Barry's Blog: May 2011

I have been out in Plattling for almost a week now in preparation for the world championships taking place next month here. Levels have been on the low side making the feature a bit tricky but with heavy rain over night and more forecast today we should see perfect levels for a few days. At the moment there is a great group of people out here, with paddlers from seven different Countries.

First thing i noticed when i got out here was that nearly every boat was composite and most of the people with plastic boats are waiting for their composite boats to arrive. With the low levels of late, broken composite boats is common place with some one patching their boat every other day.Plastic is looking like the way to go for now unless there is rain when the competition comes around

Peter Csonka hitting a mcnasty

As for the feature at current levels of 140- 150 on the gauge there are some deep spots where you can knock out air loops but be warned there are a lot of rocks. I spend some time watching paddlers that have been here a while to see how they paddle the feature and where they plug which proved very helpful to finding the sweet spots. Levels can be checked via the online gauge here which updates constantly through out the day.

Robson's new playboat designed and paddled by Martin Koll

Its still not to busy over here with ques not getting bigger then four or five at peak times, but with everyone else still to arrive, Plattling is sure to start filling up soon. That's about it for now. Ill throw up a video of our training so far some time next week. Signing off from the local kebab shop....