I was prepared. I had a buoyancy aid. I had a wetsuit, the same one I’d used on my practice trip. I had my old neoprene caving socks. At some point for some reason now lost in time, I had a rash vest aka “a wetsuit t-shirt”. I had a footpump suitable for inflating my kayak. And I had parents to help inflate it and carry it down to the sea and make sure I didn’t drift out too far without letting the RNLI know.
It takes a long time to blow up an inflatable kayak by foot. It was fresh from the bag, so part of the puzzle was figuring out which bits to do and in which order and how to attach all the other bits. Then we carried it down the zigzag steps to the sea and I realised I was about to do something the local paper had told me all my life not to do. I was going to put an inflatable on the sea. But I knew what I was doing! I’d taken precautions! I’d had a lesson! I was going to stay close to the shore and if I started to drift out, I’d jump out and tow the boat back and start again. Anyway, I had a buoyancy aid, I knew the area and I had my parents and their phones on shore watching me. How wrong could it go?
I related this story to a professional a year or so ago, expecting him to agree that an inflatable kayak, even with precautions, was a terrible idea. And he didn’t agree. I’d had a good time and it had been a gateway to really getting into paddlesport and even though I’d only used it once, it was worth every penny. He was right, I guess. If I hadn’t bought that thing, my paddling story probably would have ended with that second attempt back in 2017.
Anyway, I got into the kayak. It’s actually more of a canoe, really. It sagged under my weight, because this is a Lidl boat, not a semi-professional reputable boat, and it wasn’t very well inflated. But it took me. The sides rose up around me and I think I realised that rolling out would be harder than I expected. I couldn’t sit up without pushing the boat further down and the inflatable backrest wasn’t very supportive. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take much to capsize sideways and that would do the job of getting out in an emergency just as well. So off I went.
Yeah, it was hard work. It’s not hydrodynamic and it’s very much at the mercy of any wave or breeze that passes by. Fortunately for me, the weather conditions wanted to sweep me back onto the beach. I could just about paddle up and down the beach if I took some effort to stay in water deep enough not to beach me but the boat really enjoyed going one way along the beach more than the other. Honestly, a plastic sit-on-top is so much easier and so much more fun than struggling along in this thing. I didn’t give up on it because I had better options. I gave up on it because it’s hard work – and because it’s always in the back of my mind that I could be in tomorrow’s Echo as the latest idiot tourist to get swept halfway to the Isle of Wight, despite the evidence that the only place I was going to get swept was back onto Middle Beach.
I was right about getting out. I had to land on the beach and then fall out sideways into an inch or two of water, dodging jellyfish. I was so glad I had my wetsuit and neoprene socks. It had been an experiment. It had been an experience. It had started something.
Bumblebee Paddles 