Of broken boats and meeting fellow crazy people

So Easter has been and gone.  Dan and I went to Holland to De Kluft recreation centre.  It's in the middle of no where and has nots of water.

We hired a Trekkershut and Sarah argued with AirFrance about the fact that paddles are similar dimensions to skis and if you can take skis for free you should be allowed paddles.  We had a plan for hiring a canoe, paddling to the shops, stocking up and a good weekends paddling from our hut.

The weather didn't climb above freezing all weekend - not a problem as the hut was toasty.  The canals were frozen every day.  Frozen to the point that the ice only broke if you threw a really big stick at them really hard.  Powered boats were capable of passing if they had 2 people with large poles breaking the ice in front of the boat.  Clearly no canoeing.  The friends I had lunch with yesterday said that only I could plan a paddling trip on frozen rivers (thanks ladies) but then I'm not sure that they know anyone else who plans paddling trips.

The frosty view from our trekkershut

I satisfied myself with cold weather training by going cycling and walking in the snow.  It was fun but no canoe

We did get some boating - this is Dan operating the self service chain ferry across one of the waterways.








Tuesday we went to paddle as normal.  As I got in the boat I noticed water - thought nothing of it as the splashy woman in front had already got in.  As we paddled round and round the water was growing and not coming from the splashy woman (that usually hits me before pooling on the bottom of the boat).  The more water, the more unstable our tippy IC1 gets so we decided to change boats before the inevitable happened.   Turns out we have about a 5 inch gash on the bottom of the boat - not sure how it occurred whilst in storage but its time to learn fibreglass repair.

Out again in a more solid royalex beast to finish off the evening - we can really get those things moving these days.

To add to our excitement this week we met one of the guys going for a place in Interserve's non veterans boat.  He was on our beginners course which unfortunately for him focuses on kayak (we may have offered a little canoeing help).   They have whole PT plans to follow and organised trips to Scotland.  Feel quite jealous of the amount that they get organised but at least we won't have 7 smelly boys in a boat with us.  Added to that they seem to be skirting the toilet issue which as you have seen here needs dealing with early.  8 people all needing the loo at different times, thats a lot of shore leave.  They do, however, have a support team which I am most jealous of.

Oh well more soon as we are racking up some miles on our training paddles now.