I’ve done a little bit of kayaking before and while I’m not overburdened with talent at it, I’d decided kayaking suits me far better than sailing did. So much so that I decided back in 2017 to get my One Star Award. I got as far as booking it and then the group that actually made it worth the company running the course cancelled and so I got it cancelled too and it’s taken so long to rebook it that the Star Award system has been killed off and replaced. The new Personal Performance Awards aren’t just a renaming of the old awards and so I can’t say that “I did the equivalent of X and Y” – but very, very broadly and not terribly accurately, I did the Discover Award and the Explore Award in one weekend and that was almost roughly equivalent of most of the One and Two Star Awards.
On the other hand, what I’ve been reminded of some of the things that didn’t suit me about sailing: namely, the sea. I had to fall out of my boat and self-rescue and the sea is cold and wet and fishy and deep and the water is a revolting yellow-brown colour (turns out Southern Water may be to blame for that…) and you try explaining to a kayaking instructor and a would-be Scout kayak leader while on a weekend-long kayaking course that you really don’t like the sea. Look. I’m not a water person. I’d like to be a water person. I’m not a fire person either – I’m bad at lighting fires and I’m petrified of fire in the wrong place. In fact, I’m an earth person, a cave person. I belong in the deep dark places of the earth, not on the waves. Anyway. I was thoroughly on the water this weekend.
There were five of us on the Discover award course on Saturday and we covered the entire syllabus in the morning. Well, part of the overhaul of the awards is that there isn’t so much of a syllabus and it’s more about reaching a standard for each individuals’ needs. We had Diana, who’s the Scout leader after getting her kayaking leader certificate and needing to get all the qualifications she needs for that. We had Steve and his thirteen-year-old son Ben, who have bought their own kayak and need to know how to use it safely. And we had Lucy, who works for the company but is evidently hoping to go from a more shore-based job to a more water-based job but needs to learn how to paddle a kayak as the first step. And then there’s me. I don’t have any particular plans for my kayaking future, except that I’m going for a night navigation in the autumn.
We all had the basics already, which is why we were going for the Discover Award and not the Start Award. Antz, our instructor, popped us all into sit-on-top kayaks and we set off across Christchurch Harbour to get an idea of our standards before starting on the more technical stuff. We took a few breaks – it’s quite a long way for beginners, so we’d aim for the boat with the blue sail, then for the red and green buoys, then the pink one with the numbers on it and Antz felt we needed a drink/snack stop – and then we got some work done in the relative shelter of the river, almost in the shadow of the magnificent Norman Christchurch Priory.
We’d covered sweep strokes for turning very early on and Antz had flung “what are the three main principles for efficient forward paddling?” at us about every ten minutes until we could all recite “hands high, paddle all the way in the water, out at the shoulder/hip!” on command. Now we started learning some slightly more advanced stuff. First, we had a go at the stern rudder, which is when you put your paddle in behind you, parallel to the boat. It helps keep the boat in a nice straight line and if you wiggle it a bit, you can also use it to gently steer. It works better when you’ve got some momentum. On a narrow river, squeezed between the bank and a line of moored yachts, needless to say, none of us quite mastered it.
We also had a go at the draw stroke, which scoots the kayak sideways. Didn’t quite master that either. We went back to the centre on Mudeford Quay for lunch, since not everyone in the group had brought lunch with them. I’d brought a bag of snacks and a drink but to be fair, there was very little information beforehand, other than to come in swimming stuff and footwear that can get wet and that we’d be given wetsuits. That meant another long paddle across Christchurch Harbour, this time without so many stops and in pouring rain. The weather hadn’t been quite so bad in the morning and it would get better later but at lunchtime it was rain and fog and I had the choice of wearing my rain-splattered sunglasses and paddling blind or taking them off, paddling blind (they’re prescription!) and risking losing them overboard.
After lunch, the thirteen-year-old decided it was all too much for him – the return journey across the harbour had been very hard work and he’d struggled to keep up with the adults most of the morning anyway. It turned out we’d covered everything we needed to – we’d all gained our Discover Award! – and so the afternoon was occupied with “extras” and, unbeknownst to us at the time, half of the Explore syllabus. We paddled across to Mudeford Spit, dodging the ferry over from the Quay and started with rescues. For our Discover award purposes – well, no, for Antz’s purposes because we’d finished the syllabus, hadn’t we? – all we actually had to do was fall out and either drag the kayak back to the shore or climb back in. Christchurch Harbour is very shallow, perhaps even more so than Poole Harbour, which is the one I’m more familiar with.
Antz and Lucy had come in closed cockpit kayaks and so we learned to rescue them – get the fallen paddler hanging onto the nose of your own kayak and then how to drain the closed cockpits and get them upright again. It’s hard work – they’re heavy, there’s nothing to get hold of when it’s upside down and when they’re full of water, they kind of seal themselves and you have to break that seal before you can do anything else. The idea is to get the kayak drained, upright and with the paddler back in within two minutes, preferably within one. Well, if I’m in charge, my kayaker is going to end up with hypothermia and probably a dent in their skull because I haven’t quite mastered the closed cockpit rescue just yet. Fortunately, that was an extra today and not a requirement.
The last thing we really did was try to figure out another way to turn the kayak, without using either the sweep stroke or the stern rudder and although I didn’t get the details right, I found something that was close enough to the bow rudder for Antz to teach us that and get us jousting. You have to flip the paddle round, with the scoop forward rather than backwards, which felt very unnatural. I also prefer to jam my paddle in somewhere around the middle of the kayak rather than the middle, which feels more like doing a handbrake turn. It’s not a correct stroke but I like it. We had to pair up and paddle at each other and then bow rudder at the last minute and turn away. Diana and I had a small mishap whereby I got impaled by a kayak prow when we mistimed a turn, or more likely failed altogether. I’d had a few moments, especially during the fall out and rescue, where it had all been a bit much, a bit hard, but this was just good silly fun, the sort of thing you learn to pilot a kayak for and we giggled a lot.
But the day turned sour at the last minute. Diana had done her Two Star twenty-odd years ago and Antz wanted her to demonstrate a bow rescue. That means he turns outside down in his closed cockpit, she rams his kayak side-on and he uses her prow to pull himself upright. Yeah, great. Except I’d have to do it on Sunday. Not the ramming bit, the upside down bit. I’d barely survived just falling in the water earlier and paddling five metres back to shore. Now I’d have to hang upside down in the water. I so didn’t want to do that. Every fibre of my very soul was crying all the way home that I didn’t want to do that. Antz recommended getting a noseclip and so once I was back in the car, with the wetsuit in an Ikea bag in the back, the quest began.
Next time: Explore! I thought I’d do both in one post but the Discover Award turned out be a bit much (both blog-wise and real life-wise!) so on Thursday I’ll tell you how Sunday and the bow rescue went…
