What's in a Name?

It was another lovely weekend to take the kayaks swimming, so on Saturday I headed down to the lake again, joined once more by Hannah my fellow DW partner who was piloting her own K1, and also by a friend of mine who is an excellent kayaker in his own right though doesn’t race. He took out The Surprise, my DW boat from 2013. The Surprise is very stable, and although Hannah has only been paddling for a few months she is more than capable of keeping her boat, A Hobby2, upright. I knew that I would be the one most likely to get wet so I set everyone’s expectations suitably low and let them get on the water before me.

I actually surprised myself with how much more confident I felt this week. It's been seven days since I was last in the boat and I had mostly spent that time mentally battling the kayak demons. As I mentioned I am a long time paddler but this K1 has put me back to school, I haven’t felt like a novice in a boat since I was about ten. Despite much bravado, I am genuinely concerned by the wobbliness of the boat and with the Thames section on the last day, it was only mildly choppy when I ran the 16 mile section and I witnessed several single and double crews take a dunking, so how am I going to fare next year?

After pushing warily away from the side I joined the other two boats circling the lake in an eternal and wide left turn. My support stroke kept me upright a few times and I was able to start to think about my paddling technique rather than just remaining dry. I started to get my leading arm higher, and pull the wing out of the water more cleanly and began to feel the boat behave as I wanted it to. I started to focus on the pedalling motion of my legs driving off the foot plate and realised that my knees were pretty much flat in the boat so I headed to the side to adjust my seat position forward. I think it was about then that I capsized for the first time that day.

Adjusting the seat closer to the footrest seemed to make a big difference to how the boat felt, my weight further forward and with my knees bent slightly above the cockpit coaming I found some additional stability and as a result found a bucket load of confidence. Petra*, the name I have given this boat, is a fast boat and I am a prodigious show off so I decided to try and sprint pass my friends. This burst of speed resulted in swim number two, three and was almost certainly a contributing factor in swim number four. My concern at the moment is that it is only a fast boat if I can paddle it quickly, and every time I try that I capsize, which as you can imagine, is an even slower way to kayak.

Next time out I think we will upgrade to canals. If I fall in it isn’t too far to get to a bank unlike the middle of the lake; we can paddle in a straight line instead of endless wide turns, and can start to practice portaging which should be a great deal more enjoyable with the weight of Petra compared to The Surprise.

*I have developed a habit of naming the boats and bikes I am fond of. Is that weird? The old Avoncraft I named The Surprise after a boat in a film, and this new boat is no exception. I also think that names should have a reason and this boat was christened the day we got her. Why Petra? Well Hannah was driving her car as I didn’t have roof bars on mine at the time, and en-route I filled up with petrol, my car is a petrol. We had made it to within approximately eight hundred metres of the collection address when Hannah’s diesel engine started to burn the petrol I had put in and began to cough and splutter. Hence Petra. While we waited for the fuel man to come out we walked to collect the boat and ended up carrying five plus metres of kayak through the heart of London, in the dark, on a Friday night. A memorable start to the relationship with this K1.