This is so exciting that I’m writing the first paragraph half an hour after booking, more than two months before I actually did the thing I’m about to tell you about – by the time this is published, I will hold the British Canoeing Sea Kayak Award.
(Well, that’s what I thought when I started writing it- this video not being sufficient evidence of self-rescue, I have to go and do a half-day coaching to cover the self-rescue element so I do not yet hold the Sea Kayak Award! Nonetheless, let’s talk about the training for the rest of the award.)
When you get into paddlesport, if you want to get into awards and qualifications, you start with the Paddle Awards – Start, Discover and Explore. I skipped the first and did the second and third in the summer of 2021. Then you can move onto leadership or personal performance awards in a variety of disciplines, which “allow you to develop your personal paddling and decision making skills in the craft and environment of your choice”. There seem to be twelve disciplines and three awards in each. I looked at these after Explore and knew that if I ever did them, the Sea Kayak Award set was the route I’d be taking, given that I do all my kayaking on the sea. So, the Sea Kayak set come as Sea Kayak Award (winds up for force 3 and/or tides up to 1 knot), Coastal Sea Kayak Awards (winds up to force 4 and/or tides up to 2 knots) and Advanced Sea Kayak Award (winds over force 4 and/or tides over 2 knots). I know, I’d have named them something more intuitive. I initially rejected them on the grounds that it looked too advanced, and that the route I’d rather go down was the Instructor/Coach one. Spoiler: I’m really hoping that’s coming too this summer.
But I spied the Sea Kayak Award on Instagram courtesy of my favourite local outdoors company and evidently in the split second it took to click the link-in-bio to book it, my brain decided it wasn’t too advanced anymore. I guess I’ve done three half-day introduction to sea kayaking trips, a night-nav by sea kayak and a pool capsizing session since then. So here I am!
Day one was mostly revision. I’ve done enough training before to know the basics – for it turns out the Sea Kayak Award really is a very basic course in transferring what you already know on more sheltered water to the sea, and I’ve done pretty much all my kayaking on the sea. I knew that you should check the tide and weather before you go out, I knew the strokes, how to move my boat in whatever direction I wanted – with varying degrees of success; my sea kayak is seventeen feet long so it doesn’t want to do hairpin turns around buoys. The first major success of the course was that I managed to get my spraydeck on all by myself for the first time ever. I mean, on the boat. Getting it onto myself is just a matter of pulling it over my head and adjusting straps and elastic until it’s in the right place. Getting it onto the boat means folding it under the cockpit’s lip at the back and following it around until it’s stretched all the way around. Usually when I lean forward to get the front, it immediately pings undone at the back. No problem this time!
We spent the morning on the basics. One new thing was a contact tow. That basically means someone comes alongside you and you cling to their kayak and they paddle the both of you side-by-side. Dan, the instructor, has a contact tow on his kayak – that is, a couple of short lengths of webbing that join two boats together in exactly the same way as if their occupants were holding on, but without requiring anyone to actually hold on. I’ve been towed before – by Dan, actually – but that was a more conventional tow, on the end of a towline. Yeah, Dan was the leader for my first ever trip. An update from late May: having joined the team down at the boathouse, I’ve had a go at being the tow-er on kids who are struggling and it’s a lot harder in two wider boats!
We had lunch back on dry land and then set off for our journey in the afternoon. A journey is always a part of a paddlesport qualification. It’s about putting all your newfound skills into practice but also finding out how capable you are of actually paddling. We handrailed around Studland Bay, crossed through Old Harry Rocks and then followed the cliffs down to the Ballard Down and popped into Swanage Bay. I’ve done the trip past Old Harry and into the rougher, more open water beyond but this went a lot further. The furthest I’ve been so far is the second or third headland. I was no longer worried about the bounciness of the sea. I can still feel little me from 2014 who was terrified of this and got tipped out six times but it’s hard work paddling that distance against a bouncy sea. My arms were tired before we got to the end and although we got a bit of a break in the slightly-calmer water of Swanage Bay, it wasn’t really enough and I ran out of steam on the way back. I was paddling one-armed in an attempt to not get swept further and further out to sea and that is both exhausting and deeply frustrating. There’s no point paddling with my left arm because it pushes me further away from where I want to be so I was pushing and pushing and pushing to try to get back to the cliffs and just not getting anywhere and getting more and more tired. I admit, what I shouted across to Dan was “I’m too tired to go any further!” but what I guess I really meant and what he heard was “I need a rest for five minutes and a tow back onto the right line”. So Dan paddled over, contact-towed me back towards the cliffs and I hung on until I had enough feeling in my arms to plough on. All you have to go is keep moving forwards, not backwards. Doesn’t have to be fast. Don’t fight the water. And so on. Just get to the next chunk of rock. Just get to the next. We were back through Old Harry surprisingly quickly, actually. Then we landed on the famous feature and stumbled through the rockpools to a drier patch for a proper rest. My knees were very cramped up. You sit frog-style in a kayak, with your feet on the pedals and your knees pressed into the sides of the cockpit. Actually, I don’t – I find it very uncomfortable and mostly paddle with my legs stretched out and only use the pedals when I want more stability, ie when I’m paddling in open bouncy sea! The journey back across Studland Bay was wonderful. It was so calm and still and I’ve done it so many times that it feels like you’re practically back by the time you’re back through Old Harry.
The weather wasn’t great on day two. Force 4 SE winds, grey sky, noisy sea. Dan looked out at Studland Bay and decided that although we could handle the conditions out there, there was no benefit to us doing so. We’d already shown what wind and waves we could deal with. We wanted something a bit more gentle to finish the rest of the course. So we went to look at Poole Harbour. The harbour should be more sheltered but in fact, because it’s the second biggest natural harbour in the world, it’s actually quite a big body of open water and it has a bit of chaos at the very narrow opening, where wind and tide and bottleneck cause some more fun conditions.
We started by paddling across the SE wind to the bottom corner of Brownsea Island. That was hard work – more one-armed paddling and not getting where I wanted to be. We started off by aiming at Brownsea Castle. Then we realised we were getting blown west and aimed instead for a rest post sticking out of the water. Then that got lost too and we were aiming instead for the loose sandy cliffs. I found that very frustrating, despite Dan’s reassurances that given the wind and the tide, he was impressed we didn’t get swept 500m further west. We clung closely to Brownsea’s coast and pulled ourselves east, past the private beaches, past the castle, past the landing jetty and then round to the lagoon. By now, the tide was more or less behind us, which meant a relatively easy paddle. I did get caught by the wind and Dan took me in contact tow, using the webbing thing, until I was back in line again.
What we knew about this circumnavigation was that we’d have a long paddle back to the cars straight into the wind. We’d had a little practice at paddling into the wind on the way over and concluded that it was actually easier than paddling across it. But let’s be realistic here. There were three of us: Dan the instructor, Nick who was hoping to support-boat his wife’s Channel swim and me. Obviously, Dan is the master. Out of the two pupils, I was the experienced one and the theorist but I was also the weakest paddler. Dan said that if necessary, he could tow us back against the wind. It would be slow but it could be done. We also had the last-resort backups of landing on Brownsea, walking back to the jetty, taking the boat across to Sandbanks and then the ferry across to Studland and the cars while Dan towed the empty boats. There were options. But we knew that plan A was a long hard paddle right at the end of the day.
We made up for that with a really relaxed paddle around Brownsea’s north shore. I was disappointed to discover that the lagoon is contained/protected by a concrete wall. You can see over it from the ferries but not from kayak level. However, once you’re past the wall, there’s a long stretch of narrow golden beach with lots of birds just ambling around. This is a protected nesting area so you’re not allowed to land there and the birds know it. It was like a little private bird safari and virtually zero-effort paddling. Once we were past that, still in the calm water, still close enough to shore that it was easy to slightly run aground, we broke out the towing practice. Nick and I had gone out wearing towlines and we practised taking one boat in tow, taking both in tow, releasing ourselves from the towing system as the tower and releasing ourselves from the system as the towee, not to mention packing the towline back into its little bag. It’s like a little bumbag with a mesh panel at the bottom for drainage and so towing a kayak and a full-sized adult human from a narrow webbing belt isn’t a comfortable way of doing it. You also have to be a bit gentle; it’s easy to pull your towee sideways and round and tip them halfway over. And of course, paddling yourself and a second boat on the end of a 20m rope is hard work in and of itself.
I had a hiccup releasing us from Nick’s tow. One of the other instructors had daisy-chained Nick’s towline. That’s not a bad thing. It means the rope is shorter and sturdier which means less wiggling around on the end of a long rope. The bad thing was that it was badly done. A proper daisy chain should just fall apart if you pull it in the right place and this one didn’t. Fine. We’ll try towing on a shorter line. But when it came to releasing, I was supposed to pull myself along Dan’s kayak until I reached the karabiner, unclip from there and let the rope run out through both of our decklines. But it wouldn’t go because my decklines were caught on the daisy chain. I couldn’t move myself far enough up Dan’s boat to unclip. In a real emergency, where we needed to be urgently released, I’d get my knife out and saw through the rope hanging in the water next to me but the pair of us would still be joined at the nose.
We landed on Brownsea’s western tip for lunch. We were all carrying big orange expedition jackets which you put on over everything else, towlines and buoyancy aids included, for warmth and shelter and we kept them on for the afternoon. If you want to look like a proper expedition paddler and like you know exactly what you’re doing and like you could defeat a bear while sitting in your boat, they’re £220. Now we were more or less back into the wind and it was a bit of a struggle along the south coast. Nick was slipping behind and I was struggling a bit. Dan kept telling us not to fight the water, to make sure we were doing proper full-length strokes and to remember that all that matters is that you’re moving forwards, not backwards. We made our way along the coast, stopping regularly and clinging to each others boats to make makeshift rafts in the shallows, where it’s harder to get swept back and then it was time for the moment of truth. Two kilometres away, straight into the wind, is our end point.
Dan is practical. We’re both tired, Nick is perhaps not as strong a paddler as I thought. It’s better to know before you set out. So I said “I’m going to need to take up your offer of a tow. I’m going to get tired, I’m going to need to take a break and when I stop paddling, I’m going to literally go backwards”. Might as well be up front about these things. Dan decided to put me on a towline immediately. I’d still need to paddle but I wouldn’t need to worry about fighting the wind and being swept off-course again. I could put all my energy into just moving fowards. Nick made dubious faces. So off we went. Mindful of “you have to paddle”, I did and to my surprise, I kept up with the boys. The towline made a big u-shape in the water between me and Dan and got in the way of my paddling. Dan checked in with us and Nick admitted to being tired. Not enough to need a tow – although Dan was already unclipping me from the towline and putting it on him – but he could feel that he was fighting against the water.
Oddly enough, I was becoming more and more serene. I was going straight into the wind and therefore I could paddle equally with both arms. The waves washing past give a sense of strong forward movement – take a look around the harbour to see if you’re actually moving but the sense of movement makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something and I wasn’t fighting nearly as hard as I expected to be. Nick drifted off to our right and Dan went after him and I carried on, aiming for the marker buoy first, then the first houseboat and then the shore. I glanced over my shoulder occasionally but the hood of the enormous orange jacket blocked my view of anything going on behind me. I couldn’t hear Dan or Nick. I had no idea what was happening. Were they paddling along laddishly, talking about triathlons and cross-Channel swims? Was Dan towing Nick? Was Nick in trouble? My instinct as a Guide leader is to leap in and help in the event of a problem but here, I’m the beginner. I’m the weakest paddler. Any attempt to help is likely to leave me as a second casualty, or at least as a second person needing to be helped. No, right now, whatever’s going on behind me, the best and most useful thing I can do is to continue paddling and get myself safely to land. So I set my nose to where I was going and I paddled. I was astonished to realise that I wasn’t getting tired yet and even more astonished when it dawned on me that I was putting in no more effort than I had been on the bird safari part of the day. I was bimbling along quite quietly and calmly, breathing as slowly and evenly as I am right now, sitting at my desk with only my fingers moving, paddling 2km across a fairly open bit of water straight into a force 3 wind – I’m not convinced it was force 4 by now. Dan caught up with me, checked in, assured himself that I was doing just fine, and once he was sure I was heading the right way, went back to Nick. If I got blown a bit off course, all that really mattered was that I landed on the beach opposite somewhere. I could always follow the shoreline back to where I was meant to be, or drag the boat through the shallows.
I had enough spare breath to enjoy the paddle and to sing three Taylor Swift songs to myself as I made my way across the harbour. I was still on course and as I got closer and zeroed in more and more on the precise landing spot, I stayed on course. Aim for the end of the headland, aim for the buoy, aim for the boats, aim for the beach – and then put on as much speed as I can to ram the beach. You just want to make sure your kayak is beached and that you’re not going to get lifted up and carried away as you go to stand up. I rocked the kayak enough to fall onto hands and knees in the shallows, got up, pulled the boat all the way out of the water, took off the big orange jacket and looked back out to see where the others were. Lime green boats and orange jackets are actually surprisingly hard to spot on greyish water but there they were. Nick was coming in ahead of Dan, also perfectly aimed, and I tried to make myself useful by catching his kayak as he rammed the beach. We’d both made it but I felt like I’d had an easier time of it. Nick’s ex-army and he does triathlons. I’m very much not the army/triathlon type and you can tell that just by looking at me. Was this my greater experience? Was this just luck? Was this the sudden ability to take on board Dan’s advice to “not fight the water”? It couldn’t be that I was stronger because 1) I’m not and 2) I’d been acutely aware that I wasn’t using any strength.
I’ve always known that I like paddling against the water more than anything else. Instructors have always yelled jubilantly about having the wind or the waves behind us and how good does it feel to be propelled? Well, I’ve always felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’d concluded that’s likely to be an optical illusion because of the lack of waves passing me – when I see waves moving past me, I feel like I’m making good progress and when I don’t, I don’t. But perhaps I genuinely just have a style of paddling where what’s easiest for me is to paddle into the wind. For all my protests that I’m the weaker paddler and I’m not strong, I know I have more upper-body strength than anything else. My years of caving taught me that. Where you’re supposed to use the big muscles in your legs to push yourself around, I’m using my arms to pull myself around. But I’m not that strong because you’d see it and because my arms wouldn’t have been exhausted on day one’s journey. Anyway, there’s food for thought. I did well! And also, why and how did I do well??
I didn’t get my Sea Kayak Award. Not yet. Dan wasn’t expecting to actually assess us, just to do the training but when he asked what we wanted to get out of the two days, I mentioned adding a qualification to my list ready for boat club and so he assessed me. What we didn’t cover was rescue. Mostly you need to do a self-rescue and the important part is getting yourself back into the boat. At the end of day two, we looked back at the grey water and he said if I was desperate to finish the qualification, we could go back out and do the rescue. I’d have to capsize and swim upside down in the freezing water, even if only for a couple of minutes at the very end of the course. I was also aware that it’s very shallow here so we’d have to go quite a long way out and then paddle all the way back in again, but now cold and soaking wet. My other option was to come back and do the half-day with one of the boys again in the summer. That’s fine. I’m in no great haste for the certificate. It’s not a leadership certificate so all it’s going to bring to boat club is “look, I have some experience and training!”. But, I said, “what if I had a video of when I did it with Kyle last summer?”. “That is a brilliant solution!” Dan exclaimed. So I sent it over. At time of writing, I haven’t had a reply but I already know it’s not going to be enough because my lovely photographer stopped filming once I was in the water and didn’t get the bit where I climb back into the boat. So I’m going to have to do a half-day once the weather warms up, just to cross that off.
So by the summer, I should have my Sea Kayak Award! But for now, I’ve done almost all the training and assessment, I had two very interesting and educational days at sea, I’ve discovered that the SKA isn’t as scary or advanced as I thought it was when I finished Explore, I’ve got 21km of paddling to add to Strava when Dan sends the GPS track and I feel ready for boat club next week!