LATEST NEWS - January

Looking out over Lake Cootharaba from atop Mt Seawah

Hi Everyone and welcome to 2011!  We have an exciting year planned here at Tri Adventure with some great training sessions and plenty of events to keep us motivated.  Here's a look at what happend in January.....(wow, 1 month gone by already!)
Our first week back at training saw us conducting a Junior Tri Camp....We have some amazing Juniors and they had 3 days of training to kick-start the year.  Most of them are getting ready for the state Tri champs in February....so they enjoyed the week with some other athletes who travelled from out west to join us....

Of course January was the month of FLOODS here in Qld....and we spent a few days glued to the TV watching Brisbane and a good part of of north Qld go under water..... All of Australia has been affected by this disaster in some way....and we hope that the people who lost their homes can rebuild their lives and take some sort of positive from the experience....We have since heard of the 'family' atmosphere that was developing around Brisbane when the power went off.and the waters were rising...everyone was going outside and meeting their neighbours...good to see that people can still talk to each other without a phone or computer involved!
 PADDLING - AUNTIES STYLE....

Well….with all the water around at the moment, we decided to do a long paddle up into Lake Weyba.  Usually this lake is very shallow….but there is a channel there….you just have to know where to find it.  We were going looking for the entrance to Eenie Creek, which runs into the shallow lake….and Aunty Jan had discovered the channel years ago when she watched a boat go up there….. We left from Noosa Sound…and already a gusty SE wind had developed.  Heading up towards the lake with the out-going tide and then the blustering head-wind was quite a challenge…but we were pleased with ourselves when we got to the lake and we tackling the conditions quite well…..at this point it was a bit like a nasty day on Lake Cootharaba for those of you who have experienced that…… We had been paddling for quite a long time and slowly making progress towards a rocky point we could see ahead of us… Kim was ahead and not able to slow down much in the testing conditions for fear of capsizing and Aunty Jan was behind not wanting to go ahead any more into a rocky area just off the headland…instead she was looking for a place to land and have some food.  When calls out to Kim went unheard, she turned her boat and scanned the shoreline.  Now getting blown by the howling wind she drifted a little closer to the shore for comfort….and scratched her rudder on some rocks lying just below the surface…oh, that’s such a horrible sound!.....Meanwhile Aunty Kim had turned around too and was coming the same way when she too hit some submerged rocks…..hers were a little more vicious though and, when she discovered she had no steering, thought she had broken off her rudder…. We were now being buffeted and blown towards a distant shoreline – Aunty Jan’s boat was steering ok….just the pilot was a bit distressed – not knowing if she had a hole in her boat…..and Aunty Kim discovered her rudder was still there – it had just partly made it’s way into the hull of her precious Epic and the boat was filling up with water……Hmmmm…..getting back was going to be tricky…… Paddling into the side chop is never easy….but paddling a very lightweight, long boat with no steering was an extreme challenge at this very time!  Luckily we were now going  WITH the tide AND the wind….and Kim’s boat was gradually getting heavier as the water crept in through the broken hull….Just so we could gather ourselves, we stopped on a bank and Aunty Jan ate her biscuit…..that’s what she was trying to do when we drifted into the danger zone…. On checking her boat, it was fine, just a little scratch on the bottom of the rudder……We had the option of one of us going to get the car for a rescue, but Aunty Kim decided to have a crack at finishing the paddle in the dinged-up boat…..and she did…. Wow, she was amazing.  The tide and wind were pushing us….but a few tricky bits of navigation were required to get under bridges and around some corners…..her body is now a bit sore from the one-sided paddling and her great effort doing the teetering balancing act to get the boat home….and she didn’t fall in once J J  At one point Aunty Jan felt she had weed on her rudder…..but it was probably not a good time to complain about such a trivial problem….. We made it back 3 hours after we started out….it took both of us all of our strength and about 15 minutes to lift up the boat to empty the water out…..and we never did find the entrance to Eenie Creek….that will now have to be another adventure…..!!!!  Aunty Kim’s boat is now in for a major repair job…but paddle sessions will still go ahead…lucky we have some spare boats!

 THE COFFS CONNECTION...



Tim & Carolyn atop Mt Cooran

We were lucky to have our friends Tim & Carolyn from Coffs Harbour staying up herefor a week and they joined us for lots of our sessions including some big days in the hinterland....We took them on a 'test' climb of Mt Cooran.....it's always a bit dangerous going into unknown territory with the Aunties....however, we had no incidents, found our way up - and down - and went and climbed Mt Cooroora after that....a great feat for Carolyn especially....as she suffers from vertigo.....and coming down these mountains was a big challenge for her!!