It's very hard to ignore somebody when they tell you you're getting good at something. Especially when they suggest you might be good enough to win. Sometimes this is a good thing. It encourages you to try new things, or go further with them than you ever thoguht you would. At other times you wonder if you've been duped. Take this weekend for example. On Wednesday we (and by "we" I mean a group of keeners from the DragonFlies d. boat team that has taken up outrigger paddling on Wednesdays) decided to race. This was due mostly to the very encouraging encouragement from a couple of our lovely experienced Comox outrigger women who are kind enough to put up with our paddling attempts on Wednesdays. "There's a novice category; it's only 10 km." Only?! Yes, only...well, we do paddle that far every time we go out. Mind you, it's NOT a race. And it's sheltered.
On Thursday at our dragon boating practice we established that we did indeed have enough paddlers to make a team and we also had an 80% chance of having a boat to paddle in down in Vic. On Friday Reeg and I drove to Vic (an interesting trip full of strange little happenings - maybe I'll get back to that later). At 715 am on Saturday morning we arrived at Gyro park. We realized that a) we didn't know if we had a boat to race in, b) we didn't know how or where to register, and c) we didn't know if the rest of our teammates had made it to Vic. At about 745am we had sorted all of the above out with the help of Lyse. YAY Lyse. We had a boat, had paid our reg fees (had a name - The Flies Revised - in honour of our Comox Valley DragonFlies dragonboat team origin), and had 6 people to put in the boat. It was a shiny new boat...so new, in fact, that the club who owned it decided that they'd rather not know how long we'd been paddling. Thank you Lyse for knowing how to steer! Thank you WestBay for trusting your new baby to Lyse and us!
At some point in time innocence must end. Our end came about 20 seconds after getting into the boat and realising that we couldn't keep the damn thing from trying to drift right into the team beside us. Did I mention that we generally launch in a very sheltered spot? We'd never had to keep the boat still on a beach before. One person at the end of a 45 ft long boat does not an effective anchor make. And one not so long legged person in seat 3 is not capable of sitting half out of the boat in such a way that she can keep the front of the boat from drifting but also be able to pop right back into her seat in when the horn goes off to start....
It wasn't a pretty start. It wasn't a fast start. No nimble speedy dragonfly immitation for us; it was more like a group of bluebottles with only half their wings trying to take off in formation. However, we did get it together and for half the race managed to keep our competition in striking range. Until we got to the crazy water. Before that point we battled the head wind with much camraderie and joie de vivre; after all, we were doing this for the experience. Sure, we all wanted to win, but, when in doubt, enjoy yourself, attempt to ride the swells and sing the theme to Hawaii Five-0 at the top of your lungs...um, ok, our lungs were pretty busy at that point, what with the paddling and the "hut-hoe"ing, and the head wind...so, that should prolly read "sing the theme song to "Hawaii Five-0" with what little breath we had left over.
So we got to the islands where we were supposed to turn in and head back to shore. Great! Tail wind coming our way (going our way?) Um, no. Think back to the angle at which you followed the shore on the way out Tara...just because we were going back to the beach did not mean we were getting a tail wind. Doh! Small miscalculation in my thougt processes there...Much to my chagrin that wind that I was hoping to be at our backs ended up being at our ama. As we watched the team in front of us huli I considered that there is much to be said for a two minute dragonboat race in flat water with 19 other paddlers helping you....
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