It was never like this in Hawaii Five O

WHEN the people over at Jameson suggested that somebody from The Irish Times might be interested in taking part in the 37th annual Liffey Descent, it all seemed like an attractive enough idea.

Entirely unfit and never having been afloat on anything smaller than a car ferry, I had at least heard all the talk of the many millions of gallons of water that would be released in order to raise the level of the river, and the resultant surge of its currents.

The upshot was that I arrived for my one and only training session expecting something comparable to the opening scene of Hawaii Five O, with the boat riding on the crest of a huge wave and the paddling of those within it appearing to be little more than some bizarre affectation but it quickly became clear I was in for something far more akin to the Brendan Voyage.

The emphasis, that Sunday afternoon, by the Irish Canoe Union's Conor Ryan, was on teaching the sport's newest recruits the art of travelling down a weir on their backsides and holding on to their paddle as they swam for the shore.

It was the first major hint of what to expect on Saturday and, sad to say, it. wasn't long (less than five minutes actually) before the lessons were paying off.

At Straffan weir, one of the largest on the 18-mile course, a significant proportion of the 1,200 competitors end up going for a swim every year. This time out was no different and, having collided with another boat, the three in my own boat, Dave Elwood of Wexford and Dubliner Irene Manning (both widely experienced paddlers) and myself briefly went our separate ways before being reunited some time later on a muddy bank at the far side of the may hem.

The plunge seemed likely to set the tone for the afternoon but, in fact, it didn't. When we managed to survive a pile-up a couple of miles later in the river's overgrown "Jungle", when half a dozen canoes came to grief on a tree stump leaving their occupants to clamber ever higher onto overhanging branches, there was a growing sense of confidence in our boat that this particular publicity stunt - thought up by somebody who had the good sense to be hanging out down at the hospitality tent in Islandbridge - might not end in premature disaster after all.

A warm feeling about the whole enterprise even began to well up inside of me, but it quickly departed again when. despite the fact that my arms were telling me in no uncertain terms that we should have been approaching the end just about then, I dragged it out of my companions that we were just a sixth of the way there. Suddenly, resentment started to set in.

It never gained a firmer grip than when we arrived at the upper end of Leixlip Lake. which lacks any trees to disguise the distance ahead to he covered, and covered without the aid of any flow, while things were hardly helped when we hit an underwater tree stump that almost toppled us over in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

After hauling the boat off of the lake at its lower end and carrying it down to the start of the course's second half, things - as everyone had said they would - improved with a series of weirs breaking up the journey.

Coming successfully through the sluice near Lucan in a boat like ours (a large open Canadian), was by all accounts a decent achievement which was managed to the accompaniment of the, by now, usual encouragement from behind of "paddle like f**k!" and suchlike.

But the celebrations and self-congratulations that followed were quickly overshadowed by the spectators' jubilation on the bank when we failed utterly to make it through the next weir.

Having gone over it dead straight and hit a large rock at the bottom, a growing cheer began to register as we toppled over and into the water and, as we emptied the boat of water before setting off again, we heard a few of the competitors who came past, roundly booed for making it through upright and declining to add to the entertainment.

An evil lot, these canoeing crowds.

Long before that, Ian and Alan Tordoff in the K2 class had led the field home and by the time we made it, nearly three hours later, the English brothers could probably have been back home to Chester. But hey, all of that was irrelevant just then.

Far more pertinent, on the other hand - apart from the seeking out of the first aid people - was the question of how the name of any class in a well organised lunacy could, as ours did, include the word "recreational".

These people clearly don't understand the meaning of the word.