If you haven’t read Monday’s post on how I fared with my Discover Award, go and read that now. Then come back here and see how the Explore Award went.
I said last time that Antz wanted me to do a bow rescue, to hang upside down under a closed cockpit kayak and that I really wasn’t keen. So Antz said we’d build up to it. I’d learn to paddle a closed cockpit without a spraydeck and we’d try to get my confidence up to going into the water and if I still really didn’t want to, we wouldn’t. I could still get the Explore Award today.
I knew it had been hard work, doing the Discover award. But by the time I’d made it home through the kind of summer grockle traffic, I could hardly walk. My arms hurt right the way from the webbing between thumb and first finger all the way up to my shoulders, into my neck and my head. An early morning with an early breakfast and the exertion of a day of hard kayaking had resulted in the worst heartburn I’d ever had, which really hadn’t helped matters. So I sat in the car on Sunday morning, eating berry-flavoured Gaviscon tablets like sweets, aching, terrified and putting off the moment when I’d have to get into a damp wetsuit.
It was just me and Diana back for the Explore Award. Steve and Ben had enough to survive their own kayak and Lucy’s training was evidently not as straightforward as just working through the awards in order. I’d only been considering doing the Explore Award at some point in the future right up until I discovered I could do them both on the same day (which turned out to be an admin error which is why it was the same weekend, rather than the same day) so I’d gone for it. And as I mentioned last time, Diana wanted her Scouting kayak leader certificate and she needed the right paper trail of training and qualifications so of course she was doing Explore.
I’m often the odd one out on group things like this – I’m not naturally outgoing and sociable and of course, I don’t like the water. But Diana and I had a lot in common. We were both doing our Explore Award, we’re both youth leaders and we even do the same age group – her Explorer Scouts are now the same age group as my Rangers, ever since the Senior Section got dismantled. It later turned out that our instructor Antz is still at school and also falls into that age group but we won’t mention that. So it was a fun friendly day, with a lot of chatting.
Antz wanted us to try paddling a canoe and so he took one out as his craft and we were given closed cockpits. I was wary – still very aware that I was supposed to do an upside down rescue later but the new kayak felt a lot more comfortable and a lot more stable than yesterday’s sit on tops, if a little more claustrophobic when it came to getting in and out. No spraydeck. I’m going to have to deal with that in September but you’ll hear about that much later. The sit on tops are incredibly uncomfortable on my legs and the closed cockpits aren’t. I mostly didn’t use the footrests, unless we were doing something tricky, and my legs enjoyed being stretched out. I also enjoyed that there was so much more back support.
So with Antz in his canoe and the two of us in our closed cockpits, we headed off across Christchurch Harbour again. I had my phone in a waterproof case inside a small drybag inside a larger drybag and it turned out it can track my route from inside all that. Technically, it tracked Antz’s route. His kayak is quite big and the wind was quite strong and so he took all our luggage in his prow to try and weigh it down and make it a bit more efficient so my phone travelled with him all day. It made the paddling a bit slower, which suited me nicely, and we spent part of the paddle across the harbour discussing group leadership. Obviously Diana was aiming for doing that, Antz does it for a living (when he’s not at school) and as a Girlguiding leader, I think he assumed I was planning to lead kayaking trips too. I had no such intention. If we do go kayaking – and we really should do it more often – I’ll be booking a trip with a professional guide. I really just wanted my Explore Award for the sake of it. So we paddled slowly enough and grouped tightly enough together to talk as we paddled, about managing and leading and how we’d do this bit and that bit and what we’d expect from any other adults or leaders in our group. My other leader… well, I have the most unflattering photo of her somewhere from our Ranger kayaking session two years ago. She’s not a natural kayaker, so I’d be happy simply with another adult who can sit upright and paddle herself and otherwise I’d be treating her as another over-aged Ranger.
We landed at the old Hengistbury Outdoor Centre. It didn’t survive the plague and is currently abandoned, with a shiny new dock and slipway. We planned to land on the slipway but there was a swan preening on it. Antz said it would move for us. Did it? No! And it even hissed at us, to boot. We were therefore forced to do a high dock landing, which was planned for later in the day. Antz left it as a puzzle. How could we support each other to get up onto the pontoon without the boats floating away? To be honest, it was marginally easier without supporting each other much. I don’t know if it’s the correct way but I squirmed onto my knees, flung my paddle onto the pontoon and then squirmed my way up like a harbour seal before pulling my kayak up behind me. Diana thought I made it look easy, which was nice of her, especially as I’ve already told you what I thought I looked like. Between us, with her doing most of the actual work, she got up too and then we hopped onto solid land to have a drink and snack stop and take some photos. Diana had also regretted not having her phone handy on Saturday.
After the snacks and photos, we had to get back into the kayaks without floating away and in hindsight, I have no idea how I managed to hop off the pontoon and into a waiting kayak without ending up in the water, but I did. Antz sat on the dockside with a tow line and we practised our stern rudders again, this time with the tow line making sure we were actually going in a straightish line. Having been introduced to it yesterday, we could work on actually mastering it today. I still don’t think I did but there was definitely an improvement. I got the paddle in at roughly the right angle, anyway. Then we did some more jousting. Unfortunately, Antz’s boss turned up with his own beginner kayak group and they were chatting while we did it and so he missed our perfect turn. He pointed out that he hadn’t heard any collision, so we’d probably done ok.
We paddled up the river and turned left up the river heading for the centre of Christchurch. This is the route they take kayak tours on but we’d be using it for some lessons. We’d covered half, or maybe three quarters, of the Explore Award syllabus yesterday so today could be a lot more chilled and we could learn some more extras. We’d already been doing ok at reversing but we had to paddle a decent distance backwards up the river. Reversing is ok but keeping a straight line over any distance is another matter. Then we reached a bridge, where Antz introduced some very basic whitewater skills. Find the eddy line, turn into the flow, return to where we started. I hit the eddy too soon the first time and didn’t turn sharply enough the second time but it went ok. It’s good fun to feel the water wrestle control of the kayak right out of your hands.
Further on, the river makes a turn at an actual right angle. We weren’t turning right, we were going straight on, down a small side stream that runs through Christchurch and returns to where we were reversing, although I didn’t realise it until I looked at my phone’s GPS afterwards. It meant strong eddies, flows, currents and whatnot. Antz hopped into Diana’s boat to demonstrate how to get across, after we’d discussed it and suggested how it looked to us like we should do it. Then we had to do it for real. It wasn’t so bad. Antz yelled instructions and we were both competent enough to follow them by then, give or take a minor beaching in the shallows. Yes, the river is just as shallow as the harbour. In fact, Antz had got out of the canoe at one point, we’d clung to it and he’d towed all three of us through a really shallow bit.
But here we paddled upstream a little way, into the eddy, matched paddling speed with it and did what’s called a ferry ride, where you let the river carry you sideways. More or less. Under “paddle faster now!” and “side sweep on your right, now!” and various other yells, I got across. It had looked like incredibly hard work, judging by the speed of the water, and it felt a lot easier than I expected. I settled myself on the other side to watch Diana, who did much the same thing. And finally, Antz paddled his canoe across.
We stopped for lunch at the ruins of Christchurch Old Priory. This was where we were supposed to learn the high dock thing but the river was so shallow that we concluded the best way to get out was to hop into the water, shove the kayak up onto the bank and then climb up the wall. Similarly, returning meant dumping it back in the water, jumping in next to it and getting in before it floated too far away. It was raining at lunchtime but we were glad to get the buoyancy aids off and to pitter around in our neoprene socks for a little while.
We had a go at a hanging draw stroke on the way back to the fork in the river. We’d done the draw stroke yesterday and this one seems to be meant to turn the boat sideways while you paddle and slide along sideways, although my attempts mostly just sent me spinning. Still, I was a little better at the draw stroke than I’d been yesterday.
Instead of returning to the centre when we reached the fork in the river, we turned right and continued up past the Priory and up to to a bit of river by Christchurch Rowing Club and the Captain’s Club hotel. Antz had had me hop into the canoe to learn to paddle it, towing my kayak, and then I set off to practice my J stroke and C stroke (if you read about my last canoeing attempt, you might notice that I knew of their existence but no idea how to actually do it). I don’t think this was actually part of the Explore Award but I was very pleased to get to do it. I paddled happily around, dodging tourist motor boats, moored yachts and kids in inflatable kayaks and Diana practised some closed kayak rescue. Not a word was said about me doing it. I guess the moment we set off with me not wearing a spraydeck it became inevitable that I wasn’t going to do that. The Explore Award’s lack of really solid syllabus worked with me – there was no actual need for me to. But I did consent to a canoe rescue.
The canoe was surprisingly stable. There was no way I could get it to capsize so I sat on the side and jumped into the river, finding it less than waist-deep and Antz and I tipped the canoe upside down between us. The idea was that I’d hang onto the front of his kayak while he demonstrated how to drain and right it but the water was so shallow that I mostly just stood or sat in the water. And it turned out we had a defective canoe. First there was a hole in it – just a small one near the top, not enough to be a sinking hazard. More importantly, it turned out it had no foam in it, which meant once it was full of water, it was absolutely impossible to right it. We had to shove it all of two metres to where it was shallow enough to beach it and it took all three of us to turn it the right way up. It was painted white inside so that really showed up what a horrendous colour the water is.
And that was it for the day. Diana and I were now holders of the Explore Award and all we had left was to get home.
It wasn’t as easy as the rest of the day. The wind had really got up and crossing the harbour was almost impossible. To be honest, between the work and the fact that I was permanently drifting to the right, it all got a bit much. I thought I’d scurry across the main channel and then we’d just make our way back to the centre but between the wind and the fact that the channel is a weird shape, I must have spent ten or twenty minutes just being carried into it. I yelled and I swore and I called the harbour and the boat and Antz every name under the sun and I was exhausted and I was still trapped in the main channel.
Eventually, Antz realised that. I got to him and we clung to each other’s boats and then he jumped out, into the harbour. For all the paddling, it was still shallow enough for him to stand up. He put my boat on a tow line and we just paused. A few minutes break was all I really needed. He put down my skeg – a sort of miniature rudder – and when I was able to continue, he sent Diana and I to head at the last yellow buoy, where he and his slow canoe would catch up with us and then we’d go nice and gently back to the centre with the wind at our backs. He also said I’d never have to do this “in real life” because anything like this would be cancelled in such strong winds. I resisted the urge to point out this is real life and it hadn’t been cancelled.
We very quickly realised we had no idea which was “the last yellow buoy” and it turned out neither of the ones we were trying to choose between was the one Antz meant. Well done for having a whistle. By the time we got the last yellow buoy, he was well in front of us and we were out of the channel and heading straight home. It was choppy and a week ago I’d probably have capsized. But between the more stable craft and my slightly increased skill in handling it, I made it back. I had no idea where Diana and Antz were. The hood of my waterproof jacket had escaped from my buoyancy aid and if I tried to look behind me, that was all I could see. I reckoned they were both better paddlers than me and as long as I made it back to roughly the right place, they’d both be fine. Which they were.
I did have a minor catastrophe that nearly capsized me towards the end. I knew I had to get the skeg up before I came into land, otherwise I’d rip it off and be responsible for £800 worth of damage but I couldn’t jerk the string hard enough. The wind grabbed my paddle as I waved it around and then I shrieked and found myself clutching the paddle upside down with no idea what the skeg was doing. It still didn’t feel like I’d got it properly up when I washed up in the shallows.
It all ended quite unceremoniously. Diana and I pulled our kayaks up onto the beach, Antz quickly congratulated us and told us to see Nick about our Discover and Explore award certificates and then he was off again, grabbing a powerboat to go out and rescue a group of paddleboarders stuck on the other side of the harbour. If we’d had major difficulty crossing in our kayaks, they had no hope. So that was it, we were finished. We both had our Explore Award, I was marginally less tired than I’d been at the beginning of the day and we were free to go.
Diana will carry on her training and get that certificate. I will hire a kayak over the summer and practice some of my techniques and then I’m going to have to face the closed cockpit rescue in September to be ready for my night paddle in October. Come back in the autumn for more kayaking content!