In quick succession,
the third dragon boat event of the season was upon us. And
after the wet of Exeter and previous Bristol events we were
pleasantly surprised by the warm and sunny day that greeted
us at the Floating Dock in Bristol.
We arrived early to discover
that Sparky had managed to single handedly get the boat off
the water and on to the water. Magnificent! Could this be
the sign of a good day of racing?
After the poor 200m the previous
week we had been training hard and even surprised our selves
with a phenomenal first race against Notts Anaconda, BA Hurricanes
and Worcester Dragonflies, where we started our first of many
against BA, but in this first one, we smashed them, coming
in 4th fastest over the whole competition! With feelings of
elation we even dared to suggest that we no longer needed
Steve’s marathon speeches or crazy sunglasses?
After an extended wait at the start after Raging
dragons capsize incident and perhaps spending a little
too much time in the mid-day sun, our 200m for once coming
together very well with us in the Cup Minor Final and seeding
us well for the coming 500m races.
After a good first 500m, we
found that it was not quite good enough and had to rep the
second race, with a very close 123 with less than a second
between BA just piping us to the post and us against Colenorton.
This may have been close, but just put us into the 3rd Cup
semi, ‘phew’. So once again we were out on the
water under the baking sun without seemingly a moment to rest
and take a drink.
Unfortunately while waiting
to start a speed boat came up past us and as soon as it was
out of the way the starter said ‘go’ with out
waiting for the wash to dissipate. Thus we started competing
with waves and wash and thinking that our new and shiny boat
which had been serving us so well was going to sink.
While this did not set us up well we did have a very respectable
2nd place in the Cup tail race. We did not finish with the
glory we had hoped for but with our timing finally coming
together as it should it was a good day all around especially
since the sun was shining down on us.
Special thanks to Donna and
Alex for sharing the drumming responsibilities and to Sparky
for being our helm under challenging circumstances! This was
Julia’s last event with ExeCalibre before she returns
to Germany – we proved it doesn’t rain at all
Dragonboat events!
Full
Race Results (pdf file) |
