Project RAFT
The competitions that brought the river running world together.
My company’s tag line these days is, “Building community. One river trip at a time.”
Cute. Hokey. Hopelessly naive. And yet. . .
In 1990, as a company, we entered a paddling team to travel to Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, North Carolina, to compete and interact with teams from all over the world. It was part festival, part competition and part diplomacy. It was called Project R.A.F.T. RAFT was an acronym for Russians and Americans For Teamwork.
We were - surprisingly - competitive.
We went without any expectations and, in the spirit of river runners everywhere, without having spent a moment training.
We continued to compete in the Project RAFT events for the next three years. We traveled to Costa Rica in 1991 and Turkey in 1993. For reasons unknown to me, these river running “Burning Man” festivals thinly disguised as whitewater competitions faded away after the event held on the Coruh River which was amply supported by the Turkish military.
Besides the competitive events, one of the most fun things we’d do is scramble everyone - about 400 paddlers - up into different rafts and head off down a local river. Many of the participants spoke only their native language. But all of us learned quickly that the language of river running is pretty universal.
Here are some of my memories of those historic community-building events.
It didn’t take long to learn the teams from Russia were tougher than nails.
They came to America with their home made vodka, home made paddlecats (short for catarafts) and home made lifejackets and kicked ass. They’d party all night, chain smoke all day, nap whenever they could find time between competitions and still paddle their hearts out. We heard stories from Americans who had ventured to Russia to join a group of Russian adventurers on a whitewater expedition and they’d retell a tale incomprehensible to Americans.
Trekking over ten thousand foot mountain passes with all of your gear and food for a ten-day river trip. Cutting down saplings at the launch site to create a frame for the paddlecat and attach a metal plate for a paddle. We learned these stories at our first competition at Nantahala where we had arrived with one of the first self-bailing rafts on the market - a Maravia Williwaw painted hot - very hot - pink.
(Maravia is an inflatable boat building company now based in Boise, Idaho. One of the few American manufactured inflatables. The name comes from the combination of Marine Aviation. Apparently, the business began in San Francisco as something entirely different.)
Our team benefited from the hot pink in the lengthy downriver race when we nosed out a team from the Southeast at the finish line for first place. We were convinced the blinding pinkness of the boat jumped out at the judges who called the race in our favor.
Later we got word from the captain’s meeting prior to the next event that the Russians were insisting that they get to use the “boat with holes”. Specifically, they told the event officials, “We want boat with holes!”
Our team captain generously agreed to share the only self-bailing boat in the competition with the Russians assuming it did not preclude us from using it. All of the other teams utilized Nantahala’s non-self bailing rafts.
I remember meeting the Italian team at the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. We introduced ourselves and then they - I kid you not - introduced themselves as, “Paolo, Paolo, Paolo, Paolo, Paolo and Fabrizio.”
Fabrizio was the heir to one of the world famous clothing lines and - sadly - it is lost to the sands of time for me. Name one and you will probably be right.
The Italians - who were all male, in the event you didn’t catch that by their names - did have one additional team member who was not there for the introductions but we met later. She was stunningly gorgeous. And that was the point. They brought along a woman who appeared to be in very good shape but was not even remotely a boater.
They brought her along for the promotional shoots in case they won anything. The women on our team tried to sabotage the idea by secretly encouraging “Sophia” to demand to be a part of the competitions. I don’t remember how successful our women were but I do remember that the Italians were not competitive in anything.
Our team was comprised of three women and three men plus a kayaker. It was not unheard of to have women on your team but it was not common either. There was one all-female team called the Amazonkis. They were not from the Amazon. They were predominantly Californians. Like the Russians, they were there to kick ass. And they did.
My fondest race memory was the all out sprint down the Pacuare River in Costa Rica. It was a biathlon event. Two members of our team ran the five miles through the jungle down to the beach, met up with the remainder of the team and paddled the nineteen miles of the middle and lower sections of the river. Due to an ankle sprain during the running portion, we ended up being the 21st raft out of 40 rafts or so to launch.
That did not deter us from paddling our guts out for the next four to five hours through Class III to V whitewater in an effort to make up some distance on the leaders. The day before a local guide had showed us the safest and quickest routes down river. We used that knowledge to our advantage whenever possible.
In the end, we caught up and passed 11 other teams to come in 10th place. But my favorite passing was when we ‘ran down’ the team from East Germany right at the lip of the toughest rapid on the Rio Pacuare.
Their team was comprised of six very burly males and, in my mind, I see them as all wearing tight short sleeved shirts beneath their personal flotation devices because, as we cruised by them, it seemed like there was a lot of exposed biceps popping as they strained to stay with us using their awkward-looking stiff-armed paddle technique.
I also remember incredulous stares as we left them in our wake and the inevitable deflation when they realized they had no hope of catching up to our motley crew of gender-balanced paddlers.
That’s enough rafting story time for now. Y’all have an election to go back to worrying about. As do I.
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I considered writing about the Supreme Court issue, but I figured it was time for a break. However, this guy’s take might be what I would have written verbatim anyway. Bear with him. He might talk like he has molasses in his mouth but his points are well-reasoned. You might want to keep an eye on his future YouTube postings. Let me introduce to you - Beau of the Fifth Column.
Also, AAR Bill Moore sent along this scene from one of the many Monty Python movies that may bring a bit of levity into your life. It’s titled: Strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Enjoy!
Strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!
Thank you for reading and sharing!
What a fun trip down memory lane! It was so satisfying passing all male boats full of burly guys with biceps the size of quadriceps by using a combination of finesse, good river reading skills, and strong, efficient paddling. But the off river gatherings of river runners from 30+countries were such a highlight.
Thanks, we needed that!