Bumblebee Paddles

A new activity for me! I’ve done raft-building once before, at a Girlguiding region event called Try Inspire Qualify (all the fun of activity camp but with no responsibility!) but I’ve never done it at the boathouse. It’s something we tend to keep in reserve. Kayaking is more fun but when the wind is too much for it, we can build rafts and take them out in the shallow, more sheltered part of the bay where we don’t get as much wind, where it would be too shallow for kayaks.

That’s what happened last week. Week before, now, actually. We had a group booked in but the wind alternated between howling and dropping into non-existence and while there was a faint possibility it would be ok to kayak, there was a lot more possibility that the wind would suddenly pick up again. So raft-building it was.

The boathouse – or rather, the people who’ve been there longer than two and a half seasons – have got the raft-building down to a fine art. A decade or two ago, Butterfly was supposed to be running it for a county event but couldn’t, so she got another leader down to the boathouse and they painstakingly built rafts and photographed the process. Those are now part of the instruction sheet, along with the knots needed and in theory, you can just hand over the equipment and the cards and let the girls get on with it. In practice, Guides simply don’t know knots these days. Their leader, the biggest cheese in the region, felt a bit guilty for failing to teach them knots but no one teaches knots and even if she had, they wouldn’t have taken it in. I had a Ranger not so long ago who couldn’t tie a simple overhand knot to close up a bag of ice and salt to make ice cream comets. (“Just a knot, I’m not asking for anything fancy or anything with a name, just a really basic just-tie-them-together knot”. “No, I can’t do that, I don’t know how”. “Like when you tie your shoelaces, just the…” *notices the velcro* “Never mind, I’ll do it”.)

The boathouse people have also realised that since they do their fair share of the work in constructing rafts, it’s better for their backs to do it on the plastic picnic tables that usually live in the dry room. It’s a little awkward and maybe we shouldn’t have put them side by side on the concrete outside the back door but we got around somehow. Basically, it’s lash four planks together in a square, with an extra plank on two opposite sides to provide a kind of “track” for the barrels. When you’ve built the frame, lash the barrels to it. Some of the Guides eventually got quite into their square lashing but I’m not sure anyone mastered the clove hitch – not helped by being shown at least four different methods of tying one by three different adults.

At last, we had two rafts. Now we all had to get changed, or at least put on our water shoes and everyone had to be fitted with a buoyancy aid, so we lost at least twenty minutes to that, and then it was time to carry them down to the water. We’d debated the virtues of launching from our muddy beach vs carrying them along the sea wall to the steps but for some reason, the beach won. We had four or five girls to a raft and we had at least three adults in the water with them. I’d been picturing swimming around with the raft, which is why I suggested it might be a good idea to have a kayak in the water but we didn’t go deep enough for that. That’s why we can do it in worse weather. You really do only have to go out to mid-thigh depth (and that on a Guide rather than an adult!) to play on a raft, which means you can stay well out of the wind. For safety, the rafts had to be tethered with a maximum 10m line which I’d initially pictured as being tied to the sea wall or something on shore but in fact, Grasshopper and I just held onto the other end while wading out.

The art of getting on a raft is in getting two people on opposite corners at a time. Sit two people down on the same side and the whole raft will flip up and over and probably smack them on the head. Of course, by the time it’s floating, sitting down on it is surprisingly hard work because the bit you sit on is roughly at chest height but they managed to get on. One raft – the one I was holding onto – floated a lot better than the other, in that it floated on the water rather than just below the surface, so it was a little more stable but it was also harder to climb on. There was a lot of attempting to jump on, a lot of falling off, quite a lot of splashing and yelling and of the two groups, mine were definitely the better rafters. They never quite mastered the art of all paddling the thing in the same direction at the same time (at the same time was ok, thanks to chanting, but they all sat on a corner and all paddled the same way relative to them, so they were effectively going round in circles).

Then Grasshopper suggested standing up. When the Guides had first asked about this, I’d said no – it didn’t feel particularly safe to me to raise the centre of gravity that much, but Grasshopper has done this many times and it was my first time. Again, my group were definitely better. In fact, I’m not sure the other group managed to get four of them up at all, let alone all together.

Then it was time to go home. We only had twenty minutes to get back to shore, dismantle and put away the rafts and get changed, so we were cutting it fine. I towed my group back, telling them to let me know when the raft started to run aground, because I can’t pull it through thick mud. One of them made some comment or other about whether they needed to get off yet, to which another said in a stage whisper I assume she genuinely thought I couldn’t hear about “don’t give her ideas, she’ll make us walk!” but it’s fine, honey, I’m too soft-hearted and anyway, this is much quicker than you wading. By now we were in the mid-calf shallows where the bottom of the sea is a thick oily mud that sucks at your shoes. It was still deep enough for the raft to float with four Guides sitting on it but it wasn’t going to stay like that forever. Once it ran aground, they’d probably have a few metres of pushing it along while it floated under a lightened load and then they’d have to carry it. No point it carrying it when you can float it.

We got back, their leader took photos of each group with their raft and then we all ran back to the boathouse to take the rafts apart. That meant the adults getting involved again – Guides are not talented at undoing knots, especially when it’s in hairy sisal twine that’s been soaked in seawater. Nor are they very talented in folding each length of twine in half until it’s short enough to tie an overhand knot in to keep it tidy. When instructed, they’re very good at carrying barrels and buoyancy aids back to their correct places, though.

We were a little late finishing. Part of the reason for that is that they were unusually squeamish about getting changed. Normally they leave all the wet stuff at the back door and run into the dry room, where we have two or three cubicles that can be created by pulling down the curtains hanging on rails and that’s no problem. Butterfly tends to supervise while the rest of us, and especially Grasshopper, hang around outside or in the boat room. There’s always stuff to tidy up and it’s better for all concerned that we change separately. No problem. But this group were oddly reluctant, even with the doors bolted. One of them hadn’t brought dry shorts to put on afterwards and had to go back to the car wearing a towel-skirt. One of them was wearing a towel as a top but darted inside to put an actual t-shirt on just as the group was starting to walk back to the car park. I popped a changing robe over one of them but I can’t remember if she’d forgotten a towel or if she’d forgotten to wear her swimsuit underneath. A few of them hadn’t brought dry shoes, so we’d had to fit them with suitable beach shoes (and our beach shoes are… well, not exactly in pristine condition). When a group came for a shore evening last week, prior to their evening on the water with us this week, we made sure to go over “don’t forget this, don’t forget that and definitely don’t forget this other thing!”.

The boathouse was a bit of a mess afterwards. The coils of twine and rope had to be hung up to dry before they could be shoved back into the box where they live so we had hairy sisal hanging over the canoes and coils of rope hanging over the kayaks. But it had been fun. A couple of the girls had said they wished they could have kayaked and while I kind of wish that too, I wasn’t at all sorry that I’d got to experience the raft-building. Fingers crossed for the weather that the two kayaking sessions in the next week or so will be suitable, at least, then we’ve got one more shore evening and one last boat club, to replace one that got cancelled because of the wind (can’t really substitute raft-building for boat club) and then we’re done for the season.