A summer of boating?

Well, it could have been. Unfortunately I spent my 6 week summer 'holiday' working in an office. A very good thing for the wallet (after all, I have 4 holidays from the first half of this year to pay for!), but not so good for my boating. I chose the one year to work the 'holidays', when Hurley was running for pretty much all 6 weeks of it. In fact, being the weather witch that I am, Hurley came up on the day I accepted that office job (back in May) and went back down again on the day I left (beginning of September)! Still, with the long days and warm(ish) weather I had no excuse not to go after work... except for the 30 people that frequently formed the queue. I am not at all motivated to go boating when I have to wait for more than 10 minutes between each ride, so very often I just didn't bother going.

Unfortunately the relative lack of summer-boating facilities in the country and the huge population of boaters in the South-east area means that it is a busy place to be, especially in the summer when it is such a rare event for Hurley to be running.

So, is it possible to avoid the queues?

I spent a few of my many dull hours in the office thinking about this. The best, and my favourite, thing to do is to get rid of the 9-5 job (good in so many ways) and get down there when everyone else is in the office. However if you can't do this then you need to work out how to 'out-think' (that's the technical term I use) the other Hurley-goers to get to the quiet times, e.g "its bound to be busy on a baking hot Saturday so I'll go on Monday evening instead". But you see if all of the other Hurley-goers are thinking this it results in the presumed quiet times being the busy times and the presumed busy times being the quiet ones! So, you need to get there on a Saturday afternoon for a nice quiet session.

Obviously there is more out-thinking to be done than that to avoid the queues ALL the time, for example if someone has posted on a website that Saturday was quiet, you can guarantee that the next Saturday will be busy, well that's what you'd think...

If I knew the whole secret I a. would have been boating a few more times this summer, and

b. certainly wouldn't be publishing it here :)

Anyway just sometimes all that out-thinking of the out-thinkers pays off, or maybe sometimes I just get lucky:

Half past 3 on a Saturday afternoon, middle of August, Hurley on 3, warm enough for me to wear a shorty (meaning very warm) and nobody in the eddy - perfect. Although, bizarrely, I didn't stay on for all that long - I got bored with no one else to paddle with :)

Autumn/winter is on its way... I need to get out boating more, I think.