Tag Archives: umkomaas river

My Umko Marathon

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There he goes, no lifejacket, as was the way those days.

1983Umko

. . another guy might be wearing full lifejacket and helmet but he’d be disqualified: wasn’t wearing his club colours! Such was ‘safety’ and ‘decorum’ back when ships were made of wood and men were made of iron!

map 4

I roared in 140th – looks like 152 finishers, but maybe there was another whole page? Can’t tell – the first page is also missing so we can’t see who won. I know Chris Greeff won the singles. I spent a long time training him in the bar till late at night when the GO TO BED!!s built to a crescendo and we politely thanked Jesus, downed a last beer – and did as we were told. This was Jesus, or Dave Williams, of course, the saintly Umko barman.

– 1983 Umko results with pics of Jesus – when he shaved they started calling him John Cleese –

Hang on, the other page was given the wrong year. Here it is: 1983 results: 162 finishers out of 263 starters. Pope won with Tim Cornish. Chris was 6th and first single.

1983

Notables who finished behind me were Pete the Pom Mountford, Richard Finlay and Toekoe Egerton. They should pull finger.

That was my only Umko marathon. For a few years after that I would sweep or pick out human flotsam and fiberglass jetsam at No.1 rapid, staying with Barry and Lyn Porter on their game farm afterwards.

– 1987 – the swimming gala below No.1 –

~~~oo0oo~~~

A Rolling Selfie

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I saw the above pic on the internets and it reminded me of an incident after a river outing. It’s apparently of an old fella who rolled and his wife is still inside, but they’re getting a picture already. I can believe that these days, everyone has a camera in their pocket, but my story was back in the eighties BCE, Before the Cellphone Era.

We’d paddled to Josephine’s bridge and me and Bernie (I think it was) were on our way out of the valley when we rounded Dead Man’s Corner and saw a car on its roof with the wheels still spinning. We skidded to a halt, hopped out and ran over, ready to rescue and get the car back on its wheels before all the oil ran out (or that’s what I was thinking – dunno if that actually happens?) or before another car zoomed into it.

We shouted “You OK?” and a young guy said “Fine!” and started crawling out on his tummy out of the drivers seat window. As we grabbed the car and started to heave he said “WAIT!” grabbed his camera and took a picture of the upside down car. “One for the album!” he said, grinning.

I’d never seen that before.

We righted him and off he went. Driving off we decided it must definitely have been a case of Daddy having bought the car for sonnyboy.

Umko Trip Mpendle to Lundys Hill

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I remember a lovely day, spectacular scenery, an easy river level, quite gentle, good company, lots of laughs, but very little else till near the end when we came to the only rapid we decided not to go ‘down the middle’!

Among us were (as I recall) Doug Retief, Martin Lowenstein, Marlene Boshoff, Pete Zietsman and Bernie Garcin. Around 1983 or 1984 I guess? I wonder who drove our vehicles?

The rapid had a deep slot with the water dropping vertically over a ledge on three sides, a bit like a weir. Did someone call it The Coffin? We decided to take a sneak around it on the right and as I was on river left I started to ferry-glide across but lost my angle and decided ‘Too late, I’ll have to go for it’

I paddled hard and shot down into the slot, shuddered to a halt but then managed to pull away. All turned out alright, but I berated myself for a sloppy ferry-glide! Focus!

Don’t remember much else except a nice cold drink at this trading store on top of the hill. I wonder if anyone took a camera?

Impendle - Lundys Hill MapLundys Hill umkomaas river

Map from paddler celliers kruger; photos from mapio.net – thanks!