It’s time for boat club to get started again already!
Last year we only had 5 girls in our boat club. This year we have 9 definites and 3 that we’re still unsure of this stage. Last year, I gave them all codenames from Taylor Swift songs, starting at A and going through the alphabet until we got to… well, we only had 5, so A-E. This year’s cohort are all named after moons of Uranus, simply because that’s a really good set of fancy female names, and they’re going roughly in order of size, rather than alphabetically, and they’re in the order that they were written on Butterfly’s register, with the 1 definite who couldn’t make it in 9th place, and the two unknowns sitting at 10th & 11th with enough spare names that I can add the third unknown who may never progress beyond enquiry. So meet Ariel (our one and only returnee from last year), Umbriel, Titania, Miranda, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemonda, hopefully Juliet and Portia and maybe even Rosalind.
The pre-season session means the pool session which is run by a local commercial provider who a) has the relationship with the pool to be able to book it for a kayak session and b) can transport 10 or 11 kayaks for us to use.
First up, we “get them warmed up” (test their swimming!) by getting them to swim to the other end and back. We’re not expecting any problems at this stage – no parent signs up their non-swimmer Guide for boat club! Next, we got two kayaks in the water, divided our eight girls (one, as I mentioned, not being able to make it) into two teams and they had to swim around, with one hand on the kayak at all times, collecting up floating plastic balls. The adults then counted them and the team I wasn’t counting won by quite a lot – 216 to 166, if I remember rightly. Nice to know how many balls there are too.
Now it’s time to get in the kayaks. We had a lot of adults – me, our instructor Ladybird, assistants Dragonfly and Grasshopper and new volunteer Caterpillar all in the water along with our external instructor, plus Butterfly on the side. Ladybird paired up the girls – four of the eight are actually from her unit so she separated them – and then assigned them each to the old hands, which is herself, the external instructor, Dragonfly and Grasshopper and then I went to help Dragonfly and Caterpillar went to help Ladybird. This was capsize drill – first, learn how to fall out of the kayak and surface. Try to take the time to bang on the bottom of the boat while you’re upside down. This is partly to make a big noise to attract our attention but honestly, it can be done just as well from the surface, the kayak will make exactly the same booming echoing noise. It’s to take a moment to calm yourself and gather your thoughts before surfacing. We had Ariel and Umbriel as our pair and Ariel is an old hand at this. Last year she was new and little and a bit shy and nervous and it’s amazing to see how she’s transformed now she’s the one who knows what she’s doing. She was straight over, hanging upside down, banging, surfacing giggling. I think Umbriel was a bit nervous but she did just fine.
Then we tried adding spraydecks. The trouble is, the kayak we were working with has quite a large cockpit and the instructor only has one spraydeck that fits it, and it’s a very tight neoprene one. Even for Ariel, it took me pulling as well to fit it. No problem with Ariel. Umbriel was visibly nervous – I remember it all too well myself – so I suggested she practice popping it while still sitting on the side of the pool and this was where it kind of went to pieces. She couldn’t pull it. Neoprene ones are often tighter than nylon ones – in fact, because of their lack of stretch, nylon spraydecks have a habit of falling straight off due to gravity if you capsize, saving you the effort of pulling them altogether. But neoprene can be tough. I had exactly the same problem at a pool session once. Fortunately, our outside instructor had a looser one and a way of talking to kids that I think worked better for her than Dragonfly’s way and I’m pretty sure she did indeed have a go.
While they were busy with that, I found myself with Miranda and Ariel, and having covered capsizing, what else can I do until we get onto the next part? Aha, they’ve learned to get into the kayaks from dry land – can they do it from on the water? So Ariel demonstrated that most competently and then I had a go at teaching Miranda. Grasshopper was better at getting the message through to stay low, don’t sit up on your knees and within three tries, Miranda was doing it expertly and without me steadying the kayak.
Last, because it was a short session this year, we got them all in their own kayaks, threw the balls into the pool and they had to chase them down using their hands to paddle. Last year we had time to get the paddles out too but this year there was a private hire session before us and we only had an hour or so instead of two hours. Still, they learned to get those kayaks going at some speed and I was just watching one of them edging through the water, handling the boat incredibly well for a first-timer using just her hands when… pushed it a bit far and over she went. She popped up just fine, the external instructor paused long enough to say “And that’s why we practice capsizing first“, I drained the kayak, she jumped back in and by the time we’d counted the balls, we were out of time.
It was a lot more chaotic than last year. For one thing, we had twice the numbers and half the time. For another, four of these girls know each other at least from Guides and a further two from a different Guide unit and they were so obnoxiously noisy! One of our most important safety briefings before we go on the water is “do not yell and scream or passers-by will think you’re in trouble and they will call the RNLI!” (which, obviously, is something we don’t want) so I hope they don’t make the noise at the boathouse that they did in the pool. But it’s going to be nice to have such a big group – last year, we never managed more than four out of the five in the same place at the same time and I’m fairly sure we only had three one evening. I don’t anticipate leaders being outnumbered by girls this year, even with an extra volunteer now. And while we’ve kind of winged it for the last couple of years, Ladybird is going to be put together a rough lesson plan for this year. We won’t stick to it – the weather won’t be suitable, we’ll have the wrong collection of girls and so on – but at least it’ll be a kind of guideline.
And so now we’re officially in the 2025 boathouse season (and I have a uniform ready at last – a navy t-shirt with the boathouse badge on the sleeve and the Girlguiding Adventure Leader badge above it and a dream of another badge for the other sleeve. But I’m not jinxing it by telling you what badge I hope that is).
Bumblebee Paddles 