50 Years of Umko 1966 - 2016 1966 - 2016 | Page 73

the bag Ernie knew had the fat wallet in it, as he had been watching it. This
paddler feverishly dived into his bag, found his wallet, whipped it open and
counted. With a hugely relieved look he started scurrying off.
“Uh, excuse me” called Ernie. “Yes?” “Get your bag?” “Yes” “Everything
in it?” “Yes” “Wallet as you left it?”
“Oh, Yes! Thank you!” “Our pleasure” said Ernie.
Finally they opened a bag and found the source of that very high pong:

©Jon Ivins

Two large raw rump steaks!

Repairs

1994 - On a high river Charles Mason and Hugh Bland needed running
repairs at the overnight stop after a swim in The Approaches. In a bid to
save valuable beer time Charles lit a gas cooker to speed up the fibreglass
patch’s curing process. Too much heat set the boat alight necessitating a
dunk in the river and the process had to start anew. A one-beer patch had
became a two-beer patch!
But Hugh Raw remembers the incident thus:
“One Umko KCC made us walk almost out of the valley to the camp setup at the St. Elmo’s overnight stop (river right). The tent was certainly well
above the 100-year tsunami high tide mark! That camp was notable for one
other thing.
Peacefully patching my slightly mistreated boat in the pound with my
partner sitting in a chair giving helpful advice, I noticed Charles Mason
come thundering through the group carrying a flaming K2, a fair amount of
black smoke billowing out behind him, heading for the river. He had made
the classic mistake of hastening the gelling process with the naked flame of
a gas stove.
Hey, maybe Charles’ long walk to the pound nearer the river tired him,
or maybe his imbibing of his namesake lager influenced his hot mix, who
knows? He was paddling with Pope that year and had volunteered to put a
patch under his seat (on the “you broke it-you fix it” principle), a repair that
ended up taking a bit longer than he’d planned! “
Roelof van Riet was neck-and-neck with Paul Chalupsky one year, racing
singles. Roelof cracked his boat quite badly but only really looked at it in
the morning, and it needed work! He thus only started repairing it 15mins

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before the start - that put him out of contention. “You’ve got to inspect your
boat straight away in the afternoon, Roelie” said the ever-thorough Paul who went on to win that year.
Chris Wade had the privilege of paddling three marathons with “Mr Umko”.
“In our third race we were in the water at the start waiting for our batch
start when Charles in his usual laconic way says to me ‘Shall we make a bit
of an effort?’ instead of his usual pre-start question of ‘You’re not in a hurry
are you?’ The go is given and we take off like a bullet and are a good 20
metres ahead of the youngsters as we go into the first left/right drop before
the approaches to No.1. Down the approaches we go with me wondering
how long I’ll able to keep up this pace before I blow when Charles casually
announces that we have no rudder. We pull over, haul the boat on to the
rocks and take out our extensive emergency repair kit. New piece of cable
and connectors in hand and all we need to do is thread the cable through
the rudder wheel. Not included in the repair kit is reading glasses and there
we have two middle-aged gents trying to put the cable through a small hole
we cannot see.
“Bright idea! We lift the rudder end of the boat up and face it into the sun.
We can now see the cable hole properly and in no time at all we are back on
the river. True to Charles’ style we continue at a steady pace and pass many
boats before the overnight stop.”
Owen Hemingway has provided race-saving riverbank repair services for
years, enabling many a paddler who may have had to quit to finish the
course. Before him Hugh user-friendly Raw provided repair kit in a little
Sprite caravan which his man Lucas used to man. “Lucas could help a bit
with technical stuff like how much hardener to put in a beer-can of resin to
achieve a reasonable setting time of 60 seconds”.
Hugh says he had to buy “a fairly constant supply of sponsor’s product
to compensate Lucas for many week-ends away from his several wives and
yet the bakkie and caravan always got home in one piece.”
One time the caravan failed to arrive at the overnight camp on Peter
Krause’s farm, just downriver from Josephine’s Bridge. Loaded to the
gunwales with heavy stuff, the drawbar (a little bit rusty) gave in completely
and there it sat at a funny angle on this horrendous farm road blocking the
traffic. Ernie Alder took over command and amazingly got every nut and
bolt and all the urgently needed repair stuff out of the wreck and down to
the boatpound.
It was a very hot day. Rumours that the resin was setting without addition
of any hardener were probably false but it was true that the chopper could
not take off until dusk when it had cooled down a bit. Hugh also remembers
it as the year that Kenny Reynolds squirted something horrible into his
mildly protesting mouth fr om a sheep dosing unit carried on his back. Raw
says he almost didn’t swallow the fourth squirt. Reynolds says he had to
wrestle the spout out of Raw’s mouth.

Kevin

Middleton - “spot the mistake!”

“My partner was Cliff Sersant Andréws, the original hard man, scary
powerful. Also called Softy. Cliff has a minor chink in his considerable
armour though: He has been left with an odd kick in his gallop due to being
minus the bottom half of his left leg. At the start Cliff went off to Tripper to
buy new shoes, cheap and nasty blue and white Taiwan specials.” (This is an
important detail, readers).
No.5&6 undid them, they swam, they repaired, they walked, they floated.
“We eventually finished as the sun was about to go down. Our sorry craft

UMKO 50 Years