Hay Diddle Diddle, Straight Down the Middle

Last weekend I went to the Tallulah river in Georgia, it was about a 1-hour drive away from my house. I had run this river multiple times, the biggish rapid on the river is Oceana what is a 75-foot slide.

The normal line is on the left side of the rapid. The slide would be clean but about ¾ of the way down, there is a rock that if you slide into you are going to break your ankles. This is the line I did when I first ran the Tallulah. Your angle for the left line is 10 o’clock, then you rutter on the left and suddenly you rush passed this big white wall of water. Your eyes clean and then you hit the hole at the bottom, if you straight you probably get thru it but if not you will probably get stuck in the hole, the best way to surf out is the left side.
I had run that line many times and I wanted to spice it up a little so I was going to try the middle line or the “Skip”. What you do on the middle line is you go down the middle of the slide then about ¾ of the way down there is a hole, you throw all your weight back and the bow of your boat lifts up and you skip over the hole and down the other side, the hole and the bottom of the slide on the middle is bigger than the hole on the right side.
I got out to scout the middle line. I watched someone do it they went over some bushes and skipped right over. I got into my small Antix and started to paddle out to the middle of the river, the guy on gave me a thumbs up and I went. I went a little too far to the tight and went I got to the skip I didn’t have enough speed to get over the 5 feet of flatwater so I did the other middle line what is surfing the hole right above the rock.

The second time I tried it I got it but it wasn’t the best line. Then I tried it a third time and had the perfect line. I pushed off the rock and skipped over the pool of water it felt like I was going so fast when I skipped. Then when I came down the other side I hit the hole and the Antix skipped through that and it was awesome.