For those of you that were not there, Lethal's race pix (good work, boyo!) are backwards in time. He has sequences of shots of the Community (all the non-UBC teams, some 30+ in total) Cup Final, & of one of the Semis.
Pix 19 thru 13 are of the Final, 35 thru 27 are of the Semi.
(Tues Oct 4th: the new ones he added today, 1 to 12, are also of the Final - look at the image nums to fit them into sequence)
Fun, wet, cold, LONG (2 Km, 12 mins or so, 4 turns - see race info at
http://www.rec.ubc.ca/events/longboat/raceroute.cfm?ActID=27&path=longboat). Roller-coaster rides, with waves rolling over the sides (see pix 11/14), when they're not booming over the bow.
Think Alcan's Guts & Glory. In tippy (much!) boats that don't turn very quickly. With aluminium paddles you are not allowed to wax up for grip. In cold, cold, salty water, & tons of wind (the sailors & windsurfers are a-grinnin'), a few whitecaps starting to break out in the Bay, waves getting up to a metre or so high.
Ergo, MANY collisions!!
I was on the Oh So Close! team - a bunch of Alphas, with a few friends from other teams (lane 6 in the Semi, 7 in the Final). We also had a 2nd entry, We're Not Last (lane 3 in the Semi pix).
We're in OK shape at the beginning of the Final (lane 7, far left in pic 18). It's a short time after the Start. The Alcan folks, lane 4, have pulled out a bit & are starting their turn around the first marker. Not sure where the Success - aka Lamp Chops - team, the eventual winners, are (might be even farther ahead, or just out of frame to right).
We figured an outside lane was great, based on our other races (lane nums are draw-from-a-hat, each time). It would let us avoid the middle lane pile-ups that seemed to occur often, off the Start. Our steering guy was going to try to cut us in behind Alcan, try to catch up & pass them on the inside on the turn ... HAH!
A few secs later (pic 17), we've pulled ahead & cut in front of lane 6, but we're in a sandwich with lane 5 on our right, lane 6 banging on our bum, and lane 8 blocking us ahead. Rather hard to go fast when the whole right side of your boat can't paddle!! I'm frantically trying to push off lane 5, I get in a few strokes but the waves knock us together again, so I push off again & again ... people are screaming (tho' politely, cuz we're all Canajans) ... when we fianlly break free, we're a long ways back of several other boats.
Oh well, that's racing!
Update: today's new pix, 1-12, show some more of the fun stuff after that, heading into & around Turn 1. We're still banging blades with 5 (pix 3 & 2), then finally pull away (pic 1). Meantime, Alcan is about to get into a menage-a-trois with lanes 3 & 2 (left to right, middle of pix, in 3, 2, 1, 12), as some other boats from the race before go by the other way (Lamb Chops are well ahead - out of frame).
And then, there was our after-Finish to-do (no pix, but it was hilarious) ... we're bow-up on the beach, our Runner has banged the gong & the rest of us are slowly climbing out of the boat over the bow, when one boat races up right beside us, but they're more or less fully submerged as they come in, rubbing along the left side of our boat ... and then another boat squeezes up beside them. So our boat gracefully rolls over on its side, spilling some of us right in!!
Such fun!
We wound up 6th. Not too shabby for first-timers. And it was our 4th race too! We were 4th in our Heat (8 AM, yecch), so had to go to the Repechage, which we won & so then got into the Semi, & the 2nd place there got us into the Final.
Our WNL folks had a great Heat, 2nd place, so went right to the Semi - but in that got bumped off to the wrong side of the first turn marker, had to loop back around it, & thus were too far back to catch one of the first 4 places, so didn't make the Final.
Hmmmm ... lessee here. how's about a sanity check? ... my DB season is all done (after Kelowna), 8+ months of 2-a-week practices, 9 regattas. I'm paddled out, ya' know ... time to take a break!
Oh wait, there's this fun (!!) thing called Longboat, only 1 day, couple of races, weather should still be good ... what the heck ...
Seemed to me like all the Paddle-holics & Usual Suspects from around the Creek had the same thoughts ... and most certainly came home with a similar pile of wet sandy clothes.
We all had a blast!!
Congrats to the Success/LambChops folks on the win. And MANY thanks to the UBC Rec folks who put this on. 270 teams, each with a min of 2 races? Wow! Well done, y'all ...
Dan
