A friend recently asked me to be her canoe partner in a challenge to canoe the Caledonian Canal. We were to canoe 60 miles over 4 days from Fort William to Inverness here's what happened…..
After spending months training for the event we joined the group of walkers who were to travel with us. They walked the Great Glen Way while we canoed down the lochs. A bus followed us along the way carrying all our gear from hostel to hostel.
It was hard work but fun with fantastic scenery and very liberating! We kept our moral up by singing and having a bit of a laugh along the way! The weather on the first two days was kind to us, but that would change!
Things changed dramatically when we got to Lock Ness – we were all a bit more nervous as we knew it was a lot bigger and more open than where we had been. More like the sea really but we soon got used to the new conditions and made good progress although there was a slight breeze developing.
After a while the breeze got worse and soon developed into a 25mph wind blowing head-on into us. There were waves with white caps, pretty scary especially when you are at the front. We fought to try and stay head on – we knew that if we were side on we would capsize and the current would take us! We couldn’t afford to miss a stroke either!
It was getting pretty dangerous!
I quickly came to the conclusion that we should get out and the rest of the team agreed – there was a log cabin on the land next to us it seemed like it had been in the same position for 10 minutes – therefore we must have been in the same position too. We just weren’t going anywhere!
The guys in front pointed to a pier up ahead. But none of us could make it and we docked up nearby on a remote pebble beach and made plans to get back to civilisation.
A parallel can be drawn here with the business world - you need to be able to make good decisions quickly and make the necessary change, as factors change! Going on the same course doing what you have always done could spell disaster. You need to read the ‘climate’ and adjust where necessary even if it means pulling out, dropping a contract or changing direction completely.
Of course having the right people around you who listen to each other and are supportive is also crucial.
Click here for more on this subject http://www.searchenginesensation.com/team.asp
Thanks for reading!
Claire