For a weekend, it was a fairly early start, and I arrived at the VUCC gear shed in the City at 9am. 14 paddlers in total had turned out for the paddle on the Otaki River. During my trip down the Hutt Gorge a few weeks ago, I snapped my paddled. It was still being repaired, which meant I had to use one of the clubs paddles for this trip.

We loaded up the cars and started the hour drive to the get in at Otaki Forks. The decision had been made to skip the coffee stop at the Red Shed cafe because Neil was worried that the river level was dropping. After a brief discussion at the Otaki Forks car park we decided to drive a bit further up the river to another getin point and paddle the top of the river too.