Ottawa River in seakayaks Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I'm in Ottawa, Canada filming Ken Whiting and Brendan Mark seakayaking down the mightly Ottawa River. These former world champions ( Ken in playboating and Brendan in Squirt boating) know the river like the back of their hand and make 10foot drops into a wall of whitewater look like a piece of cake.

One the first day we paddled down the Middle Channel which opened my eyes pretty wide. I've paddled in quite a few tidal rapids but have spent less than 20 days kayaking on rivers in my life so it was exciting, to say the least. I managed to slide sideways into 'Phils hole' but emerged the right way up, and had one roll on my weaker side at another rapid. The boys were very cool and even ran the impressive Garvin's shute in their TRAK kayaks.

Today we paddled down the main channel, which is 3 times the volume of water of the middle channel. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous!! Today I managed 4 rolls, 2 of them in the last rapid which was a HUGE wave train! The 3rd wave broke on me from what felt like a great height and I knew I was in trouble. The next second my kayak was vertical and soon after I was upside down. It took a while to be able to get into position to roll as the water was very turblent, and almost as soon as I was up, I got knocked over again. A quicker roll this time and I paddled to the eddy. It was quite a buzz to survive that! Ken and Brendan made it look pretty easy and I've got some great footage of them on waves which make the seakayaks look very small! The footage will be in 'This is the Sea 4', which will be released before Christmas this year - more details to follow soon!

Tomorrow I fly to Toronto for the MEC PaddleFest at the weekend.