To read part eleven of day five, click here.

Bruce picked up one of the blobs. I blinked, wondering if it was what it looked like. He picked up the other one and held it up to show everyone on the shore. I laughed – they were his booties. They had fallen off while he was swimming.

I caught up to him for a second, but then he was way ahead of me again. He got back to shore and started telling everyone that they had fallen off on his way out to Patrick, but he had forgotten to get them on his way back to shore. I think he was racing someone to get back to land.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the swim evaluation came before we learned to pack the canoes. Because we weren’t that wet when we got into the canoes a little bit after packing, so we would have had to do our swim evaluation before then.

So this happened after we finished the packing.

We all got into a circle and Patrick explained what was going to happen. We were going to get into our canoes, lighter person in the bow (front), and learn our paddle strokes.

Everyone pulled their canoe off the shore and into the water, except for me. Everyone got into their canoe, except for me. Everyone paddled over to the dock so they could hold on and not float away, except for me.

I couldn’t – I didn’t have my partner! Jen, Katie and Glenn were all talking and when I went and stood by Jen, she told me to go back to the canoe, she would be over there soon.

The rest of my crewmates were already learning their paddle strokes, paddling around in the shallows. And I was still waiting for Jen.

Ten minutes later, she hopped into the canoe. “Sorry about that!” she said as we paddled out to meet the rest of the crew.

Thirty minutes after that, we were still practicing paddle strokes. I was glad – I still had no idea what I was doing. Patrick would call out what we were supposed to be doing, and I would usually do the opposite.

Jen would correct me, telling me to do the other one, and I would correct it. I knew which stroke did what, I just couldn’t figure out their names for some reason. I still don’t know their names, actually. But when Jen would say that we needed to turn right, I was able to do the correction strokes that were needed.

Because I was in the front, I didn’t have to do as much steering. I was mostly the power. The engine, in a way. The person in the stern did most of the steering, but I needed to know the strokes that I would use to correct our direction the next two days. If the person in the stern couldn’t turn us in time to miss a rock in the river, I would have to help.

Patrick said we were done learning the strokes and told us to go line up by the docks. We headed back across the lake to the dock. Jen and I stopped for a second and she took a picture of me.

This is one of my favorite pictures of me from my course. :)

I was a little worried about what was coming next, but I shouldn’t have. Jen and I kicked butt. 😀

Click here to read the next part of Day Five.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks too NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*