About us

Small Stations, Sheltered Water, Everyone Welcome

The first station was a shed with six boards on a lagoon that local families had swum in for generations. It worked because the water was genuinely calm, the price was low enough for a spontaneous hour and nobody was made to feel that watersports were for other people. Five stations later, that is still the model: sheltered locations only, short hire slots, no membership, no lengthy paperwork, and staff who will happily spend twenty minutes teaching a nervous adult to stand up rather than pushing them off the jetty and walking away.

Locations are chosen for shelter rather than views alone. Each site has land on at least three sides, a maximum fetch short enough that waves never build, water shallow enough to stand in over most of the marked area, an easy sandy or stepped entry and no motor traffic. Boundaries are marked with buoys, the safe area is drawn on a map handed out with every hire, and the on-duty instructor watches the water constantly rather than from behind a till.

Equipment is chosen for beginners: wide, thick inflatable boards that are very hard to fall off, sit-on-top kayaks that cannot fill with water, stable pedal boats with backrests and shade canopies, and buoyancy aids from toddler to extra-large. Everything is rinsed, inspected and pumped to the correct pressure every morning. We also keep the bays clean, run monthly litter paddles, monitor water quality with the municipality and post the results at each station.