Bumblebee Paddles

Well, we’ve come to the end of the 2024 season, my second season, at our Girlguiding boathouse and so it’s time to reflect on the last few months.

First of all, this so-called summer has done its level best to sabotage us! We had 19 dates in the calendar, seven boat club sessions and twelve unit sessions. Three of the boathouses got cancelled and we still need to make up for that before September, more because it’ll get cold in the evenings and it’ll get dark too early than anything else. We try to get in six sessions for them and we know at least one will be cancelled which is why we scheduled seven, so it’s actually only two we should make up and realistically, we’re probably only going to manage one. Between the tide and the fact that half the kids are going on holiday over the summer, it’s going to be almost impossible to find another two suitable dates. We actually only cancelled three of the unit evenings although one of the ones that went ahead was raft-building. Now, this sounds like an adequate exchange for kayaking. You still get to go out on the water. See, the point of raft-building is you don’t need to go out so far, you don’t need to leave the relative shelter of the little bay behind the boathouse, so we can do it in worse weather. Well, I wasn’t there for this particular session but all they actually did was build the rafts on the table in the boathouse’s dry room and couldn’t take them out and launch them.

I think in previous posts about this year at the boathouse, I’ve covered the pool session, the first sea session and the time I capsized. What else has happened? Well, I’ve still never met the fifth member of the boat club. She came along to the third session, which is the only one I’ve missed, because I was at Brownies. I understand they went on a bit of a journey around the marina. At the last session, we went beyond the marina and into an area they call the Blue Lagoon, which is little bite-shaped bay utterly invisible from the road, where every house has its own private jetty. It used to be bright blue but now it’s more green. We did some draw stroke practice there and then went back via stronger winds than we expected. I struggled with them and that’s because they were coming side on and I hate paddling across the wind. Give me a straight paddle into a strong wind any day. Once we were back in shallow enough water, the girls were allowed to jump out of the boats if they wanted – shallow enough that it would make a proper capsize a little tricky and anyway, it was such a hot night that if they wanted to swim back or paddle back riding their kayaks upside down, it was all good.

As for the rest of the unit sessions, some of them were a bit breezier than we’d like. My Rangers’ sister Guides came on a night that was absolutely fine up until we started getting them ready and the wind picked up literally while we were adjusting their footrests. If it had been like that an hour earlier, we might have cancelled. As it was, we went out and I think most of them enjoyed it despite it being a bit breezier than we would have liked. That was the night I broke out the towline for the first time. One of the other assistants usually carries it but she wasn’t there that night so I took it. Anyway, one of the girls was getting spun around by the tide or the wind or the current and getting frustrated, so I brought her back. Well, I say that. I put her on the end of the rope and then found she was beside me all the way back rather than being pulled along behind. So she got back entirely under her own power and if it stopped her spinning and made it easier, then great.

Mostly we play a game where we raft up and they take it in turns to stand up in their kayak, say their name, their favourite chocolate and then do head-shoulders-knees-and-jump. One time we did “who wants to try to swap kayaks with someone else?” but one of the girls ended up in the water doing that and we had quite a time getting her back in. I gather it all came down to the fact that she was wearing old shorts that were fine to get wet but too tight, it turns out, to climb back into a kayak. So we didn’t play that again. I got into the habit of taking a couple of tennis balls out with me because playing tag is a great way to get them to learn some fine motor control without realising it. Not that we did it that often but it’s good to have them in case we want them. Tag is also good when it’s too rough for rafting up.

We have a group of Sea Scouts nearby. Now, I know there’s a long-standing rivalry between the Guides and the Scouts but when you have a canoe full of Cubs paddling straight at my Guides as fast as possible with a Scout-equivalent of a Young Leader ostensibly looking after them while making no effort to divert them, while they yell “RAM THEM!!”, that’s not going to improve relations. That was one night when I had to say to the girls “Ok, I’m going to get in front of you, stay well behind me, because if anyone’s going to get rammed, [sigh], better it’s me than you”. I don’t want to go in the water. I certainly don’t want to be knocked in the water by a group of Scouts. But better me than my first-timer Guide group. The dinghies were a bit better behaved but perhaps less controlled than the canoes – oh, those canoes knew exactly what they were doing. We were very relieved that they seemed to break up a week before us and we had our last two sessions in glorious sunshine without having to dodge the Scouts.

Some changes from last year: I now have my own keys! I still don’t have one to the main car gate but that’s because Timpsons didn’t have the right key blank to cut me one. I have the foot gate so I can get onto the premises, I have all the keys to the building and I have the key to the sea gate. So I can go and make use of the boathouse as long as I’m ok to park somewhere else. Second, I did my Paddlesport Safety & Rescue – did that in September 2023 but because of the way the blog schedule has worked out, it’s not going to appear here until September 2024. That technically makes me second most-qualified of all the leaders. Our main instructor is probably going to take a bit of a step back next year, so either we’re going to have to hire/borrow an instructor for some nights, cut back on what we can offer, or I’m going to have to find time to practice my rescues and do my Instructor award in the next couple of months, because I don’t want to be doing it in the winter, and we need it by January because that’s when we book in all the summer’s sessions.

Third, we have a new volunteer! She came with one of the units towards the end of the season and said “I wish I could come here every week”, to which we replied “You can!”. I have no idea how capable she is but if she enjoyed it enough without any of us holding her hand, she’s probably capable enough to do what we need, which is basically to just be an extra pair of hands out on the water.

Fourth, we’re hoping to get our fourth Jive back in action. Last year, the Jive was my choice of boat while the other leaders used the Arc and the Transition. This year, they’ve both decided to go for the Jives. Now, we have four of them but one of them has broken footrests, which means it’s basically unusable. I tried it once – I went “Well, I know I should, but I hardly ever actually use them” and once I was out and didn’t have them, I realised how much I do use them. Most weeks it’s fine. Three functioning Jives, three instructors. But sometimes we have leaders out and sometimes the Jive is the best choice for them, especially if they’re new and nervous. A lot of our boats are sized for Guides, so we’ve had a couple of Rangers sitting lower in the water than we’d like and we’ve sometimes struggled to find a suitable boat for a leader. It means it’s always me that says “It’s about time I tried something different!” and gives my Jive to the leader. If we can have all four back in action, we can put a leader in it and I can still use mine.

I’ve quite enjoyed giving others a go, though. I didn’t get on with the pink Dagger Transition – not enough room in the cockpit for my legs. If I capsize in that one, I probably die. The orange Perception Arc wasn’t so bad but in certain conditions, it spins a lot. On the other hand, it’s the one I capsized in and I think something in the back of my brain will always know that. I never got round to trying out the Dancers – the blue one has a huge lump of foam in the front so I already know I won’t get on with that but maybe the pink one at our make-up boat club session in August. And maybe one of the Prijons. It would be handy if I took a liking to those because we very rarely use them. We default to the RPMs, the Redline and the Wavesport, with the little Dagger Dynamos for our tiniest Guides.

One last thing – I’ve acquired a little safety equipment of my very own. A circular sling and a couple of bent-gate carabiners. Theoretically I can use this as an improvised towline, or a step or whatever else a length of webbing might be useful for but what I’ve actually used it for is to tie up to the buoy when we raft up because it saves me having to spend half an hour clinging on to it with my bare hands. Actually, the one I currently have has done absolutely nothing. The one I tied up with is on the bottom of the sea not five metres from the buoy because I dumped it in the bottom of my boat and immediately capsized. I will say, after that, I’ve made sure everything is attached, including my GoPro. That’s why if you look at my Instagram, you’ll see lengths of cord or webbing across the photos because I haven’t quite figured out how best to tether it. I know it floats but between capsizing and getting my bearings, it could potentially float a long way away. I even sewed a loop inside my buoyancy aid so I can tie my phone case to it. It’s inside the pocket but I keep catching myself cheerfully paddling along with the pocket wide open, including the time I capsized. It would be very easy for the phone, in its nice waterproof case, to fall out and plop straight to the bottom so now it’s attached too.

And that’s the 2024 season. I have no idea what 2025 is going to look like and technically, we haven’t quite finished this season. But we’re mostly done. I get a whole month off.