Thought I would
let you know about the Rangitikei trip I did recently.
Water
Strider fly fishing kickboat trip.
4 days on the wilderness Rangitikei
River headwaters,
March 2007
I flew in with Brian (Goodwin) to the Otama[-teanui] Stream
on Saturday (3 March) with the plan to raft down the river
back to where my Vitara was parked by the bridge on the
Taihape – Napier road. I allowed myself four days for the
trip but was happy if I needed another day. I hadn’t done
that stretch before and flying up the valley with Brian many
of the rapids sure looked lumpy with a lot of boulders
showing because of the very low river level.
Fortunately as it happened, I had
decided to take my Water Strider floatboat instead of my
Incept W33S raft, which turned out to be the right decision
because with the river so low I had to portage a few of the
rapids and I would never have got the 33 down through the
boulders, and being by myself I wouldn’t have been able to
lift it over them.
Prior to this trip I have used the
Strider floatboat a lot, fishing in the central lakes and
rivers that feed them. It’s a great bit of equipment, so
good in fact that I have never used my W33, actually its
never even been in the water, just gathers dust in the shed!
I set up camp by the Otama[-teanui] then fished later on the
Saturday getting a couple of decent size trout that were
returned.
After packing
up camp on Sunday I finally hit the river about 10.00am.
The weather was
beautiful, so hot my wet suit and life jacket got to be
uncomfortable, with regular splashes of river water keeping
me reasonably cool.
I must admit I
was a bit surprised at the size of some of the rapids, the
low water made them into very long rock strewn obstacles
with the water rushing through the gaps changing the
direction of the runs dramatically. The maneuverability of
the Strider is wonderful and it wasn’t too difficult to line
up the runs most every time. Not every time I have to admit,
and I got it wrong quite a few times.
In most cases
if I got stuck on the rocks it was just a matter of sticking
my legs down into the water and pushing off the rocks, then
I was away again.
Some of the
rapids had fairly large drops at the bottom of them and they
were exhilarating, that’s providing I had got lined up at
the top first, if I didn’t then a little bit of skill and a
hell of a lot of luck got me through on most occasions.
As you know
there are some really long rapids with fairly steep
gradients and because of the low water level quite a few had
too many boulders to let even the Strider get through and so
I would drag it across the top and around the side of the
rocks, it seems really hard on it but thankfully in most
cases the fabric stayed wet so for all the bumping across
stones, dragging over and ricocheting off boulders the boat
never had a serious mark on the fabric at the end of the
four days. I was really impressed - seriously impressed,
because it took some big knocks. I had taken the repair kit,
but thankfully it wasn’t needed.
The only
problem I developed was on the fourth day when the rivet
securing the blade onto the shaft of one of the oars sheared
off after hitting a rock allowing the blade would twist
which caused a bit of a problem down some of the rapids.
Fortunately the worst of the rapids were behind me by the
time that happened so I was able to negotiate them with some
reasonable control until I would hit something with the
blade again then it was anyone’s guess where I would end up.
I’m going to fit an extra rivet into each blade just as an
insurance in future. But given the impact those oars took
they did remarkably well to last as long as they did.
Considering I
had all my camping gear, food, clothes, boots, fishing gear
and rifle it had a hefty load on it, maybe that helped it in
the bigger rapids, I’m not sure, it would be interesting to
have done them empty to see if there was any difference in
its performance. Irrespective it was brilliant and I can’t
speak highly enough of its capability.
For the whole
trip I ended up only flipping it twice, once with me in it,
and once as I was lowering it down a nasty rapid. I had all
my gear in two of your Incept 80 litre dry bags and nothing
got wet at any time, even after being submerged on the two
occasions, a great set up all round.
The weather stayed perfect for the
four days and I got back to the road bridge about 3.00pm
Tuesday so that worked out about 17 hours on the water to
complete the trip. Working it out on my electronic map it
looks to be about 36km and I must admit it was a bit tougher
than I thought it would be, much of it I think was caused by
the low river level. Nevertheless it was a great trip and
that Incept Water Strider is brilliant.
