The Maiden Voyage of HMAS Tub.

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Six months ago, Roger was struggling to ride a bicycle.  His back hurt, all his other joints had joined in out of sympathy, and he was looking for exciting opportunities that said joints could tolerate.  At the same time I was talking excitedly about the possibilities of storing a kayak in our shed in Milang with close proximity to Lake Alexandrina and associated kayaking opportunities.  I've never paddled a kayak in my life other than a weekend in white water on the Derwent River 40 years ago, but it can't be that hard, right?

What do you know, next minute Roger had ordered himself a modular, pedal powered, bright orange kayak complete with auxiliary motor, fishing rod holders, and token paddles. After four months of excruciating waiting  a whole pile of boxes turned up at our front door and Roger was tasked with turning them into a kayak.


Which he did.
 

The kayak fitted in the car although there wasn't much space left around it which didn't bode well for our plans involving fitting other stuff in there as well, but that's a problem for the future us.  Nobody needs more than one set of clothes on a kayak camping trip anyway.


Off we went to West Lakes for our maiden voyage.  West Lakes had no current, was sheltered from the wind, and was sufficiently constrained that if we ended up in the drink we could still get to shore even without a kayak.

It floats!  That's a start.

Off we went. The pedal flippers flipped, the steering steered, we passed an old man swimming, and we quite optimistically decided that circumnavigation of Delphin Island was possible.


Which it was.  It just took a while.


Exciting things happened. We went under bridges.


We watched adventurous young men jump off bridges.
 
 
Our legs, unused to pedaling in anti-gravity positions, started to ache.  We took drifting breaks and looked at the mansions that lined the waterway.


Some of them crumbling...


and others collecting kayaks.


On the home stretch we found ourselves in the path of several very serious dragon boat crews, all concentrating on training and not impressed to find us there.
 
"You're on the wrong side, buddy!" 
 
Oops. I blamed Roger for our kayaking gaffe. Being a childhood sailor he knew the rules of the sea, but neither of us had computed that West Lakes qualified as a proper waterway and our tub was, in fact, a proper vessel not just a floating laundry tub with flippers.

Landfall.  And without damaging flippers or rudder either.  We're doing well.
 
The maiden voyage of The Tub was declared a success and we went home to the dogs who had nothing to say about kayaks, but quite a bit to say about late meals and poor service. 

They better get used to it is all I can say. South Australia's summer doesn't last very long so we will be out there Tubbing every chance we get.  We'll make sure to paddle/pedal on the correct side of the waterway, too.


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