Ever try paddling without a fin? We gave it a shot last weekend and here is what happened…

After we created our DIY pallet puppy decal a few weekends ago, we got a lot of requests from friends and family members for cut-outs of their pups.

So, we spent the following sunny Saturday cutting pallets for future projects. If you’re a DIYer too and want to learn the best way to break down a pallet make sure to check out the how-to video if you missed it (and subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss a vlog or video)!

On Sunday, we floated on the Lamoille River in Jeffersonville, VT with Sam’s parents for his mom’s birthday. What we thought was going to be a rainy, hour-long paddle turned out to be a sunny three and a half-hour float.

Want to float along? Check out this week’s VLOG!

We learned some pretty important things along the way…

1. Bring extra snacks and extra beers
2. Paddling is about a million times harder when you take the fin off of your board… you might even fall in… Like I did!
   
   

The river was too shallow for us to use our fins and it was way harder than we thought it would be. Read: we were (quite literally) spinning in circles on the river and had to spend a lot more time sitting down than we normally would.

I think my exact words before we started were “it can’t be that different” but MAN was I wrong. We were ALL OVER THE ROAD without the fins helping us out.

Why? The fin keeps you moving in a (relatively) straight line by ensuring the back of the board doesn’t slip sideways when you put pressure on either side as you pull through the water. The fin also can help with speed and stability – neither of which we had last Sunday.

We learned our lesson: even when it is shallow it is totally worth picking up the back of the board for those few sections of the river so you can relax during the rest of the ride.

We’re also wondering if standing on the front of the board to lift the back out of the water a bit more could have worked?

We’ll definitely have to give that a try next time around (you won’t catch me up a creek without a fin again) but at least made for a good adventure;)

We hope you had a great weekend!