Napier Daily Photo: Another painting I found at CAN with a story :)

The other day I visited the art gallery again. I found this paintings a man canoeing at Pandora :) It reminded me of the times I had canoed there. Without meaning to detract from the painting I shall tell you about them.

Let me start by saying I have canoed else where over the years. I enjoy it. The first time my oldest son and I canoed at Pandora we rented the canoes from a place beside the pond. There is a bridge (not the one shown in the painting below) and when I went under it I got caught up in the swiftly flowing water and tipped out. I learnt that it is not wise to keep money on oneself when canoeing. I lost $20. So canoeing that ended up quite expensive.

Last time my oldest son and I went with my youngest son and daughter, who was on holiday from up north. That was quite an experience too. My daughter nor my youngest had been canoeing before however my eldest son is a Sea Scout leader (as well as a land Scout Leader) and so he is very experienced on the water. This time we used canoes from the Sea Scouts. We thought wed manage fine with the two novices. That was until my daughter drifted away and did go under that bridge. Luckily some stones under it stopped her from going any further. She too found the current too strong and couldnt row back towards us. Dont get me wrong the pond isnt really bad current wise. You just have to selective where you row on it. It pays to stay with the group you are with. We had to rescue her. There was a lot of rowing that day.

We also found a huge fishing net and decided to put it in my canoe to get it back to a the Sea Scout den where we thought it would be dealt with accordingly. We didnt just want to dump it anywhere in case it got back into the pond again. Fishing is prohibited at Pandora as there are many wildlife birds that live there. It was very long and heavy and I had trouble getting it back to shore but didnt want to give up. I ended up swimming a lot more than I had wanted to and pulling the canoe behind me. In the end I ran out of puff and a man saw me going no where fast. He was lighter than me so he jumped on top of the net in the canoe and took it to the den. I slowly walked back once I got to shore. I was very grateful to him.