No Rest for the Wicked

We had dragon boat practice a couple of days after the racing. No time to pat ourselves on the back.  This is the time to work on all the faults our coach observed on Saturday. We have three weeks to the Wellington Regatta. We aren't reaching enough, we are flaring our paddles too much, we are arm pulling and not using enough top arm. Its a tough business being a dragon boater...

Actually, that's what everyone else got told. Though I am sure I am committing all those sins as well, I was not in our boat tonight. We had a good muster turn up and not everyone could fit so I volunteered to go in another boat that was short of a paddler.

This lot are in the social grade and are not quite as serious as us. They talked in the boat. No wonder they were all over the show with their timing. The blokes were keen to up the rating which led to a Mexican waving of paddles as others tried to keep in time with the the drummer's counting. This led to a clashing of paddles at times, and much hilarity.

 They made the same errors as my team. They dropped their inside arm into the boat causing the paddles to flare. Their timing was way worse than ours. They needed to increase their reach, stop looking at their paddles and focus on their diagonals. The sweep took us a bit close to the Eastbourne ferry and we got a warning from the rescue boat that has to be out with us when we practice. We practised paddling with our eyes closed to help timing. We almost collided with another dragon boat. 

All in all a good time was had by all. I said goodbye to my new friends.

The weather was mellow and Wellington was in a good mood.