeting. "That old man on the bank said he did it the other day in his canoe; I had to do it. I think he's full of shit, though," I said, sponging the water out of my boat.

The rest of the day was fairly calm. There were a few areas on the map that we were a little nervous about. Some dams were marked that we had never seen before, but they had all been breached long ago and posed no threat to us.

At about 16 miles from our put in, two public camping areas were marked on the map. The first one was on an island and the second was on the right bank, past the island after a large "S" bend in the river. We stopped at the island, which had obviously been camped on, and stayed the night, although it wasn't marked as a campsite. The next day we looked for the camping area on the right bank and never found it. Neither of the public camping areas on the Rivanna River are marked. That made a couple of tired kayakers pretty pissed on their first day, but all worked out fine in the end.



Fair winds and following seas...