Knot a good day

“Tis hard to steer a sinking ship,” I whispered wearily to my fellow survivor, as we stood on Bundoran pier, looking out towards the hazy blue horizon.

“We’re lucky to be alive,” replied my shipmate, staring dazedly across the uncaring expanse.

The sun inspires people to do things that they would not normally do.

Indoor creatures, guilt-ridden by the golden rays that pierce their curtains, feel obligated by the clement conditions to break from their hermetic existences.

With the petulance of a child whose cartoons has been turned off, they depart from their preferred way of life, and begrudgingly choose between lying in the garden or going for a walk.

For those accustomed to the outdoors, however, it is not uncommon to feel the urge to engage in more exotic recreations. Neither sunbathing nor strolling will do for these people. Such an unlikely spell of warm weather, they reason, warrants an equally unusual form of fun.

It was in accord with this desire to pass the time in a manner unfamiliar, a friend and I recently took to the salty depths of sweet Donegal.

On our drive along the westward road, we discussed the flotation device that we would use to cruise the broad Atlantic. The following is my blurry remembrance of that discourse.

“Surf boards,” I said, stating my preferred vessel, with uncompromising brevity.

“I don’t really wanna go surfing,” said my friend, resolutely. “I would rather go kayaking.”

“Sure, if there are any waves at all, there is no point trying to kayak,” I responded.

“But if the sea is flat,” he countered, “there is no point trying to surf.”

“Right, then, if there are waves, we will do what you don’t want to do, and if there are no waves, we will do what I don’t want to do.”

“Deal,” he said, cranking the radio to signal the end of the discussion.

So up to Donegal we got, sun blaring, beaches heaving, bald men burning, ice creams dripping, mild breeze blowing, traffic warden sweating, Atlantic rippling, but no waves rising.

“That is a day for the kayaks,” grinned my friend, triumphantly.

“Doubt so,” I conceded, feeling like I had just endured a defeat, such is my friend’s uncanny knack for turning everything into a competition.

Swallowing my pride, I rang a boy who owns a watersports rental business up that way, and, to the cheer of my stingier side, he said that we could take the kayak out for nothing.

Furnishing me with a security code and a bit of safety advice, he told me to let myself into the wee hut where he holds his boards and boats, and just grab away.

Opening the container, there sat a mountain of wetsuits and surfboards. But no kayaks.

“There are no bloody kayaks in here,” I roared, forgetting the generosity of the fella whose keys I held in my hand, and cursing his incompetence as a business owner.

“That’s because they are sitting around here,” shouted my soon to be co-captain, who stood around the side of the container looking at a tower of kayaks.

Around, across and through this mountain of plastic snaked a big thick chain. This, presumably, was to prevent would-be thieves from having their way with the kayaks. One, however, sat away from the rest, unshackled and apparently ready for the water.

“Happy days”, we said to each other, “sure that will save us having to wrestle with that big chain.”

Oh, how I wish it were encoded in law that the wisdom of some ancient idioms were tattooed upon the back of people’s necks.

For if walking towards the water, carrying the rear of the kayak, I had seen the words, ‘If it is too good to be true, it probably is’, inked above the collar of my friend’s wetsuit, it might have clicked. However, it did not.

About ten minutes out to sea, I began to think that we were the most useless pair to ever drop of backsides in a kayak.

Regardless of how much we tried to establish a rhythm, shouting our ones and twos, our oars clashed at every stroke.

However, about 20 minutes in, even when it seemed we had managed go get our oaring in sync, we were still going nowhere.

“What are you at back there,” shouted my friend from the front. “This thing is going to tip!”

And sure enough, over it went, out we came, and out we stayed.

“I cannot get this thing turned,” shouted my flailing friend.

“Looks like we are going to have to swim her back in,” I shouted.

Grabbing the nose of the kayak with one hand, and holding my oar in the other, I began to kick my toes in an effort to generate a few knots. My friend done the same from the back.

About half an hour later, we reached the peer.

Dragging the kayak out was like pulling a Vauxhall Corsa up a hill, such was the weight of the water which had amassed within during our short voyage.

Standing on the peer with one end of the kayak resting precariously on our shoulders, we tipped the contents of our marooned vessel towards its vast receiver, and returned the water to whence she had came.

“A hole. That’s why it wasn’t chained up,” said my friend.

“You got in one, Popeye.”