This has been a really slow and quiet season for me. I’ve managed nine sessions, including the pre-season pool session. On the other hand, I’ve had three new experiences: raft-building, the shore evening and a unit session as run by an outside instructor.
Counting the pool session, we had just sixteen sessions this term. Seven of them were boat club, six were unit sessions and three were shore evenings. Of those sixteen, I made it to nine, which is a better record than I thought it would be – three of the boat clubs (again, including the pool session), four of the unit sessions and two shore evenings. It was too windy to kayak on two of those unit evenings and we built rafts instead and I think one of the two I missed was also a raft session. I talked pretty comprehensively last week about boat club so we’ll leave that out.
As well as seeing very little of the boat club girls, I’ve seen very little of either Ladybird, our instructor, or Caterpillar, our newest assistant. Ladybird did the boat club evenings and the two evenings that involved her Guides and Rangers and I think that was about it, whereas I missed most of the boat club and couldn’t leave my Rangers unaccompanied the week she brought her Guides, although we both brought our Rangers together. I think I’ve only seen Caterpillar once, which was probably the first unit evening of the season when I discovered she’d used the yellow paddle I usually have when I hadn’t been at boat club the week before and has now pretty much adopted it. Fine, I adopted the red one instead and at least now I know which is mine. Ladybird uses a yellow one too and I could never remember which was hers and which was mine. The red one is much more identifiable!
Last year we cancelled a lot of sessions – six out of twenty. We only cancelled one this year, although it was borderline for at least one. Maybe we were a bit slow to swap rafts in last year, whereas we did that at least twice this year. You can stay within the more sheltered area with a raft, so we can still get them out when it’s too windy for kayaking. I’m pretty sure we haven’t had any trouble with rain or cold but we definitely had some chilly nights in the last two years whereas all of this year’s were somewhere between nicely warm and borderline too hot.
How do I feel this season went? Well, from my point of view I’ve had those three new experiences, so that’s educational. I think this season was a bit short – I think a lot of leaders forgot their usual experience of getting in touch with Butterfly well in advance and getting on the list in time for the meeting in January which is why we only had four units in who didn’t belong to one or other of the leaders. There are at least two Ranger units on last year’s list who weren’t on this year’s and at least two Guide units. In a way, that’s good. All Girlguiding volunteers are busy but those who are running two units and working at the boathouse are busier than usual, so it’s good for us to not be spending two or three nights out of every week down at the boathouse for three months (well, thanks to the tide, every other week) but on the other hand, it means we’ve only had about 40-60 girls out on the water this season – no idea how many there were at the two unit sessions I didn’t go to. We had an estimate of 85 last year – would have been well over 100 if so many sessions hadn’t been cancelled, so that’s a big drop. We might have more of Ladybird next year, we’ll definitely be adding one unit to our roster and hopefully the four units that missed out might remember to email Butterfly and get booked in for 2026.
Differences for me personally: well, I did my Paddlesport Leader training. Last year I had the excitement of finally acquiring my own keys and some safety equipment. This year, I’ve got my own boat! Well, they mostly belong to the boathouse rather than to us individually but Ladybird and Dragonfly have each had something tied on to one of our four identical Jives to mark it as theirs, so they don’t need to mess around adjusting it every single time. Caterpillar apparently also has one marked, but I think it was by hanging Ladybird’s buoyancy aid on it. Now I have one. Normally I just grab whichever is closest that isn’t claimed by anyone else but at the penultimate paddling session, I didn’t bother adjusting the footrests, only to discover they were far too far away to use. So at the last boat club session, I deliberately checked and adjusted them, then Butterfly produced a permanent marker and I wrote my name across the front of it so it’ll always be ready for me to go. I’ll find a bit of something or other to tie on it for next year, since my name is going to be hard to spot when it’s on the rack but at least I now have a boat that is mine, that no one will interfere with unless we have to borrow it for a visiting unit leader one week when I’m not there.
I think that’s everything I have to say about the season. Quieter than usual, hotter than usual, a lot less windy than last year and most of the details I’ve written as I’ve gone along. I’d have liked to have spent more time at the boathouse earlier in the season – six of my nine sessions have been since the third week of June, which just left the pool session back in March, the first boat club in late April and one unit evening in mid-May to make up the entire first two-thirds of the season.
As for next year… well, we’ll wait and see.
Bumblebee Paddles 