The story of the broken paddle

I want to talk about security while paddling I Nordmarken. The last couple of days we have to give away spare paddles to canoers from other canoe outfitter 3 times. It´s easy to break a paddle when handling it wrong. Normally the paddle brake when canoe is loaded in the water, but is stock on the bottom. To get free into deep water the paddle is used to push the canoe to deeper water and it will break. Started as a canoe outfitter 1956 and have seen some broken paddles during this year. The excuse we get is “It just was broken when we were paddling middle of the lake”. So I have made the mistake, to hand out bad paddles and I have the responsibility. That’s the normal story I get. Things can of course happen and then it´s good to have an extra reserve paddle in the canoe. A situation can be two canoers with limited experience, hard wind and to handle a canoe with only one paddling can be serious trouble and even dangerous. So please when you hire a canoe from a canoe outfitter ask for a spare paddle, even if you are told that you don’t need one. This is just a friendly advice, so I don’t have to give more paddles to canoers who not are our guests. The 4 person on the photo told me that the paddle broke when paddling against the wind in very hard weather. The have been our guests for many year and I believed them to 100%.