You never know where you’ll meet another P-netter. I’ve been paddling
the P-Cat Drawdown and BBQ on the Piscataquog River in Goffstown, NH for years.
In fact, it was one of the first whitewater trips that I did when I started
paddling back in 2005. It’s a short class II with a great BBQ after.
I usually attend this trip with the local RI crew, but none of them
were interested this year. Instead, I signed up for the trip with the NHAMC and
ended up in the “open boat group” – 4 tandems, 3 solos, 2 duckies and one
kayak. One of the leaders was HikingMike (hope I got that right) from P-net. The river was at it's usual release level - 5.5 feet on the Goffstown gage.
I paddled tandem, which was a nice change. I got the bow, and Jonathan
(also a solo open boater) got the stern. We made a good team and clicked pretty
much right away catching eddies, ferrying and surfing. To me, the highlight of
this trip is a playspot that has a habit of pulling open boats in sideways, and
then spitting them out. I’ve had lots of practice demonstrating how not to side
surf in this particular hole.
I warned Jonathan about my luck, but he was willing to venture in
anyway. We did pretty well on our first attempt – stayed straight and backed
out without incident. Now figuring that a 16’ tandem wouldn’t get pulled in
sideways, we got a little more aggressive on our second attempt. As the bow got
sucked down into the hole we immediately got spun sideways. We lasted for a
couple of seconds before getting “window-shaded”. My 100% swim rate at this
hole is safe for another year. Great
trip as usual.
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| Surfing with Jonathan |
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