One of my workmates is involved in one of the outrigger canoe clubs here and has been asking Angela and me to come down and have a go. Ang wasn’t too keen, especially after her experience of getting sea sick while kayaking at SaMoana, and we have usually been busy with netball and other things. But last week I finally went down to the harbour and checked it out.
Actually we are trying to put together a team from work to enter the Independence Day regatta next weekend. It is getting a bit late to do any serious training, but we thought it would be a good idea if all of the crew had at least been in the boat once or twice before race day!
So, I joined the rest of our crew for my first introduction to outrigger canoe, or va’a, racing. Some of our crew had paddled before, but most of us hadn’t. All of our most experienced paddlers are actually involved in running the regatta so won’t be able to race with us. So our motley crew piled into the boat and went for a paddle. I didn’t get much instruction, but was able to figure out which end of the paddle to hold! After a few easy circuits in front of the yacht club we tried a couple of longer runs. It was good fun, and when everyone is going in time the boat moves along quite well. These are 6 man canoes and are quite big. We found it takes quite a bit of effort to get them up and going and that they don’t always go in a straight line! Somehow I got ‘promoted’ to the number 1 seat at the front of the boat and the very important job of setting the pace for the rest of the crew. After about an hour it got dark so we had to call it quits, but I must admit I was pretty tired by then.
Since that first practice I have managed to join in one more session. We did some 500m sprints, and we were puffing at the end of that. I missed practice last night, but apparently they managed to capsize the boat! The races are this weekend, so I will post an update and our results next week. Hopefully we will have some photos too.
No comments:
Post a Comment