Swimming Into a Strainer by Marlon Andrew

On Monday we swam into a strainer....on purpose. It was completely safe and there were coaches all around us. But to me the idea seemed so wrong. When you start out whitewater kayaking everyone says don't swim into strainers, just don't do it. But here we were, willingly being thrown into a stationary log by the current around us. For me, it took a lot of courage to make the first jump into the water. I got slammed into the log but it didn't hurt half as much as I thought it would. After a couple of seconds I purposefully went under the strainer to get unstuck and be washed down stream. I got out of the water and realised that what I had just done was super fun. And a couple minutes later, there I was jumping into the water once again.