Bumblebee Paddles

In the time since I first tried to do my 1 Star and the second time, the entire awards system was overhauled the 1 Star ceased to exist. As far as I could tell, the Star awards were replaced with, among other things, the Personal Performance Awards and the closest equivalent to 1 Star was now Paddle Discover. I discovered a local-ish company that would run a Discover Award day – and then I discovered they’d do the next one up, Explore, on the same day. I dithered. I wasn’t entirely sure I was up to Discover standard. Explore would be far too much. And yet the fact that you could do both together nagged at me until I booked them. Of course, then I discovered it wasn’t a single day but an entire weekend but that was fine. That worked better.

So off I went to Christchurch. By now I pretty much had my paddling kit. I’d added a sailing jacket to my wetsuit & buoyancy aid, I was still wearing the neoprene caving socks I’d bought in 2006 (still couldn’t believe they weren’t wearing out) and I had a neoprene jacket to add under my sleeveless wetsuit which made it nice and adaptable.

There were half a dozen of us, ranging from a young woman working in the office of the company who wanted to start moving out onto the water, a father and son who’d bought a kayak and wanted to know how to use it safely and a Scout leader who wanted to go down the route to running her own paddle activities with her groups. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I guess I wanted to be able to go to Studland and hire a kayak and feel like I actually knew what to do with it. But I did have dim and vague ideas of leading my Rangers. I was already an archery instructor and fencing coach. On the other hand, it had taken a weekend to become an archery instructor and a day to become a fencing coach. I already knew it would take longer than that to qualify as a kayaking instructor.

We spent Saturday learning the basics, mostly on Christchurch Harbour with a little trip up to the mouth of the river where I met obstacles for the first time. There are yachts moored in Studland Bay but not nearly as many or nearly as tightly-packed as in the mouth of the Stour. I knew some of the basics: forward and backwards and sweep strokes had been covered on my half-day adventures. Stern rudder was new-ish. I’d kind of done it before but without the detail. Draw strokes were entirely new. Paddling across the harbour in a reasonable breeze was pretty new and much harder than paddling across Studland Bay. After lunch, we paddled across to Mudeford Spit to practice things like capsize and recovery, which mostly meant falling off the sit-on-top and towing it back to the shallows before jumping back on. But on the way back, our instructor took it into his head to demonstrate a bow rescue and tell those of us continuing with Explore that it would be our turn tomorrow and to maybe bring a nose plug.

Bearing in mind we had maybe two or three potential leaders, our instructor went over some group control work – keeping an eye on everyone, non-verbal signals, methods of communicating etc. On the way back to base, we talked about next steps and routes. I kind of wish I’d paid more attention. At this point, I wasn’t thinking seriously about becoming a leader and wouldn’t have had a clue about where to acquire people to lead or equipment but it was deep in the back of my mind. The Scout leader had an idea about the certificates she would need. I hadn’t even looked at Girlguiding’s requirements but I knew it would be more involved. The Scouts have a lot of their own activity leadership schemes designed to make it easier for leaders to give kids opportunities. Girlguiding is a lot more by the book.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired and battered after a kayaking trip. Well, I’ve never done more than about two hours so I guess that’s not so surprising. But between that and the prospect of hanging upside down under a kayak, I thought seriously about not going back for part two. I had the Discover certificate I’d been chasing for four years, although I’d always planned for it to have a single star on it. Did I really need Explore too?

Actually, Sunday was a lot easier. We’d covered a chunk of the syllabus on Saturday afternoon and most of Explore was done while paddling a circuit of Christchurch via its rivers. No mandatory capsizing was done – one of the joys of the new Personal Performance Awards is that it’s kind of led by what the participant wants to do, to make it more relevant to their situation. On the other hand, maybe it’s good for me to be required to capsize more often. But we did do a bit of a rescue session in the wide shallow part of the river where all the Sunday afternoon tourists sit and watch the water

Sunday was certainly less physically demanding, right up until the end. The wind had picked up and paddling back across Christchurch Harbour to base was really hard work. Our instructor barely saw us back to dry land before leaping on a powerboat to rescue some paddleboarders who’d found the wind way beyond their strength.

And so I’d completed my Paddle Explore Award! I’d been so dubious about whether it was worth even trying and in fact, it had been marginally easier than Discover. Steeper learning curve from nothing to Discover than from Discover to Explore, I guess. And now, of course, the million-dollar question: what next? Which of the many pathways do I go down now?