Sweden has lots of water. Oceans, lakes, rivers. To fit in, the idle tourist must engage in water sports. Lake Siljan is ideal, it is a small welcoming lake, no surf, no depths, no storms. Watching kayaks passing by with kayakists gently paddling along, moving almost effortlessly along the horizon seemed easy and an invitation even for the novice. The hotel offered rental kayaks. No further instructions were given, so it was going to be an easy task. A modern kayak is a light vessel, made from nothing more than thin air. That nothing is held together by impressive colours, fire-engine-red and rescue-helicopter-yellow. Kayaks are easy to carry as they have no mass. Placing them in the water is as simple as floating a candle on a Japanese river. But, lack of mass also means a lack of a centre of gravity. The kayak has no keel and hence no inherent stability either. Both must come from the kayakist. As kayakists do not grow on kayaks, the challenge is to bring both stability and gravity to the kayak. The budding kayakist tends to be a terrestrial bi-ped with a high centre of gravity and reasonable stability – on firm ground. Ideally, he would be moved from land to the kayak with a helicopter straight above the vessel with the kayakist abseiling into the middle of the kayak. In less ideal situations, the kayakist must move his centre of gravity from firm and stable ground by a lateral move into the non-existing, unstable mass of the kayak. This process creates a system of double instability. Nature abhors instability just as it abhors vacuum and seeks instant recovery of stability. Gravity exerts its force on the stability-challenged kayakist. The moment the kayak realises the kayakist is a fool it moves sideways – and that’s when I splashed into the water. After that the process can start again – unless you get a helicopter.