Ibis Point to Inanda Dam

With hardly any rains inland the river was rather low! The race started at Ibis point and finished, after a short paddle across Inanda Dam, at Dip Tank. It was the third Dusi seeding race so we had to give it all!
We started in A batch next to previous Dusi champions Andy Birkett and Jason Graeme. The start was carnage but we just managed to slide out of trouble, a boat did manage to climb onto our back deck of the boat pulling my splash cover off making us loose 1 place when I had to put the splash cover back on, but nothing serious.
About 5 km’s into the race we arrived to the steep 4km portage- Ngumeni Hill. We took out with two “change a life” crews. The one crew opened a 500m gap on us. We managed to keep ahead of the other crew during the portage and never seeing them again after that. Once we climbed back into our boats we had to negotiate our way down the three biggest rapids in the low river- Gumtree, Thombi, Hippo. We shot everything perfectly thanks to Donovan’s top driving skills. From then on it was a hard grind to the start of Inanda dam. We managed to catch 6th place-Brandon Van Der Walt and Clint Cook- about 6km from the start of the dam. Because of the hyasins becoming more and more of a problem, they had blocked up the whole of the river forcing us to take out and portage along the bank of the river for 2km. After that portage, which felt like the comrades, we put in with the group of 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th place. It was a short paddle to the finish but at a fast pace. Coming into the finish the two boats on our side(Michael Mbanjwa, Eric Zoni and Brandon Van Der Walt , Clint cook ) started sprinting and got half a boat length ahead of us. In the end we just managed to sneak past Mbanjwa and Zondi putting us in 8th overall and 1st junior.
We are looking forward to the next Dusi qualifier next weekend, the Midmar Mini.