Boat Repairs Oct ‘22

Club kit is important because canoe polo kit is expensive - not everybody has their own, and this shouldn’t be a barrier to participation. As a club, we should be making this as accessible a sport as possible, and having functioning kit available to everyone is a key part of this. 

With this in mind, last Saturday a small but determined team gathered in Pete’s glamorous back garden to fix a rather substantial pile of damaged club boats.

Under Maz’s expert guidance with steaming cups of coffee in hand, even the most clueless of us set to work sanding (all hail to the electric sander), checking seams, cutting carbon fibre to size and trying to stop Asha the puppy eating seam tape.

James was soon deployed on a quick, simple mission to B&Q for some kit-fixing essentials and to get some pizzas for lunch (also essential). This mission transpired to neither be quick, nor apparently simple, and when James returned almost an hour and a half later, we were left wondering which branch of Morrisons he’d visited on his quest for lunch, and whether he’d taken it upon himself to travel all the way to Naples itself to retrieve the pizzas. 

Anyway, after a lunch break we were fuelled up and straight back on it - working on attaching new seam tape, patches, mixing resin…all the good stuff.

By the end of the afternoon, we’d tolerated approximately 100 of Ruaidhrí’s terrible boat fixing related puns and we’d managed to fix 5 boats. Feeling pretty chuffed, we wound up the day with a drink and a dip in the hot tub that had been heating up all afternoon. 

Big thanks to Maz for organising and keeping us all in line and to Pete for his hospitality.

Boats were fixed, hearts were healed, and club participation was widened with every seam glued. 

Author: Mary Sharples