Sometimes I forget how narrow this boat is. I am still amazed I did a marathon in it.
Sometimes I forget how narrow this boat is. I am still amazed I did a marathon in it.

Sunday was such a warm day and I had intel that people will be in the base. I wanted to get a head start with Nelo before the new week.

My plan was just to sit inthe boat and get a feel for it.

Luckily, Rait (the manager of our club, rower, coach) was there and he was pushing me (not literally). And thanks to the peer pressure 🙂 I did get a taste of the water.

I didn’t tare to push myself away from the port, so I started from the little “beach” right next to the port. For me this is the safest way to get started. After around 10 minutes of back and forth (few meters) I started doing bigger circles (don’t be fooled, that only means few meters longer). And then I fell in. Once you are wet, it doesn’t really mater so I got back in and decided that I will at least come out of the kayak by the port.

To get the port on my right, which is the natural side to come out, I had to turn. By that time (100 meters?) I already felt that well, this is not SO BAD and decided I will do another circle (that’s what you see in the video). And just when I got the groove on, I fell. I can’t really figure out what happened but most likely it is the left side issue.

Anyways, I didn’t want to catch cold so I happily, excitedly changed to warm and dry clothes and called it a day. The season for Nelo has started. This is the first view, I can only get better. Stay tuned to see how the season ends, I promise you, it will be a lot better (but less fun and entertaining I suppose) to watch.