Bumblebee Paddles

The last and for me, the second! I made it to the first boat club session and I was supposed to be at the fourth but it got cancelled. That worked for me – it meant we had to use today as our reserve date and Brownies has finished for the summer, so I can turn up without abandoning my little yellows.

I’ve occasionally heard about what they did. The actual fourth session involved seal launching and either the second or the third was a Big Paddle Cleanup (unfortunately – from this perspective anyway – a rare evening when there was very little to clean up). In the intervening weeks we’ve lost one of the girls, the one I called Umbriel, who was the one who struggled with the spraydeck back at the pool session. Obviously I haven’t seen what happened but I get the impression she was just never particularly happy with kayaking, starting right back at the pool. I think she was nervous before the pool session and perhaps she’s never entirely found her confidence in kayaking. But as I said, I haven’t been there since the very first week but I know it took the other leaders by surprise too.

So that leaves ten of them. I wasn’t expecting all ten to turn up – you rarely get every single girl anyway but this was the last week of term and I was fully expecting at least two to have already gone away on holiday by now. I’d made notes the first week so I could remember which was which. I knew Ariel from last year and Desdemona, Juliet and Portia all have their (real) names on the back of their buoyancy aids. Would “curly hair” help me recognise Cressida? Would Miranda wear the hat that I’d noted down? I’ve seen two or three of these girls during the season when their units came down – Ariel, Juliet and maybe Portia have definitely been down (maybe definitely, she says) – so their faces at least should ring bells.

As it happened, we were also missing Desdemona, who has gone off at some point to do cricket – whether it was just this last session or earlier in the season, I don’t know. By some miracle, none of the remaining nine were on holiday or school residentials or end of term parties or ill and we had the lot. Ladybird helpfully did a warm-up game that involved re-learning everyone’s names (turns out half the girls don’t even know each other’s names) and I was able to make some mental notes before we went out on the water.

It was a shorter paddle than usual because it was the presentation evening; we had to be back half an hour or so earlier than we normally do. Ladybird decided it was time for a little expedition. I assume for the last few weeks, they’ve been in the same bit of bay week after week learning new skills and improving their confidence and now we were going to put it to the test. Our traditional expedition involves paddling up to the nearby marina, making a dash across the entrance, paddling along the inside of the sea wall and then paddling back via the outside of the sea wall. Getting across the entrance was a bit tricky – we had foil gliders whizzing back and forth and a fleet of dinghies setting off one after another.

But the main problem was… Look, I haven’t seen these girls since their very first session. It’s the end of term, it’s been very hot, most of them will have had exams of some kind recently, they’re tired and ready for the summer holidays. But at any given point, there was always at least one kayak facing the wrong way, often two or three, even when we were deliberately going somewhere. Bianca seemed to have her paddle dragged out of her hand at least three times – I don’t know how you do that even once, even when you’re inexperienced, let alone at your sixth session. Two of them looked utterly miserable, as if it was their first attempt and they were regretting their life choices. Getting them across the entrance to the marina was like trying to herd cats across a main road – they were all bunched up and either hitting each other with the paddles or crashing into each other, two or three had got turned round and even when we warned them, they seemed utterly oblivious of the boats coming up behind them.

I’m going to give them all the benefit of the doubt. I refuse to believe that after five sessions and the pool pre-season session that they’re all as incompetent as they came across. It’s hot, it’s the end of term, everyone’s tired and giddy and no one’s really in the right frame of mind by now to show off their skills at their best. They’ve at least improved from the first session when half of them kept going round and round in circles.

So by the time we got to the end of the sea wall and Ladybird had peeked behind it to see how the sea looked, we’d normally say that the boat club girls are experienced and competent and much more able to face conditions that 1st Happytown Guides, on a taster evening, would be able to. But not tonight. So we turned round and came back the way we’d come up.

There was another entertainment on the way back, though. On our side of the marina is a low walkway and one by one, using a stern rudder, the girls were to have a go at paddling underneath it. At least two of them came out either backwards or sideways and I’m not sure any of them quite mastered the rudder. Being a bit taller than these 10-13s, I chickened out at the last minute as I realised I couldn’t lean backwards in quite the same flexible way as the kids but also, there were the bottom of bolts sticking out through the wood, at precisely the right place to drag through my eyeballs. So I kind of leaned and used my hands on the underside of the bridge to propel myself through. But what I was looking forward to seeing was Grasshopper in the canoe. I assumed they were too high together but by leaning right forward, he made it far more comfortably than I had.

Because it was hot and some of them really wanted to, we let them fall, slither or capsize out of their boats and wade back to shore. Then they hauled everything up to the boathouse and washed it all down, hopefully well enough for them to be in decent condition when we look at them again in April, ready for the presentation. I was surprised again that by their sixth session, most of them still had no idea which rack their boat went on. They don’t grab a random boat – we assign them one at the first session which they use throughout. Admittedly, they don’t necessarily put away their own boat – all of them have to be washed down, including the leaders’, so they do that in pairs with whichever boat is closest when they’re ready to wash the next but surely they’re used to getting their own boat out every week, with the help of a willing victim?

We invite the parents for the last evening. We have hot dogs and snacks out in the garden, or a barbecue if the weather’s cooperative and when everyone’s eaten, we present a certificate and some badges to each girl. They all get the boathouse badge (we’re thinking of getting a second version, subtly different, to present to boat club girls rather than all girls who just come to use the boathouse), the Guides Water adventure badge and, as long as Butterfly’s supplies last out, the old Outdoor Pursuits interest badge. The syllabus used to include at least two sessions in three of a dozen or so adventurous activities, plus the basic knowledge surrounding them. In the pre-plague days, they would row and we’d get the canoes out more often but now it’s mostly just the kayaking. But this time, Butterfly had the problem that she was up to the last of the Outdoors Pursuits badge and we didn’t have quite enough Water badges, and the order of replacement ones hadn’t arrived in time, so although they all got a boathouse badge – we have hundreds of them – they all got a fairly random selection of either the Outdoor Pursuits or Water badge.

Butterfly and Ladybird both gave a little speech, Dragonfly took on the job of official photographer and each girl in turn was presented with her certificate and badges. If they want to come back and do it again next year, they get priority over new members in the unlikely event we have too many girls – we’re quite picky, we want at least eight to make it worth running but number of available kayaks means we can’t go over fourteen absolute maximum. We can plonk unit night girls in the two canoes if we really need to but they can’t really learn their kayak skills properly if they’re either sharing a canoe or having to learn how to handle it solo. Oddly, the dad of one of the girls who looked miserable tonight said she really enjoyed it and would love to come back next year, so we’re all interpreting her demeanour as either “that’s just her concentration face” or “it’s the end of a long term and everyone’s tired” rather than actually being miserable.

So that’s the boat club over with for another year. Who knows how it’ll go next year but fingers crossed for 10-ish of them and three months of good weather!