Hence the reason I have started taking kayaking lessons (only a fiver a time!), long before I actually get around to parting with any cash or venturing onto the sea and the local estuaries. When I was first considering getting myself a kayak, I didn't think I would need a PFD, helmet or anything else, to be honest with you. Then I started watching some of the beach landings on YouTube. I found amazing how people who seemed to be really good kayakers on the open water were so very easily being tumbled out of their boats because they didn't really know anything about kayaking beyond paddling out to where they wanted to fish and then paddling home again. Equally amazing was the amount of these people who had serious money's worth of fishing gear, but not a tether of ANY KIND holding it to their boat! Then I got to see one video where a fella who had a few kayaking qualifications came back from fishing and arrived at the shore of a steeply sloping beach - just like my local beach in fact. He had been out about 4 miles or so on what looked to be mirror glass water all day. But what feels flat calm in the depths can be another thing entirely when that depth of water shelves up quickly. He got rolled and was only under the boat for a few seconds. Had his head whacked against something and came out of the water hanging onto his head. It looked like he was trying to hold his wig on at first. Then amidst the "panic talk" of his friends I came to realise what I thought was a wig, was actually a large portion of his scalp in the form of a huge flap of skin and hair! The other thing that was immediately apparent was that none of his friends, nor the man in the video, had any form of first aid kit. Let alone one stored in a water tight container. Let's face it, even wet bandages would have been better than nothing for holding the skin to his head. The fella was wearing a PFD though. In the few seconds that passed, I quickly realised I would need quite a lot more kit than I had at first thought and before the remaining seconds of the video finished, I was also beginning to consider lessons and whether I could find somewhere local too. Thankfully, I managed to find somewhere I can get a lift to and the first actual question out of the instructors mouth was to ask what sort of kayaking did I want to do once I get my own boat? He then tailored what I would be taught to that usage. After all, I had already made it clear that the reason I was there was to get a good skill set under my belt before I ventured out alone and at that point I was completely uninterested in actual qualifications. Just the instructors approval that I have been appropriately trained and confident within myself of what I had been taught and my own ability to carry those teachings through to my own paddling and peddling on the water.
