18.5.16

Lessons of the day

The day before matters. Sea kayaking just isn’t my type of sport. Biking is.

Main part

On the day after the Norwegian National day one half of our class had the honour to go sea kayaking at 9 AM. Of course we skipped the party on the night before, proofed to ourselves that we can act responsibly and went home at 6 PM. Unfortunately, destiny had planned different and we met Len on his motorcycle right outside our accommodation. After a short chat with him and the words “Why aren’t you partying? Party hard, play hard.” It was clear that our responsibility once again was drowned in helplessness. I made it to bed at 1.30 AM and Julian… well, you probably can read this on his blog.

We had to arrive at the seaside at 9 PM and because our driver Max had a day off being lucky to go the day after we decided to take the bikes and cycle the 15 km. The way was actually pretty nice and we had some fun on the last 7 hilly kilometres. It also helped to get awake and active again. I wasn’t really motivated to jump into the kayak again, as I felt uncomfortable on the first time, when we were on the calm river for 2 hours. But hey, maybe the rough sea for 6 hours is better? We started our trip and to my own surprise it felt kind of stable and there was a chance that this trip could be way more fun than I expected. Luckily the sea was also pretty calm. Everyone had to take one lead and try out his sea navigation skills, which actually weren’t too bad. The first half of the trip was soon over and except of my feet going numb (my legs are just too damn long) I enjoyed paddling along the beautiful islands at the seaside. We stopped for lunch in a calm bay and climbed the top of the island. The view was once again awesome, although it was pretty cloudy that day.

When we went back into the kayaks I felt good to end this trip safely without capsizing. And then we left the area protected by islands, kayaking into the open sea. For Len it was probably still pretty boring water, but I had some troubles staying in the kayak while going into the right direction. After almost making my way back to Germany and having a scary experience with a few higher waves we were close to finishing the trip. Just when I thought that we only had to paddle back to the bay we started, Joey decided that he wants to capsize so that we had to practice a rescue in the deep water. When a person capsizes it is important to act quick and effective. As soon as you realize that another person has flipped around you make your way to the place of action as fast as possible forming a raft with the other group members, so the person can get out of the water and lie on the kayaks while his kayak is turned around. Well, we did manage to get him back in the boat, but way slower than possible, as we acted like a bunch of scared chicken. We continued our way back and when Len said that we should stay close to Joey because he is now cold and may capsize again I suspected an evil plan. And yes, he did capsize again. This time we reacted way better and Joey also held on to his kayak, which helps the rescue team a lot. Unfortunately Dominic decided to capsize as well when he tried to turn around fast and suddenly things got really hectic. With Len’s help we brought Joey and Dom back in their kayaks and finally could paddle back to safe land without any more incidents.

This day was a crazy and interesting experience which showed me, that sea kayaking will probably never become a hobby of mine, especially if the water is still cold and the weather isn’t the best. I can’t enjoy a sport when I’m always nervous and scared to crash the water. But still I’m happy to have made this experience and maybe one day I’m going to go back into a kayak with having fun.