COMMERCIAL ROAD WEIR – mutton dressed up as lamb??
If Commercial Road weir were to get a facelift why not do it less than a week before Dusi??
Speaking to the foreman today, he says they are drilling away the concrete base to make the bottom 400mm deeper. Then putting in another thin slab of 50mm.
In theory this will make the ‘water level’ at the bottom 350mm deeper. However in my opinion it won’t deal with the angle issue boats were having by being suspended nose and tail coming off the shoot.
Watching the guys pneumatically drilling the base, its hard slow going. What you see is a days work with three workers constantly rotating. You gotta love the life-jackets.
Personally, I would have left the infamous weir as is. Paddlers have become familiar with its ‘design’ and can thus make their own decision to paddle or to portage.
I’m no engineer, but would of thought the easiest quick fix would be to fill in concrete to lessen the angle at the bottom.
As soon as its complete and theres enough water I will give it a bash. Will keep an eye on proceedings and let you know what the outcome is.
Min dae to Dusi, start easing off. In the words of Bruce Fordyce when approaching a big race, “Go into it slightly overweight and undertrained”.
Mart, well done buddy. You are doing a sterling job. It was great catching up in Wilderness, pity we did not get to see more of you. Leaving things i.e fixing or fiddling with commercial is part of SA tradition, i think they should just have left it as is! Makes is all the more exciting, but then i have never broken a boat there!
i hope that you guys are give it horns for this years race, with someone like you behind them, they can only but excel! well done! wish i was on the start line this year!
Nix
Martin
The reason for the vertical section at the bottom of the weir is to allow you to clear the stopper. If you were to slide down a weir all the way then you expose the deck of your boat to the maximum force of the suck back. Paarl’s mark straat weir is a case in point. It was built to be paddleable but the designers did not understand this point. Hence after a bunch of Stellenbosch paddler all wrapped their boats it became a compulsory portage at the first Paarl-Skooltjie that was supposed to open the weir to the paddlers in general. It has been a compulsory portage since. All it needs is a fish chute with a step. Ernie Pearce weir is a good example of the step projecting you beyond the stopper.
Hi Mathew,
Yes, Earnie Pearce is a great fish shute to shoot as it is deep at the bottom and your nose of your boat does not touch anything. Commercial Rd is very different in that your boat bottoms out, and your nose ends up scraping along, until you and your boat are suspended (tail & nose points of contact) because it is too shallow. Deepening it 35cm is not going to change too much.
Commercial Road Fish shute has never been a problem where there is any danger of suck back. The water flushes straight out the bottom (pre & post alterations).
PROBLEMS
Pre-alteration – boat could come to a sudden stop hitting rocks at the bottom.
Post alterations – boat suspended mid-air negotiating the change of angle of shute
SUGGESTED SOLUTION
Change (flatten) angle of the weir to be more gradual.