The leader was Harland, the same leader as on the W. Branch Farmington trip last fall, so I was expecting an open-boat-heavy crowd. There were a lot of open boaters-six-but almost as many kayakers, five. We decided to go in two groups, determined by type of boat.
The kayakers consisted of myself, Conrad, Tony, a middle-age woman whose name I forget and her daughter who couldn't have been more than 11. (A future pro boater).
It was a cold morning, autumn-like, so the temperature did not make me want to do any practice rolls. Sure enough though, I blew a ferry at Hangover Helper and rolled right away (first attempt).
We got to the first playspot (Carbis Bend) and I got some good surfs on my initial rides. I did not stay on as well after the first three though. I stayed upright the whole time here.
We headed on down and Tony and I just missed what looked like a great surf wave at the top of Freight Train. I forgot about the big hole right before the railroad bridge and punched it. Then I tried to surf it a couple of times, but it spit me right out each time without flipping me. While the others were eating lunch, I did some stern squirts under the bridge, all but one of which resulted in a roll.
After lunch, we headed down and I did one more squirt and roll. We hit the few small surfable waves before the long, flat, shallow, boring stretch before the rock garden.
The rock garden had never been one of my favorite rapids on Fife Brook because I think people catch too many eddies there and go too slow as a result. This is still true of course--I opened up a big lead on the field during this portion--but I found that the rock garden has many good sidesurfing spots. I got two good sidesurfs, but I didn't keep my upstream edge up enough on the second one and got turned over, hitting the rock that was forming the hole. I couldn't locate any new scratches on my helmet though.
We came to Miami Beach, but I didn't manage to stay on the wave at all. I did stay upright though. The trip around the island and through the squirrelly spot where the channels come back together was uneventful.
After another long, flat, shallow, boring stretch (these are the reason some people hate Fife Brook), we reached the takeout above The Gap. I was unable to find anyone willing to run it, either from my group or another group of kayakers, some of whom I had met on the West. So I had to wait for the open boaters to come down, which took forever.
In the meantime, Tony decided he wanted to run it and found a stray kayaker named Alan who wanted to run it too. When the open boaters got there, we scouted it and they decided not to run it either. I was disappointed because I wanted to go down it following someone experienced, but we decided to run it anyway. One of the open boaters lowered his boat into The Gap with a rope to catch us/our boats if we swam.
After much deliberation, we decided to run a line just right of center, the idea being to just miss the holes to the right. The order was Tony, me, Alan. We got through the lead-in unscathed, unlike my attempt last fall, and proceeded down the initial tongue. I saw Tony go over in the first or second hole because he was too far left. I was too far left too and I believe I went over in the same spot. I was able to roll before the third hole, which impressed Alan a lot, but I was facing upstream when I came up and got flipped right back over by the bottom hole. I rolled again in the pool at the bottom, as did Tony. Alan stayed up the whole time, so the open boater did not get any rescue business.
I convinced Alan to go past the takeout with me down to the place where the railroad tracks cross the road, a portion I had not run since the first day of the beginner course last summer. We got a couple of extra surfs, including at least one sidesurf by me.
It was a fabulous day overall, no swims, each roll was on the first attempt and plenty of surfing.
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