Testing the boat.

Sorry, no updates for a little while, my computer time has been more occupied with speech writing but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been out there doing my thing.

I’ve had a couple of games of squash since last time, I am getting better at the game now and am able to hold my end up in some of the longer rallies with my dad. This is good as I am working harder and finishing games feeling more tired. Bad news is that my left knee is giving me some gyp with some of the rapid direction changes needed in the game.

I have also been out running a couple of times, nothing serious as I’m not going to start building for the Great North for a few months yet but enough to keep the muscles where they are. I have got a lower left leg problem that might be linked to the dodgy knee and is keeping me awake at night. It sort of gives me a pulsing dull ache. Internet diagnosis is inconclusive so I might have to go back to my doctor if it persists.

What I really want to talk about today is the Pyranha Speeder though. I have taken the boat out a couple of times since collecting it a couple of weeks ago. The first proper run out with the boat was with my dad partly because I might have needed fishing out of the river. I have read all over the internet that this boat is tippy but I just didn’t find this to be true, it was fantastically stable as long as it was given a little bit of respect (one wobbly moment when I was faffing about was all it took to remind me). My dad’s boat, an old Dancer style plastic boat has always been much faster than my Dagger RPM, the longer hull saw to that, but it was never going to be a match for the 4.5 metres of the Speeder. The waterline and the knife like prow ensured that this boat cut through the water rather than bobbing on the surface of it and I while my dad was having to constantly drag his boat over the water I was able to rest between paddle strokes as the boat sliced through it. We had a leisurely paddle and by the time I was done I was looking forward to a longer run.

Second run of the Speeder was to explore some of its potential on my own. I got on the Severn at Shrewsbury and headed upstream for a while to get warmed up and then pointed myself downstream for a blast. Being four and a half metres long this boat is not particularly manoeuvrable, you can initiate turns with a lean and many directional strokes, I did manage to turn around in the width of the river and I am able to turn while stationary but it takes a very long time and a lot of effort. After saying that you would expect that boat to keep a straight and true course but it didn’t, it wasn’t that it was all over the place but it would just veer off a bit. I suspect that it has a lot to do with my centre of gravity in the boat and that I was sitting crooked in the cockpit but either way, I found myself having to correct every other stroke. Practice will iron out this problem I think.

I did a couple of timed runs as well just to see how fast I was able to zoom in the boat. Unfortunately I don’t exactly know how far I paddled because google maps doesn’t do route maps on rivers. So what I have done is laid on a piece of string on the computer monitor and worked out how far I went using the map scale. It isn’t very accurate though and I could have paddled anywhere between a mile and 7 miles… I am going to go with my best guestimate of two miles in each direction for the timed runs.

Down stream with the flow of the Severn from Welsh bridge to the railway bridge took me 20 minutes. That is a (convenient) average speed of about 6 miles an hour. The return journey took me just 21 minutes. Considering that I was more fatigued and more importantly going against the flow I was surprised to add only one minute onto the time. It just goes to show how well the boat cuts through the water. A longer timed run this coming weekend is planned to find out more.

There were many other boats out there on the water and as I am want to do, I raced all of them.
Two man inflatable kayak was easy pickings (in fact the boat was so cumbersome and wallowy it wasn’t a race at all. It was like blasting a Ferrari past a Transit van)
A two man canoe was also dispatched with relative ease.
A four man rowing scull was harder work but the crew were novices and needed to stop for a pep talk every now and then so I had them.
A one man racing scull was raced and I nearly caught him. True he kept briefly stopping to adjust something on his oars but when he was under power he didn’t pull out much of a lead.
A pro two man scull nearly decapitated me, we were all heading the same way, I was looking in the direction I was going but these stupid rowers look backwards so neither of us knew about the impending collision as they reversed (at speed) towards me. I got the feeling something was up and glanced over my shoulder (I don’t know why as I had my iPod on so I didn’t hear them), their bow was less than a metre away from my stern. I tried to change course and accelerated hard and somehow the boats didn’t touch (they would have been swimming if we had), but their ruddy oars are about 5 metres long. I saw the blades slip out of the water, turn at right angles so the sharp bit was pointing at me and then swing in my direction. It was now I realised that I was real and potentially in bloody trouble so yelled something, I would like to think it was something manly and commanding but I have a suspicion that it was girly and ignominious, either way I didn’t die and they didn’t sink.
Two, one man, glass racing kayaks put to the water and they were beautiful. They took off effortlessly and were uncatchable and made me suddenly feel like I was in that wallowing inflatable kayak not the Speeder. I wish I had more confidence to be able to take on a boat like that but I now know from experience that the wobbly racers are not much fun in the hands of a novice like me.

So that’s me for today. The weather looks great for the weekend so I think there might be a long run in the Speeder planned.