Jessica Shares her Road to the World Championships, One Place at a Time!

Finally made it down to Nantahala Outdoors Centre. This is my favorite time of the quarter.

My name is Jessica Droujko and I am on the Canadian National team. I’ve enrolled into New River Academy kayak school this semester to train for the World Championships.

We spent the last quarter in Uganda. The first two and a half weeks were spent at the Harry Lemon. Every day we had classes but as soon as they were finished we would paddle out to surf the Nile Special until dawn. This is a huge semi-glossy wave and it can only be reached when using a rope to surf across or when dropping in from above. Of course we also had the option of surfing Club wave, which is a rougher and more consistent wave. Club Wave comes out around noon. We would alternate waves every other day.

Even closer to Jinja is Eden Rock. There, we got to paddle the Silverback section of the White Nile every day until February 28th because it was being closed to build a dam This was the last day in history that anyone would ever be able to paddle down this section of the river as it is being dammed.

But now we are in the United States and we spent our first week paddling the New River Dries and now we are in North Carolina, training for the NOC Shootout this weekend. I’ll be working on cartwheels, maybe a felix, and getting my loop solid.