Kayaking the River on a Fluid Synergy

This morning I had a great start to my day. I woke up at about 5:45am – a good few hours earlier than my normal rising time – to go kayaking with my father-in-law.

He has a Fluid Synergy two-seater kayak, which is very lightweight and durable. I’ve paddled on a few paddle-ski’s, waveski’s and canoes, but this was probably the best little craft I’ve used.

It’s very light and manageable, so can be used as a single boat, even though it seats two. It’s made for both calm river waters as well as the breakers in the sea. So that will be our next target, taking it out into the Indian Ocean.

The Synergy has moulded in footholds and the whole seating setup is very comfortable with a decent back support.

We went down to quite a popular river in our area. By 6:15am the sun was already out in good strength making it a glorious morning. The picnic spot, which is the launching area for all boats, was completely deserted which added to the serenity.

We paddled downstream first, looking at all the wealthy mansions, most of them standing empty and stuffing up the natural beauty river.

But we soon left the man-made structures behind and came across quite a bit of wildlife which stole our focus. There were loads of Egyptian Geese and Yellow Weavers. The Geese were swimming all around us, completely unruffled by our presence; the weavers were all nesting in the reeds near the waters’ edge.

We did see something quite interesting in that there was a Yellow-Billed Duckling swimming with two or three sets of Egyptian Geese adults. I would’ve loved to have studied them for a bit further to see if the duckling had perhaps been adopted by some of them as there weren’t any other ducks anywhere else nearby. I’ve asked around and so far no-one has seen a Yellow-Billed duckling hanging out with Egyptian Geese before, so not sure how common it is.

There were also quite a number of Pied Kingfishers around. I’ve never really seen so many in one place before.

There was one part of our journey we almost came unstuck (not sure why use that expression when we actually mean ‘stuck’) – we paddled over quite a shallow area near a grassy island and heard the rocks scraping the bottom, but fortunately nothing major and after a few pole-vault pushes we were away.

We paddled for about an hour, then returned to the makeshift ‘jetty’. After checking the bottom we were impressed to find no damage done. And when we unplugged the cork to drain any water which had taken aboard, I was pleasantly surprised to find that hardly a drop had sneaked in – something I’m not used to when paddling.

A great morning, and a quality, sleek kayak, definitely worth having.