jedi jeffi wrote:
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Jim Mark arrives at this point we know the boat is caught on something, between the two of us we have 4 throw ropes, numerous prussic carabineers and pulleys, so we know we have the equipment. Jim has a drysuit so he volunteers to walk a rope out to the boat and clip on one rope to the boat.
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. Somehow approx. 100 pounds of grass roots and dirt wrapped around the one thwart that was still attached to the bottom of the river.
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Jeff
Hi Jeff,
My friend and I were the last boat to start the race. We probably left "the rock" about 10 minutes after Jim Mark and did not even notice the submerged boat in
the water and were wondering if Jim was just acting as a safety in case people
had trouble with the narrowing/faster water at the foot of the bridge. Sounds like you some fun. I've seen a boat upset off a shallow smooth rock, just below the surface, and having both the boat and occupants go completely under water. The depth was about 6 feet (bottom of Palmer) and they resurfaced about 15 feet downstream. The common thing they had with your incident is that the boats had no floatation bags. I suspect that is how the thwart came into contact with the submerged root ball.
Being that flow was fast and my first time on a river, this year, we
ran down to edge to scout. The boat that was to upset was 100 yards underway
and had already encounter a diagonal wave that turned it about 45 degrees toward the left bank...the bridge was another 80 yards away. I'm glad it wasn't us (the last boat) to upset that day...our boat would still be there
You can read the rest at the following link that has flow data and some pictures from the 2007 event. If you did hard, you'll find a link to a photo taken at "Awards Table" toward then end of the
write-up:
cheers,
Ray (C-2 Bronze for the day)