Paddling Delights
As the holidays approach with all their trimmings, celebrations and mad shopping dashes, paddlers delight, with new adventures to explore and only five weeks left to enter Paddle Florida’s Kayak giveaway, considerably more time than you have to decorate, shop, bake, entertain, and be merry.
Take time to register to win a Manitou 14 courtesy of Necky Kayaks and consider giving a Paddle Florida trip to your best buddy for a holiday gift. If you need a nudge, read this first time paddling experience from Jill, Gainesville. Jill’s contest entry was one of many great paddling adventures we’ve received during the contest. We’ll post more in the coming weeks.
Jill from Gainesville shares...
The very first time I paddled a kayak involved going over Big Shoals on the Suwannee River, with a water level that produced Class II-III rapids. I’d accompanied Ed, my boyfriend at the time, to the area to watch he and his friends shoot over the shoals repeatedly. They made it look so easy. As the afternoon wore on, I grew restless from my perch on the bank.
“I think I want to try this,” I said to Ed tentatively as he steered his craft back to the bank below the shoals for the umpteenth time.
I’d never paddled a kayak before, but I’d canoed several times. How difficult could it be? We portaged his kayak a few hundred feet upriver from the shoals. Ed buckled me into his too-large life jacket and held the boat steady as I slid in. He handed me the paddle and advised me to “stay left,” as I approached the shoals. With a shove, I was off!, heart pounding loudly in my chest.
"Wow, this is a bit wobblier than a canoe. This paddle sure is long. Why can’t I make it turn left? Wait. That was too far left. What the?? I can’t turn it back the other way. What’s with these currents?!?"
As the thunder of rapids ahead grew louder, it dawned on me that I was about to approach them perpendicularly! Every desperate flail with the paddle was in vain. I could NOT get this damn boat pointed in the right direction. As spray from the rapids began to hit my face, I stopped paddling in frustration, looked up, and cried, “I give up!”
At precisely that moment, river currents took over, my kayak righted itself, and I shot over the shoals, bow-forward, like a pro. Seconds later, having recovered from hyperventilating in calmer waters, I felt a surge of pride.
“I DID this,” I boasted to myself, and it was my FIRST time in a kayak. I paddled over to where Ed and the others were standing on the bank, anticipating the high-fives and congratulatory hugs that my admiring audience was sure to provide and unceremoniously flipped over the boat and fell out into the river.
Life lesson #1: Do all you can to make things right. Then LET GO.
Life lesson #2: When #1 goes well, don’t get cocky about it.
Despite the inglorious ending to my first kayaking experience, it instilled a paddling bug in me which Paddle Florida continues to nurture to this day.
Posted by: Nickie Kortus, Paddle Florida volunteer
Please share your paddling adventure with us and register to win a Necky Kayak Manitou 14 or join a Paddle Florida trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment