50 Years of Umko 1966 - 2016 1966 - 2016 | Page 91

easier in fuller conditions.
So with the now silent girls in the back we set off as planned, right at the
back of the batch, giving the racing snakes lots of space because the boat
picks up speed in the Approaches like a KTM 500 through a dip. Clinging
to the inside line we eased through to the bottom of the approaches and
euphoria set in.
After telling the crew we would take a middle line at No.1 as we arrowed
down the small stuff my legs suddenly turned to jelly and I called back:
”We’re going left”. MISTAKE #1
So with no real plan, going at a comfortable 25 knots like a destroyer
trying to ram a U-boat we arrived at the lip of No. 1. MISTAKE #2.
About now MISTAKES #’s 3 to 5 kinda blurred together because a K2
was aiming to take out but left me no room in the narrow channel and so I
jammed on left brake and got my nose inside of them but with the impetus
of a cruise liner. With our nose on the bank, tail in the current, the boat
swung around, we all fell out, to the oohs and aahs of the admiring groupies
on the rocks. (Patricia Stannard very flatteringly - and erroneously - described this
as “no small amount of skill of the part of her driver”!).
Save The Boat was uppermost in my mind - with the cockpits facing
upstream a wrap was imminent. It was a strong boat and no wrap happened
because it was half out the water conveniently resting on the K2 which
was making failing fibreglass noises. I needed help to lift but my crew had
deserted me. I saw Di clinging to a rock in the middle of the drop with her
knuckles turning white, then slipping off and following Patricia down into
the big hole at the bottom. (Maybe this was where Di heard Patricia “uttering
various four letter words at intervals“?).
With the help of Guy Collyer, Nick Burden and another we fought the
boat onto the bank and I ruefully surveyed the damage. Several breaks on
hull and deck looked bad but so blinded by pride was I that we prepared
to tape her up when a glassfibre patch or two would have been better. The
sun was hot, the boat dried in minutes and the last batch had rattled by so
I looked around for a knife to do a good job of taping. My two river-babes
each fished out a vicious-looking flick knife with a serrated edge designed to
cut through cockpit lips when trapped. I took a mental two steps back and
had eyes in the back of my head for the rest of the trip. And so I should as I
continued to treat my crew very badly.
We set off from No.1 on three wings and a prayer for the finish. At Rapid
No.2 MISTAKE #6 occurred as I tried to sneak the holes in our wounded boat
(Patricia now reduced to shouting to the boat “go girl, good girl”), overlooking the
danger of eddies snatching the nose and so we spun out, rammed the rocks
on the side and cracked the deck some more. A bit more tape and off we
went again. As P said in her description of events there were times when
she was on top of the world and times when she was in the depths. As rear
gunner in a wildly flexing boat she was being thrashed up and down in
the wave trains like a yo-yo. But there I was sitting sublimely up front, just
missing the holes and having a lovely time and ignoring the yells from the
back. The boat got us through everything (walking No.5&6 - P loyally records
that Hugh - briefly - helped carry the boat) until that bony little rapid just above
No.7 where I dumped us in the water AGAIN.
It was here I discovered something startling about Di. As we pushed
the wreck to the bank she carelessly tried to knee a rock out the way and
I discovered that she sinks. As I pried her little white clutching hand off
the boat down she went into the depths. Only a quick grab on her PFD by
Patricia saved her! Later when I politely asked if maybe she should enhance
her personal buoyancy she just looked at me with eyes like black holes.
(According to Di she had bravely placed herself between the boat and a large rock
and thus saved the day!).

91

So with Patricia being whipped up and down and Diana passing damage
reports like, “Water has reached my waist, now it’s reached my er....neck”
and me paddling blithely on (my end was OK) we got to our nemesis: Rapid
No.8. The top drop had a serious wave train of vicious curling monsters
and as we punched through the biggest of them the nose snatched the slack
water and we went up the bank like a large crocodile after a wildebeest. I
was so high up the bank that I stepped onto dry land. The boat was hanging
together - only just - and so we decided to float down to the cars at the picnic
spot. The second drop at No.8 is a test even for a whole boat and with a
despairing cry from P as she floated out of her seat it was end-of-story. The
K3 was held together by cables only. (Or as Patricia put it: Here everything fell
apart - quite literally as our brave K3 decided that she would fare considerably better
as a K2 and a K1).
We dragged ourselves ashore like drowned rats and a very kind Gary
Clarke drove us out the valley. Di and P were thus the first to learn one of
the Golden Rules when paddling the Umko: D.F.H - Don’t Follow Hugh!
(um,hadn’t Dickie learnt that before them, Hugh?).

Mom & Daughter Whitton Paddle a “String of Sausages”

Approaching the top of No.4 Debbie Germiquet and Kim Eksteen wrapped
their K2 in three places, the foremost right at the pedals so there was
absolutely no steering. Colleen and son Clive Whitton saw them and pulled
over. They decided that Colleen and daughter Debbie would nurse the
stricken boat down to No.8 where hopefully they could find some fibreglass
and do make-shift repairs to get to the overnight stop at the Orange grove on
the left bank past Josephine’s where Dad Ric could do the necessary. Clive
and Kim took the intact boat down.
Colleen tells it: “Once taped up the boat was like a string of sausages
but it was still holding together. For Debbie and I it was possibly the
hardest thing we had ever done. We had absolutely no steering and very
little boat control with it writhing in the water beneath us so we were also
forced to take lines down the river which we would never had contemplated
normally. The biggest epic was No.8 where we should have entered 8a on
the right and crossed over the wave train to exit down the left at 8c . This
just was not going to be possible so we made an off-the-cuff decision and
just rode the centre of the wave train all the way down, mind-blowing stuff!
I think Debbie took the brunt of the strain on this epic as she was having to
keep the momentum going while I spent most of the time keeping the boat
as straight as possible to the current with bow rudder strokes.
“By good fortune” (she says! Skill, we say!) “not only did we get the boat
down to below No.8 without any swims or incidents, Umzinyathis Henry
Pretorius and Kevin Walsh were at the bottom with enough repair materials
to do a fantastic job of repairing it - so good that only minor tweaks needed
to be done at the overnight stop.” All four of them finished the race!

Race tactics

Jerome Truran and Rory Pennefather held off the big guns and won the 1978
Umko like this: “I was always a thin, skraal kid, but in races I was committed
and thorough and this paid off for Rory and me when we won the Umko
and the SA K2 Champs that year. We held off the big guns Robbie Stewart
and Tony Scott (who, together with Peter Peacock, were my paddling
heroes). The second day we were leading but could see the bigger, heavier
Robbie and Scotty team coming for us. It just happened to be above a place
where the river splits, with a shallower, but slower option, which we had
scouted before. I said to Rory, (hold my beer, watch this!) and took the slower
option, knowing that these two busy quantity surveyors with wives and

UMKO 50 Years