Back from the big trip.
We took a day and a half to go the 55 Km. to Veles from Skopje - that's road distance, don't know how long the river is, but I'm guessing pretty close.
The boats handled 12 - 18 inch standing waves (chop? white water? rapids? - sorry not a nautical type o' guy) very well, but took on water with the bigger stuff. We all had makeshift bailers on board and used them whenever we got to calm waer, or pulled to the side if it got too deep in the boat. The current was about 10 KPH when we were able to measure it most accurately... Moving along pretty good.
The Vardar Wasp was the heaviest boat, carrying about 330 lbs.
I had the oars on the Wasp, and while it took me a bit to get used to them I really liked how they helped me maneuver in the fast choppy stuff... Just stick one out and haul on it and I could usually move from side to side or in and out of the current fairly easily.
There was only one bad spot on the river, I had seen it when I scouted the river from the air, but it turned out to be a lot worse than I thought it would be. On of the boats suffered a cracked side from gunwale to bottom and the other had a 4" by 6" hole punched in the bottom. The Vardar Wasp didn't suffer any damage. I was really glad I had built flotation into the bow and stern after going through that. We lost all but one and a half paddles and some of our gear. I'll never take a canoe through that spot again.
Fortunately it was only about 10 km. out of Veles, and I had a new roll of 100 mph tape with me, so we taped up the boats, redistributed the load and finished the trip. We made new paddles from sticks, tape and plastic trash gathered from the sides of the river.
The boats should be pretty easy to fix, but I think we'll stick to calmer waters from now on.
