Those dreadful 45 seconds in water....

Those dreadful 45 seconds in water....

The Ocoee River ! - I can never forget that now. It was in this river that I decided I will kill time this weekend. Never ever realized I would come back and write a blog about how I myself would have got killed(almost) :-).

Am reminded of this Kaaka Kaaka dialogue - "Sodukku onnu podrathukkula gaaali ! Athaaan vaazhkai.. elllarkum.. On anbu selvamkku sethu..! ". It does sound true after this Saturday.


Ocoee river is simply the best place to do Level III and IV white water rafting - atleast that is what many Kayaker's blogs say. I honestly cant have an opinion comparing Ocoee with other rivers cos this was my first time. This link gives a lot of details about the rafting part of the river....
http://www.candelatech.com/~greear/White_water/ocoee.html

Let me get to the point. There is a line in the above blog about this rapid called Hell's hole.
"The farther to the left you go, the tamer it is. If, for some reason, you take a swim here, swim to river right, for the next rapid, Power House, is a nasty swim on the left. It isn't fatal, but the ledges are likely to bang you up pretty good."
It is the last one on the river and our Guide on the boat called it the "Grand finale". We successfully avoided flipping in any of the other rapids which was quite an achievement I feel. Also flipping is not supposed to be this really rare thing that should not happen when rafting. I guess what does matter is where we flip.

As we approached Hell's hole I was kinda bored ( nothing much seemed to happen.. though there were one or two near misses from flipping) and I was sure we wont flip here. We managed to survive the rapid named - flipper ! With that thought in mind as we just entered the rapid, two of the guys(- the ones on the right front and right middle) . The two who sat opposite to them tried to get these people in and then came a huge fall in the river and the boat flipped. !

The first 6-10 seconds - I totally totally did not expect it. I still remember this period where I decided I was going to die. (Flipping is pretty common in rafting. I think the fall caught me totally unguarded. Then I realized I am near the far left of the river - exactly where I should not be. :-)....hence the mortal fear.)

10-45 seconds: This went in trying my best to battle and swim to the right. By the way, it sucks to swim with life jackets on. Atleast I found it hard. There is a force that constantly tries to hold u upright. I was tired of this force and could barely get myself to freestyle swim position - the only stroke I knew. The current was atleast around 20 miles/hr and there was NO way I could stop myself from drifting. I was too close to the left wall, the power house and all these places I was not supposed to be near. I panicked. I really really did.

45 seconds - 3 mins: My friend who was safely drifting (quite coolly smiling) towards the right most part shouted - " Don panic bey !" seeing my terrified face. He still laughs at how fear reigned supreme till he said that. After that I decided, I was going to do something about this rather than just panic and try to swim right. Once I started becoming calm, I realized I was just drifting rapidly and nothing else was happening. I realized my attempts had not gone totally a waste because I was right in the middle of the river now. (death averted !! )I tried slowly to swim towards the right and started thinking about a lot of things that I would not wanna blog about. :-)

3 min - 6 mins: This was an even better period. The current had slowed down but I was still far away from the other people in my team or my boat. I had by then decided my boat was not going to come to rescue me and I had to hang-on till some Magic force showed me the way. :-) I was not afraid. So, I was able to think. I did a lot of things like being in the position we are supposed to be in when we fall into rafting waters etc. and I managed some more swimming to the right. Then someone shouted - "Look back". I did. This was another rafting boat right behind me..

Got on it to it and came back.

No, neither am I unhappy cos I could have died nor am I proud that I survived. I just am thankful that I dint get thrown towards the left end of the river. There was a power house there. Turbines, pen-stock pipes -Those are not the things you wanna get into when you are an average swimmer.
Decided to raft every summer from now :-). It has been the best experience I have had till date. Simply the best. I was happy. It could have been better though.. Hmmm.