World's First Surf on the "Braver Wave" today, Rock Island at 30,000cfs

December 8, 2004

OK, so when does Christmas start and finish? Today
Stephen Wright and I crossed the dam early this morning to scout Sieve
City for a high water run. We did the full scout and were ready to get
our boats and make the run. Remember that this is 1/4 mile from my front
door. On crossing the dam, which has 6 gates fully open and spilling about
25,000 cfs out of them, we noticed a beatiful, giant wave below the dam.
There has been awesome waves there before and we have looked at them,
but only a broken paddle, or blown skirt below the waves looms Great Falls
at 30,000 cfs. These falls are perfect for watching trees do cartwheels
at this level. It is a 20′ low head dam effect that is hundreds of yards
wide, and below the falls is Sieve City. A swim here just might be your
last one. For this reason, we have not really taken the waves too seriously.
However, on this day. Stephen announced to me that he would rather surf
a big wave than run a big rapid, so we drove back over the dam and parked,
and hiked down the steep banks about 200 feet into the gorge to get a
closer view. The wave looked awesome, no doubt about that. The eddy was
particuarly big at this gate configuration making it more attractive.
The eddy on river right was the safe haven and it looked like you could
get into it if you didn’t get surfed out to the middle by the catchers
mitt below the main wave. Both the main wave and the catchers mitt are
angled towards the middle of the river, raising more concerns from the
bank. Our desire to surf the wave was strong enough to get us to hike
down the river bank to make an estimate of the emergency plans if something
went wrong. We determined that in your boat, with a hole paddle, we could
get to the main eddy most of the time, and have to eddy out behind a log
jam some of the time, and probably never have to catch the last two eddies
before going over the falls. With a broken paddle, we determined that
we could catch the eddy behind the log jam most of the time, and perhaps
have to use one of the last two eddies if we flushed in the middle. With
no paddle, we would have to go for the log jam, but likely catch one of
the last two eddies, or maybe since the water is BIG and BOUNCY and BOILY,
that we might not have the power to get in any eddy and have to try to
run the falls, not good. Swimming, we had several different opinions.
I am a very fast swimmer, but the water is too easy to under estimate
in its speed and difficulty to swim, and I gave a swimmer a 25% chance
of making an eddy before going over into oblivion. I am not sure what
Stephen thought about that, but we just decided that well, we aren’t swimming,
we have Mountain Surf skirts and Jackson Kayak cockpit rims so we should
be good as far as skirts blowing.

Stephen and I hiked up the hill and went home to get
our boats, and to get Emily, Dane, Kristine, Clay, and John Ratliff. Emily
took the photos you see here. Dane and John took video, and Kristine watched,
while Clay paddled, of course.

It was a minor project to get the boats to the water
but not unreasonable. The three of us got in our boats and did a small
seal launch into the angry eddy that has holes going up river. I did the
first ferry out to test the waters and got the virgin surf, just front
surfing to see if it was what our eyes told us it was. I pealed off and
drove for the eddy to see how hard that would be and caught it pretty
high, making me much more comfortable right away. The catchers mitt greened
out when I hit it so I didn’t get a feel for what that hole would be like
yet. Stephen went next and not only surfed the wave but he got the first
trick ever on the Braver Wave, a nice righty blunt. Clay got on and did
a sweet first surf nailing a couple of nice blunts right off.

The wave, as you can see from the photos, changes dramatically
from jacking up tall and green to getting smaller and breaking. You couldn’t
catch it when it was green but the big tricks were, for sure when it was
green. The trick was to either go way out to the river left side, where
the break was more consistent, but the flush there put you at risk, or
hope for a breaking wave when you got there. We slowly moved out to river
left as the session progressed with Stephen leading that charge, almost
missing it on the left side once and, of course, missing the eddy and
catching the eddy below the log jam. I decided that I wanted to stay above
the log jam leaving as much margin for error as possible in this environment.

Once on the wave it was easy to launch the kayak off
the water for a variety of fun moves. Clay and I were watching Stephen
on the wave and just looked at each other like, oh yea, did we choose
wisely or what? This is in terms of choosing our place of residence, Rock
Island, TN. There are no photos showing the view we had in that eddy unfortunately.
It was awesome. 30,000cfs dropping down the 60 feet or so of vertical
drop over the dam and hitting a 80 degree transistion on the bottom and
shooting straight out at us. The eddy was crazy, with waves coming in
from the river that could catch you and surf you over top of people (it
happened). Those waves were awesome for Macho moves too. The view downstream
was of the big waves, then the river just started humping over and dissapearing
over the horizon line. The horizon line was very apparent and seemed way
too close, but we kept ourselves away from it.

The ferry out to the wave was really cool. There were
two really big waves just before the main wave that were surfable. The
top one fluctuated a lot, but Stephen got on it in his 2 Fun and had a
wild bouncing ride before washing off and almost missing the main wave
to the left and, then, missing the eddy, bad boy, bad boy. I didn’t get
tempted to surf the top wave today. Falling down into the main wave had
two different views. One was a giant green wave, and one was a big hole.
Both were interesting and neither were a sure bet. A breaking wave would
green out instantly before you got there and you would flush right over
it into the catchers mitt, which was biggest when the Braver Wave was
green. A green wave would suddlenly break and you could catch it so you
never aborted the attempt.

Well, add the fact that it was sunny and 65 degrees
today, that I got out of the water and ran home, and that we broke new
ground here at Rock Island, I would have to say that today was a keeper!

Check out the video
clip and photos.

🙂 EJ