The Thames is still cold!

So on Saturday Big and I decided that we would take on the last stretch of the non-tidal section of the Thames, which meant a paddle from Maidenhead to Teddington.

We launched the Condor and started to make pretty good progress in her, being at least a mile an hour up on the Pope's kayak. The steering was a bit weird as it's a different mechanism and also the rudder is a little understern rudder, which is certainly less responsive that our bigger plate.

We went along quite nicely and once I had the seating and footrests in the right position we shot along.

Wake from leisure craft, which have increased in activity now the sun is out, was no issue and balance was fine.

As we approached Egham, we had a bit of a wobble due to lack of concentration but the correction was easy, although we over corrected and shot in the river on the other side. It was cold.

We managed to get to some trees and pull ourselves out of the water, and humped straight back in and on up to the next lock.

It was here that the issue began. Whether we still had some water in the boat or not, we're not sure, but as we pulled away from the portage at Bell Weir, we went straight in again.

Not to be defeated, we picked ourselves up, drained the kayak, and headed off. About half a mile later a leisure boat was steaming towards us and at one hell of a rate, with a too much wake, we cut through the first wake fine, but the secondary wake (the bounce back from the bank) hit us on both sides at the same time and in we went.

The issue here was that the bank was about 8 feet high and so we were in the water for about 5 minutes before we could get out. This was seriously cold.
But out we got, drained, shivered and back in, knowing that once we were paddling we'd soon warm up. what we didn't realise, was that our shivering was causing too many issues and we were too tense for the boat, so for the fourth time in 30 minutes, we were in again and this time for about 4 minutes. Having spent the best part of 15 minutes in the river in the past half hour was getting pretty tedious, so we decided "enough is enough" and a couple of decisions were made.

1. The condor is not going to be our vessel of choice, especially as the whole of the Thames is going to be in the dark.
2. It was time to call it a day, and jump on the train to collect a car, and come and pick up the boat.

People look at wet people, wearing PFDs on a train in a very strange manner!

Looking forward to getting out this week for a more successful paddle.