Seeing Red: Summer Paddle Days

The blog has really been languishing for the last few months. I’m doing stuff, I just don’t get around to writing that stuff up. Most of the stuff has been normal sort of stuff – rock climbing at nearby crags, paddling around the local area, walking the new bits of the headland track, lifting weights. After a cool spring and early summer, we have been catapulted into regular summer with hot weather and strong northerlies so there is more paddling on the agenda and much less rock climbing.

In a fit of craziness - it’s often good to commit to things without thinking about them too much - I signed up to be assessed as a Sea Guide under Paddle Australia. In general, I’m an over-analyser and can take weeks to decide on a shade of off-white to paint the house trim. Clearly that level of analysis – dithering by another name – is not a good use of our precious time on earth so without giving the Sea Guide thing much thought, I put my name down.

So far, I’ve done the quiz – which is open book so if you get much less than 95% you have serious problems - and the assignment. Ironically, the assignment took me less time than the wretched assignment for Sea Skills but my assessor said “there’s a lot of red on that assignment” so apparently I did not do very well. “There’s a lot of red on that assignment” is a statement reminiscent of real estate agents in Australia who answer all questions, particularly those about price, obliquely with statements like “there will be a 7 in front of the number,” as if they are entertaining an audience with ESP and mind reading and not trying to sell a house.

I don’t know what all the red on my assignment is about because I have not met with my assessor yet. Apparently, there is so much red on my assignment that we need to sit down in person to discuss all the red. There might be tears. It’s lucky I’ve developed a thick skin over the course of life as, despite what the self-help gurus want you to think, negative feedback can be tough to take, particularly when there is a “lot of red.” There are a ton of things I am not very good at but one thing I am good at is finishing what I started and not quitting so I expect I’ll get through all the red just like I’ve got through everything else.

A friend of mine recently told me I was a “Doubting Thomas” which I had to look up on Wikapedia as my Sunday school days are about five decades ago. Apparently, the very first “Doubting Thomas” was one of the apostles - coincidentally called Thomas - who did not believe that Jesus had “risen from the dead” after being crucified until he – Thomas - had seen Jesus alive and even touched the crucifixion wounds. I don’t know about you, but doubt in that instance seems pretty legitimate to me. Anyone who believed some random had got up, pushed aside a ton weight of rock in front the cave he’d been entombed in for three days after being hung on a cross and stabbed in the side, and casually strolled down to the local cafe for a flat white is just a wee bit too credulous. In my life, that level of credulity could get you killed.

In between thinking about all the red and wondering if I should have a little more faith and a little less skepticism (probably no), I have been working on my sea guide skills which is actually a bit difficult without a group of unsuspecting punters given to random capsizes to drag around the Tollgate Islands and plonk back into their boats. But, my surf skills could improve as could some of my strokes and my combat roll.

Last Sunday, we did some surfing off Barlings Beach which was better than I thought it would be and again on Wednesday we drove down to Moruya Heads and went out surfing Moruya Bar in very friendly conditions. On Monday, I paddled solo down to Mossy Point to meet some friends who were going for a half day paddle. I don’t really need more long distance training for Sea Guide but it was too nice a day to stay home and too short a distance to bother with loading the boat on the car – I’ll do just about anything to avoid that - so I paddled the 17 or 18 kilometres down the coast to meet them. Apart from long paddles up the Clyde River, that is probably the longest distance I have paddled solo and I could see the appeal.

The weather was great with only light winds and a long rolling swell. In the afternoon, I had the usual clapotis but nothing at all sketchy and it was pleasant out on the water by myself with scarcely even any power boats around. In fact, it was all so nice, so chill, just an enjoyable day out in the best company – my own – that I forgot all about the red, and Thomas, and whether the legacy media are legitimately reporting on all the things they want you to worry about without a skerrick of actual evidence and decided that for this year at least, it’s unlikely that the world will end or that we’ll all be struck down by a “novel” virus.