The Canoe

Ah, the fickle life of boating. Just when I start to feel like a cool, competent, boaty person, life gives me a wedgie and shoves me clean off the cliff of smug into a stagnating pool of humility.

Let’s rewind to the glory days of last winter in the British Virgin Islands - a Disneyland for cruisers; paradise island after paradise island, all warm turquoise water, just a few hours away from each other and little effort required to get to land. This matters enormously to us, travelling as we do with a dog who has flatly refused every attempt at on board potty training in every country we’ve dragged her through. She has instead trained us very efficiently into three land walks a day, rain or shine, entirely at her convenience.

To live this marinal lifestyle you naturally need to get yourself a boat. Then, perhaps puzzlingly, a boat above a certain size needs its own boat. This is not because your boat is insecure and needs a security boat, but because you can’t plonk your actual boat onto a beach and just hop off like its a taxi - not unless you’ve borrowed a shallow-draft catamaran, enjoy staying in a constant anxiety for your hull, or live on a raft with a basketball named Wilson, none of which describes us. So most cruisers keep a smaller boat; your boats boat, commonly called a tender (God knows why), purely to get to shore. Our tender came with our boat’s boat. Since our boat is called Moonfleet, we called it Moonbeam.

Moonbeam is a glorious 14 foot AB workhorse style dinghy - she’ll haul many humans, dogs, groceries, scuba tanks, picnic baskets, and I’m fairly confident a small fridge if we all breathed in. My favorite thing about her is the proper steering wheel, sparing me the deep shame among sailors of having to confess I have no idea which way to push a tiller to make a boat go in the right direction. My least favourite thing is that she is enormous and extremely heavy, meaning that if she ever gets properly beached on a…well, a beach, our only two options are swimming back to the boat or waiting, not so patiently for the tide to have a change of heart.

For getting the dog ashore in the BVI, we perfected a maneuver we proudly nicknamed the amphibious assault: Ken would gun Moonbeam straight at the beach, and at the precise moment the bow grazed the sand, the dog and I would leap for it, wade the last few feet, simultaneously shoving the dinghy back out before a rogue wave could either beach or capsize it. Ken would then anchor Moonbeam beyond the breaking waves, which in practice meant wading back to shore wet to at least the waist. Fine in the Caribbean. Considerably less fine in the Irish Sea.

We realized, as we approached England, whose not-so-balmy ocean temperature is a chilly average of 62 degrees in the summer, that the amphibious assault was no longer a viable life choice. Partly because Ken stood a real chance of losing an organ to frostbite that he (and I) might need later, but mostly because of the tides - which in the British Isles can vary up to twenty-three feet. This means a beach can look perfectly normal one minute and then, the next, the water will vanish faster than the last bottle of wine on board, leaving any boat that hadn’t got the memo lying on its side, slumped in shame, until the water deigns to return.

In an ideal world we’d have bought a boat with wheels. This is not some James Bond fantasy - these exist, I promise you! They’re called SeaLegs, and you line yourself up opposite a beach, press a button, some kind of magic happens underwater, and wheels descend and drive you straight up onto the sand. Unfortunately they cost as much as a lesser Bentley. Given my total disregard for budgeting I would have bought one anyway and driven it up onto beaches with a martini, sloshing not stirred, in one hand. But I’m not the mechanic in the family who keeps things working, and the mechanic said no. Another option was to trade our hefty dinghy for a smaller one we could actually lift — but Moonbeam is a champion in rough weather and the odd fridge ferrying, so instead we did what I always do when faced with any dilemma whatsoever: we went shopping….

And we bought a canoe. A canoe! Who doesn’t want a canoe? A canoe is the very symbol of intrepid wilderness adventure - crafted by the original people of the Americas, trusty, reliable, and timeless. In Cornwall, Ken selected an Old Town Canoe, apparently a legendary brand founded in Maine in 1898, closely associated with “paddling heritage”. I personally have no paddling heritage, but I was fully prepared to invent one for future generations. I could already picture my grandchildren speaking of my paddling prowess in the same hushed tones reserved for other treasured family stories, like the time I pooped my pants in front of my kids whilst trailering horses on the highway. “Grandma,” they would say reverently, “became the Minnehaha to Ken’s Hiawatha, navigating the mighty lochs of Scotland.”

The nice people at Cornwall Canoes delivered our new cherry-red canoe, which turned out to be considerably larger than I’d imagined. “All the more stable for the dog,” Ken said cheerfully, as my arms turned to linguini hauling it down the dock to the boat. I christened her The Comet, as we winched her aboard with the hydraulic crane (I didn’t say we had gone FULL wilderness) and set off in high spirits for the wild, craggy famous coastline of North Wales.

After some great marina stops in Milford Haven and Pwllheli, we finally dropped anchor in a beautiful bay at Porthdinllaen, North Wales. A vast sandy beach unravelled for miles beneath the Snowdonia mountains. With a tidal swing of 21 feet, and no dinghy dock, it was time for The Comet’s debut!

…Doubt hit me like the slap of a wet fish in the face roughly the same moment I clocked how very small the people on the beach looked from where we were anchored….it looked at least a mile away. It was blowing a stiff breeze straight off the land, and there was a light chop to the unfriendly, smurking green ocean. We strapped on life jackets, including one for the dog, did a wobbly group canoe clamber to get in, and untied.

The wind seized us immediately and made a beeline for Ireland. Ken, my real-life Hiawatha, was at the stern doing actual frenzied paddling. I sat at the front being spluttering as cold sea froth hit me and dipping the paddle in the water with the unimpressive impact of stirring a cold cup of tea. Gypsy sat in the middle, eyes rolling and gazing at the boat wistfully. Ten strokes in, my arms filed a formal complaint. “At least it’s not raining,” I said, with the forced brightness of someone who has already lost the plot. 

Twenty strokes in, I had a full identity crisis: I am not, it turns out, a wilderness adventurer. I am a “visit the wilderness for a weekend, possibly with a concierge, then retreat to a five-star cottage” adventurer. As I alternated paddle arms just prior to eacone falling off, I pondered my life choices: If I had actually wanted to make paddling a life focus, I would have joined Venture Scouts after Brownies instead of dedicating my free time to being a Goth and loitering on the Kings Road, London while charging Japanese tourists for photos with me. Heck, I don’t even like the rowing machine at the gym. And yet here I was, a face full of ocean, wind screaming, arms dying, apparently having signed up to do this several times a day for the rest of what seemed like our lives.

We eventually made the beach, mostly through sheer will to live, and gave the local tourists quite a show pretending this was no big deal, and something we choose to do multiple times a day “for fun”. We all got out then hauled The Comet up past the tideline, boots full of seawater, sliding on rocks like a pair of newborn giraffes, with the dog trying desperately to disassociate herself from the shitshow. 

A long walk along the Llyn coastal path and the best fish and chips of our lives washed down with some local brewed beer in Morfa Nefyn restored some dignity. The paddle back to the boat was, mercifully, easier - wind at our backs this time - and me slightly numbed by the local ale. We all agreed, including Gypsy, that we were done for the day. There would be no night time walk.

This morning it is fifty-nine degrees out, raining, and the sea now has a few white caps here and there, and the idea of getting back in that bloody canoe holds all the appeal of a root canal. Even Gypsy is taking a second look at the plastic turf potty mat.

I’ve started quietly researching small, light outboard motors you can clip onto a canoe. I’ve also researched some kind of dolly system so she has wheels. In short, I am building my own cheaper version of a SeaLegs boat. The Comet, for her part, remains perkily bobbing about tied to the swim platform, cherry-red and smug, patiently waiting for her next chance to humble me. She reminds me of Pauline Hughs, at my high school, who was one of those sporty gals with permanently flushed cheeks, she absolutely loved the mandatory long winter morning runs I loathed and would give me a wedgie as I stumbled along with steamed up glasses. I fear the wedgie is just the start.

Buggering canoe…To be continued…

If you enjoyed this story then you may like to step on board. I am writing a book, and you will be able to witness the horrific event as it happens. Lucky you…