Contributed by Andy Neave, Photos Darren Ship
Slalom challenges and other games using plastic ducks are great fun for any age group. The ducks have flat bottoms so sit nicely on the decks of slalom boats. Developing paddlers can learn to maintain a flat boat or only use controlled edging in a wide variety of flat or moving water environments. On sites with good eddies like Stone, Marple, Sowerby Bridge etc. break ins, break outs, ferry glides and crosses are all possible.
Adding slalom gates increases the challenge and timed competitive
runs even more so. Try also with a duck on back deck, or balanced on your head, or paddling a course backwards ….. guaranteed to bring smiles to any dull session.
There are endless possibilities. Ask the group to devise their own game or challenge. Coaches be warned, kids can become quite possessive about their ducks so count them all back in at session end!
Edit: Extra uses for ducks that I've found!
- Start off with the duck just in front of the cockpit for the first run of a course, then move it 6 inches forward after each successful run ("levelling up").
- Team runs with ducks, team runs paddling backwards with ducks, team runs with everyone in the team (no need to limit to 3) balancing the duck in a different place.
- I had a nice session the other day with a relative beginner on a gentle jet of moving water where I would just throw the duck and she had to go and recover it. I threw it into eddies, into the middle of the flow, on the edge of the flow. The young lady chasing the duck giggled non stop for 10 minutes and forgot that she was scared of going over as she chased her duck around. If you had more that 1 then they could do this in pairs, throwing the duck for each other, or you could sit somewhere centrally and they bring the ducks back to you for you to throw again (in the former you have no control over where they are sending each other, in the latter you can manipulate where you want them to go).
- Throw a duck into a course while someone is paddling it and they have to do a 360 round the duck before continuing.
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