Upper and Lower James PFD for Caissa, Tru and Noah

Ah, boater lingo...PFD stands for two things in the boating world: 1) personal floatation device (very important on the river) and 2) personal first descent.  For this blog entry, I am referring to the second definition.  Caissa, Truett and Noah all had their personal first descents on the Lower James in the corn raft this weekend.

Here are Caissa and Noah headed down the stairs at Pony Pasture...geared up and ready to boat.
It was a very good trip.  Although I was convinced the weather wasn't going to cooperate (it was 76 degrees at the put-in).  The kids were slightly chilly until we got to Choo-choo rapid and the sun made an appearance.

Caissa at the entrance to Choo-Choo rapid

The edward (it's too big to be an eddie) at Choo-Choo.

Of course the Amtrak train went over it while we had lunch and there was waving and honking of the horn.  Cai and Tru even swam a little bit, but I forbid our traditional bare-butt run of the rapid (sans boat) because it was still really chilly.

On down the river, we decided to run the lower James in addition to the upper (everyone was having a good day and everyone was in good humour).

Doug looking fly with the overcast sky

Skies clearing as we set up for the downtown run

We made a pretty clean run of First Break and then eddied out to shift gear and kids.  The bigger rapids were after the wave train at First Break.  We attached cam straps to the thwarts so that Tru and Noah could sit in the bottom of the boat and hold on to the straps.  Caissa and I were the power and Doug was the "raft guide" steering us in the lines.  We made it through Corner Rapid, Flipper, Stripper, and Hollywood with hardly any trouble.  We waved at people on the Belle Island bridge and got set up for the last major rapids.  We did pretty well at Fish Ladder and S-turn, and Pipeline was fun and splashy.  Unfortunately, that's were our luck ran out.  After Pipeline we tried for a line that was too narrow for us and got wedged pretty good on a rock.  I got out and Doug got out and after a bunch of pushing and grunting, got the raft, only to not be able to paddle to the other side of the river to make the next line for the takeout.  We ended up having to go around an island and paddle back across the river, but in the lee of the island, the current wasn't as strong as it was above it 

The picture of them at the take-out from the previous blog is us after we carried the raft up and started deflating it (and before we got everything loaded and changed out. 

We were very lucky to have an invite for Vietnamese at Mekong from Jeff Smith.  It was really superb food and Mekong also specializes in a huge selection of Belgium beers.  I had a lovely "dessert" beer (raspberry) and Doug had some sort of coffee beer (that was delicious).  Hats off to Jeff and family for such an awesome meal and company.

We're back home now (for the moment).  We have four days until we leave for the lower Yough on Friday.  Should be interesting to do the turn around.  On a happy note, Doug and I are getting better at loading and unloading the raft.

See you on the river,

Santha