Brothers in Kayaks

Location: Southwater Country Park
Conditions: Warm and sunny, slight breeze

With what looked like the English summer having finally arrived my kids decided it would be a good day to go kayaking, so before they could change their minds I bundled them and our gear into the car, strapped a couple of kayaks to the roof and made for the nearest lake.

Now that we no longer had a sit-on-top for my youngest (Aid) and I to share, we had to come up with another method of transporting three people on two kayaks.  We opted for the towing the smallest.  Aid grabbed the back of my kayak and laid flat on the water while I pulled him along.  This worked pretty well as we paddled down the length of the lake to reach the roped off “beach” area.  Here they had a quick swim and then Aid wanted to try a kayak.  So he paddled the Blast around, while I waded close by, just in case.  He loved it!

Having confidence that he could manage the boat well enough, we paddled (and towed) back to the launch jetty and used that as a base camp for the rest of the day.  Here they could paddle around, land and launch as often as they pleased, all the while in range of a quick dive, swim and rescue from me should it be required.  More for my peace of mind than anything!

They had a great time.  Aid commandeered my playboat and paddled around in that for ages.  He often proclaimed how much fun it was; “Even more fun than Xbox”, which is high praise indeed from this one!  I was really impressed how quickly he took to it and Ell’s skills are improving too, he can turn and navigate quite naturally without having stop and think what to do.  He spent a lot of time chasing the ducks in an attempt to get some footage of them (at least, that was his excuse).  He also did some wet exit practice and a few seal launches.

Aid found some tiny fish on the jetty and spent a while trying to film those, to add to the duck and damselfly footage that Ell had captured.  So, if you are interested,  here it all is, edited together for your viewing pleasure:

As you can see, we had a great time and the kids did very well.  Proud of them both! 🙂

-Mut