The Yat Report…
Dawn, somewhere over the Atlantic (not permanently), writes:
Well, I had intended to keep a Yat diary over the course of the Easter weekend. My head torch was primed and ready for long evenings, under the canvas, spanking the muse. Sadly there was no time for spanking the muse, nor anything/one else for that matter. Although, truth be told, I did find the time to give James/Steve/Simon a bitch-slap up side the head when required.
But amid all this bitch-slappery and lack of muse-spanking, my memory of the
weekend has now descended into something of a soggy, whisky-soaked mish-mash of shapes without much form. I recall quite a lot of water, two dunkings – one swim-one roll, lots of surfing, lots of photos, a chorus of snorers, a dog called Sally and an unfortunate incident with a crème egg. I’m still
suffering the effects of a session in Olaf’s stunt bat, so I won’t be
forgetting that for a long time. But what escapes me now is a sense of
chronology. We arrived, we left and lots of stuff happened in between. But
I must emphasise that it was fun stuff.
The moving water experience was useful for all of us. Some hadn’t been on
moving water much, if at all. Some hadn’t been on moving water for a while.
Some hadn’t even been in a kayak for a while. A few of us fell in. Poor
Jenny was nearly suffering from hypothermia after a downstream search for
her lost paddle proved fruitless, and it turned up on the very island on
which she was standing. Steve proved how adept he was at rolling after
realizing that you keep warmer if you stay in the boat. My disappointment
turned into a perverse kind of triumph when, while watching Olaf and Louisa
rescue me, James backed over the eddy line and fell into the water too.
Suddenly a loss of concentration and a failed attempt at a roll seemed
entirely worthwhile!
The water was bigger than it had been the previous year. Many of us hadn’t
previously experienced waves quite as large as the ones we were now surfing.
And, whilst for some it was nothing new, others amongst us found it rather
intimidating when the entire front of the boat was submerged beneath the
very wave we were surfing. John, who was having nightmares about broken
legs and a cracked skull, took to the waves like a natural and emerged
completely unscathed from his one swim. Ritchie did not repeat the broken
toe incident of last year. And Myrkka was a master-class in cool as she
performed professional looking stern rudders on top of the waves.
But Easter weekend at Symond’s Yat is about more than just paddling. It’s
also about eating and drinking and good company. I broke Lent early after
my swim, with hot toddies in the Saracen’s Head. Medicinal obviously, but
once I’d started it was difficult to get me back on the water. Someone
pointed out to me that Lent was already over in Australia, and, well, since
I was born in Australia… After that, any guilt I might have had was blown
away. Sadly not soon enough to avoid the crème egg incident. The moral of
that story – don’t leave your crème egg in your sleeping bag over night, it
may hatch into something sticky and altogether unpleasant!
I guess now all that’s left is for me to offer big thank yous all round.
Thanks to Louisa for organizing things, I hope you enjoyed some of the
weekend in spite of feeling lousy for most of it. Thanks to Olaf and Jon
for your leadership and encouragement. Thanks to Olaf and Louisa for
rescuing me before I floated like a Pooh-stick all the way to Monmouth.
Thanks to Jon for the loan of the tent and for including me in the ‘elite
paddlers’! Thanks to Martin and Clare for the lift down and for
loading/unloading boats and kit on my behalf. In fact, thank you to anyone
who did any lifting and carrying on my behalf, I tried to make up for it on
the Sunday before I left. Thanks to Jon, John, Louisa, James and anyone
else who was in anyway responsible for the pictorial evidence of a
tremendous weekend. Thanks for the weather for staying dry and not too
cold. Thanks to God for not striking me down when I broke Lent early (or at
any other opportunity). Thanks to Myrkka for potting that black, I love
beating boys at pool!