The River is Changing - Sarah Sandeman

Hi! My name is Sarah Sandeman, I'm 17 years old and I live in Ottawa. This is my second year at Keeners but last year I was in sessions 2 and 3. This session has been very different than my sessions last year. Firstly because I have improved a lot in my kayaking and secondly because the river is very different. When I was here last year the water was at a steady level of about minus 2. When I arrived here last Sunday, the river was at 10 and 3/4! That is so much higher than last year! This means that the first day we ran the middle channel, a channel I had only run once, at minus 2. The level stayed at 10 and 3/4 on Tuesday and Wednesday but then it started dropping fast. Over night it dropped about a foot to 9 and 3/4. Thursday was the first time I ran the main channel this year and boy was it different than what I remembered, probably because the water was so much higher. Friday was our competition day and we saw the river change so much that day. When we got on the water the level was 9 and 1/4 so we headed over to McCoy's to play in 7/8 hole. The hole was getting progressively stickier and stickier and downstream a wave started to form. This was because the water was dropping quickly. When we started paddling downstream we found out that the level was at 6 and 1/4. The water had dropped about 3 feet in 4 hours! This meant that the rapids on the main channel had changed quite a bit, especially the waves on Coliseum. They had massive foam piles that would flip you and surf you for a few seconds, even though you could have punched through them just fine the day before. Yesterday and today I really saw how much the water had dropped because I was safety boating on the middle channel, which I hadn't run since Wednesday. I noticed that rocks that were underwater last time I had been there were about 2 feet out of the water now! Personally, I hope the water keeps dropping to about minus 1 or minus 2 because then Garb, Pushbutton, Baby Face and Cornerwave will be in and we will have some more awesome play spots!

Harry Potter Week by Sarah

On my way to winning "Beatdown of the Week" in Right side phils. 

Hey guys its Sarah here again! This week has been super awesome so far and I've done so many new things. On competition Friday last week I tied for 3rd place in the pushbutton group. This weekend I refreshed my memory by retaking the Standard First Aid course which was surprisingly fun. This week is a Harry Potter themed week so on Monday we got sorted into the four houses. I am in Ravenclaw with Luka, Ben, Edward and Isaiah. So far we're in last place but the challenges have been really fun so it doesn't really matter. I was in the competition at the pourover near garb where we had to see how deep we could go by swimming in the pourover. I got third place with 14 feet deep. I also ran the middle channel for the first time on Monday which was really fun and it was great to see a different part of the river. Today I broke my paddle on my practice run in the race down the death slot. What happened is that i flipped right at the top and my paddle snapped while i was underwater. In the race down coliseum I came third overall which was really surprising to me because I know there are many people who are a lot faster than me! Today I was also working on my backdeck roll and learning how to bow stall. After learning how to backdeck roll yesterday I can do it most of the time on flatwater now which is pretty cool. Nicole taught me how to double pump to get into a bow stall and even though i cant quite get it yet im going to keep practicing because a bowstall is one of my goals for this session. This evening we learnt how to play quidditch so that we can play tomorrow as our morning activity. Im excited to play because i've seen my city's university team playing it and it looks like a
lot of fun!

thats all for now, i should get some sleep before big water beatdown thursday tomorrow!

Sarah's first blog

Hey there! My name is Sarah, I'm 16 and I'm from Ottawa. Even though I'm from Ottawa I had never been on the Ottawa River before Keeners because I paddle on the Madawaska which is near my cottage. Today was big water beatdown Thursday and I had a super fun time! In the morning I didn't do any beatdowns because I went with the other group to practice skills. We ran the bottom of McCoy's and then I got some surfs on Baby Face. After that we ran The Lorne then surfed at pushbutton. I got my first ever spin on pushbutton and it was really exciting! After lunch I ran the main with the group and we swam in the whirlpools at the bottom of butcher's knife. I got a lot of great rides and managed to go pretty deep and far. I decided to go down Norman's without a skirt on (the other options were backwards or eyes closed). I ended up swimming but so did everyone else that went with no skirt on. I also went with no skirt down the last rapid and managed to stay up until I hit the tongue even though my boat was completely underwater. I'm so happy I got to come to Keeners and I'm having an amazing time!