We had the big regatta over the weekend and it was great fun. For us social/business house crews the racing started on Friday afternoon. This was supposed to be a 6km ‘Change Race’, where we were supposed to do 4 laps around a 1.5 km triangular course and change 3 crew members each lap. For those of us that hadn’t done much training this sounded like it would be quite a challenge. Due to time constraints the course was shortened – we had to paddle out to a buoy about 400m out, turn around and come back then change 3 crew members then out and back again with another change and out and back a final time – a total distance of about 2.4 km. This sounded much better to us, the only problem was that we hadn’t practiced doing a 180 degree turn and these boats are quite big and don’t turn easily. To add the drama it was quite windy, this was an extra challenge for us novice crews. This all made for plenty of action for the spectators, we had a couple of boats tangled up on the marker buoys, one boat that flipped over and some rather ‘interesting’ crew changes. At the end of it all our crew managed a very impressive second place! We managed to avoid most of the problems and got through the race ok. We did get a 20 second penalty because we only changed 2 crew members instead of 3 at the end of the first lap, but aside from that we went well. We were also the best looking crew thanks to our flash team uniforms!
On Saturday we had the shorter 500m and 250m races. These are a lot more straight forward – no turns and no crew changes. Just line up at the start line and paddle like mad to the finish line with the winners of each heat to go through to the final. The 500m race was first and we were in the second heat. We started off OK and had enough power left at the end to win our heat, so we got to the final. The final was a really close race, after a slow start we didn’t quite have enough power to come through at the end and had to settle for third.
The 250m sprints were next and this time I took my turn to sit our and let one of the others paddle. It was good to be able to watch the crews in action from the comfort of the shore. In our heat there was some controversy at the start and 2 crews (included ours) were still waiting for the start signal while the other crews stated paddling. It took them a little while to realise that the race was not going to be restarted so had to get going and try to catch up. Unfortunately they weren’t able to get there, so we missed out on the final. As you can imagine there were all sorts of protests and complaints directed to the race starter and race director, both of these guys work for us but there was no way they would listen to our protests. Just wait until work next week – we will sort them out then!
It was a great event and everyone had fun racing. It was also good to watch the competitive paddlers racing too. They really get the canoes moving, but even they have their mishaps – one of the finalists in the women’s 500m race tipped over right when she was challenging for first place!
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