Greg and Kat's blog

A while ago, Ted and I had the brainwave to take some of the DDP kids kayaking. (If you don’t know what DDP is, just think “Chinese exchange students” and you’ll be close enough to follow along.)

So yesterday, we showed up at Rocky Point with something like 28 students, approximately 27 of whom had just seen a kayak for the first time that day, and certainly never been in one. Try to picture me, Ted, and two guys from the kayak rental place trying to quickly explain “hold the paddle like this; that end is the front; sit in it; go!”

I re-learned that Chinese people don’t have a keenly developed sense of “let’s get together and do this activity as a group.” This, along with the baseline inability to control a kayak on your first time out, meant that getting the group to all head in one direction to get somewhere was hopeless.

More than anything, I wish I could get time-lapse video of the bay we were in for those two hours. It would have looked like Brownian motion. As a group, I think we went maybe 500 metres in the whole time. Ted and I each paddled miles in a futile effort to sheepdog the group.

There were two students who tipped out of their kayaks during the day, which is probably pretty good all things considered. It’s a good thing Ted was there: I have never done a deep water kayak rescue. (But I could do a deep water canoe-over-canoe rescue with my eyes closed.) It turns out the principles are the same: empty the boat, bring it alongside you for stability, and get the person to kick-and-pull their way up out of the water.

For the second rescue, I was alongside Ted. (My kayak, then Ted’s, then the empty one, and the student in the water on the far side.) The kick-and-pull out of the water wasn’t going so well. (It takes either a strong swimmer or a lot of upper-body strength.)

I learned everything I know about patience from my father. So, while the student was kicking, I grabbed him by the life jacket, hauled him up (hard enough that he made a little squawking noise), and deposited him face down into Ted’s lap. Hey, the goal was to get him out of the water, and I achieved the goal, right? And, once he found himself laying across Ted’s lap, he was pretty quick to hop back into his kayak too, so it was efficient all-around.

I hope the students had a good time: I suspect they would have told me they did no matter what. I was in the water in a small boat, so I had a blast.

Edit: It should be pointed out that I wasn’t aiming for Ted’s lap; that’s just how it played out. Overall the day was a lot of fun, and I’d do it again next weekend if everybody else wanted to go too.