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sean's blog
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Durban Training Camp before World Cup 2011 by Sean Rice, 22 Jun 2011
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| Durban, South Africa during winter time in is the place to be! I’ve been up here for the week to train in the idealistic warm weather with some new faces but also more importantly to get some time on the Durban World Cup Course. It’s just over 2 weeks till race day and it’s looking to be another very competitive race. Including all the usual guys from SA, Bruce Taylor, Dean Gardiner, mark Anderson all from Australia and some Frenchies thrown into the mix!
Yesterday Afternoon Barry Lewin, Clint ‘Lighty’ Pretorius and I set out to scout the Durban- Pipeline course for Durban World Cup. This will be the race course if the wind is blowing east for the race.
Arriving at the beach Bazza and I were greeted by dark grey sky’s a very over excited Lighty Pretorius as per usual and a Easterly wind being more temperamental then a 16 year old girl not getting her own way!
Anyway after rushing around to change rudders, prepare juice and find my Garmin which ALWAYS goes missing at the worst of times we were soon on the beach ready to go.
If there’s one thing my old man has taught me, that is to trust my gut feeling. Standing on that beach looking out to complete whiteout squalls’ of wind and sheet spray blowing out at sea didn’t do much for my gut feeling to say the least!
There are a few rules when paddling some where you’ve never paddled before in big downwind the biggest one being SAFETY! I suppose I’ve become pretty comfortable with my paddling capabilities over the years and do take risks but yesterday brought me right back to reality very quickly!
Standing on the beach we all looked at each other trying to decide if we should go or not. We’d come all this way and drivers had been organized etc so no turning back we decided. I got plowed by 2 waves heading out and in the process lost my juice bottle and sense of humor. Paddling the 2km out to the harbor wall before turning downwind I had some time to asses my situation. I had no idea where I was going( Big problem!), I had no Garmin to direct me(BIGGER problem!), I had forgotten my leash, no cell phone, my juice was gone and I was about to be taken out by a massive tanker entering the harbor( Biggest problem!)....
It was still bucketing down with gusts of wind trying to lift you out your boat. Lighty was in his element! About 20min later the weirdest thing happened. After a particularly heavy down pour the wind just vanished! GONE! NOTHING!..... WHAT???????
I had not signed up for this ha ha…. I continued on hoping the wind would soon pick up again. There seemed to be a solid current coming straight towards us which slowed our pace down quite a bit. I was told that we’d take about 1.5hrs to cover the 26km. Barry had gone very close in shore while Lighty and myself chose a deeper line. The wind eventually did come back only to flatten out once again. The runs in Durban are different to the one I’m used to in Cape Town. Swell and wind combine here to makes the runs a lot stronger but also more technical to deal with.
Barry had given me a rough idea of what Pipeline looked like. Barry “Bruuu no worries you can’t miss it!” Me “miss what?” Barry “just look for a rocky out crop” Me “Um ok cool….I think?” but 1.5hrs passed and I was still very far from what looked to be the closest kind of civilization along the coast. A solid 2hrs 15 min later I washed up on what I had finally decided looked like the right beach.
Covered in Blue bottle stings, very thirsty and stuffing hungry we tied our boats onto the car just as it went dark (it gets dark at 5pm here). This session was a solid reminder of how one needs to be prepared but for all weather conditions! I’ve still a couple more days here. I will be racing the oldest long distance surfski race in the world on Sunday Pirates-Umhlanga-Pirates and hopefully getting lots more downwind under the belt tomorrow with a big West wind coming through. Can’t wait!!!!!!
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