Posted by … wherein I profess my love for my new Tiderace Pace 17.
I didn’t mean to race, in fact even as I’m typing this I’m still not sure if I’d call it ‘racing‘, but as circumstances turned out, probably 15 to 20 people turned up for last night’s club paddle, and out of that group I started chatting to George, and George happened to be one of the first people to start paddling out from the beach, and so I found myself paddling in the front group for the night …
There were four of us in this group, just holding a steady pace for the first few kilometres, then as we went past Long Point I think it was Larry who surged a bit, so I accelerated slightly – just to keep up with him of course and see how the boat would handle – and then Phil jumped onto my tail … and yea, well, we kind of, you know … got into a racing type scenario without really racing.
At least I did.
Actually, once I’d poked my head out in front, I found it ridiculously easy to keep it there which is why I love my Pace 17. Heading directly into the sea I found that even with no paddling fitness (I haven’t really been in a boat now for five months) I could just accelerate away from the others down the back of waves and get a five to ten metre jump without really trying … it was ridiculous and it was all down to the boat I was sitting in.
On the way back, I deliberately started paddling right at the back of the group, but then I started jumping onto some small runs, and playing around … and again before I knew it I was back paddling with the front paddlers thinking to myself “Oops, I’m not supposed to be here.”
Look, I’m way off anything resembling paddling fitness, and I’m not saying I was going particularly fast last night, but what I am saying is that the Pace 17 makes a bad paddler look good in my opinion and I like that.
I like it a lot.
I might need to rename my boat from “Commodore’s Folly” to “Commodore’s Jolly”. No, that just sounds wrong doesn’t it.