After a break of roughly 40 years I am back on the water!
Since shutting down my safety signage business and semi-retiring I have had a lot more time to concentrate on doing things with my spare time.
Canoeing and kayaking have become a passion over the last year and in this section I will be sharing details of the vessels and trips completed and planed along with some photos and videos.
The Jolly Wobbler
The Jolly Wobbler is where my love of being on the water was rekindled, purchased in August 2024 with a couple of mates. To start with she was indeed very wobbly, hence the name, but that was more down to a complete lack of any talent on our part having not been in a canoe of any kind for the best part of a combined 100 years!
We kept her for a year, having taken her out on several adventures on various stretches of the River Thames upstream of Maidenhead. Pretty much every trip being choreographed to arrive at a pub for refreshments at the halfway point of course.
She was purchased for the 3 of us to go out on some adventures but more often than not we had an empty seat on outings. She was also very heavy and filled up half of my garage, so we sold her in August 2025 and replaced her with a couple of much lighter single seater craft.
Spongebob Wet Pants
Spongebob Wet Pants is a Cambridge Kayaks Quest, purchased in August 2025. As you can see it is a sit-on-top kayak. I opted for a sit-on-top mainly for safety reasons, but also for the payload – she can carry 180kg and I alone take up over half of that allowance so anything smaller and I would be having more than wet pants!
Even though my pants are generally soaked through after a trip I love her. She is easy to paddle, manoeuverable and has plenty of storage for a few tinnies, chocolate bars, clothes etc…
She has had several outings on the Thames since I’ve had her and plans are afoot to take her on The River Wye in the summer of 2026 and tackle the famous Symons Yat rapids!
Weighing in at 22kg and being 10ft long (4ft short than The Jolly Wobbler), the Quest is easy to put on and off the car roof by myself making solo adventures a possibility also now. I can also store her vertically in my garage so I have much more space again.