When the Dragon Flips: Lowell Water Festival (8/17/19)

Team picture: This must have taken 10 minutes

Event: Lowell Water Festival
Distance: 500m
Times: 2:48 and 2:50

Dave basically jinxed it.  As the A team boat, Cheddah, finished its third race he breathed a sigh of relief and exclaimed, "Well, at least we didn't tip over."

****

Gouda, Qualifying: 2:48
Hours earlier, we started the regatta with some qualifier races.  Aboard the boat Gouda, we were pretty comfortable and confident.  Dave sent us out from the Ryne Beach boathouse and we paddled down past the UMass Boathouse to the 3/4 Hand-off for Mill Cities near the Rourke Bridge.

I guess this is where the race used to start.  Not so this day, the race directors began yelling at us that we'd gone too far.  So we turned back and made our way to the start line.  The other team had a monster take off and we were playing catch up the whole way.  But, still thinking it was 1000m, it didn't worry us because we were pulling them back.  But when the race turned out to be 500m, we just ran out of water to catch them.

We thought our 2:48 would be good enough to make the knock out round.  But both Lester and I discussed that we wished we had known it was only 500m.  I think we could have pushed that boat earlier and won the qualifier.

Cheddah, Qualifying: 3:10

All week Dave had been discussing how hard it would be to steer these Sampans.  While I'm sure we all took it to heart on an intellectual level, Harris probably didn't understand fully until he was doing it.  The two boats came around the bend and Cheddah looked like it was tacking a sailboat into some ridiculous wind. He was pushing it toward the wall and then back and to the middle line and then back to the wall.  Cheddah came in a little ways down.

****
Gouda v Cheddah, Repechage: (Gouda 3:11)

Both Gouda and Cheddah were forced into the repechage.  And then they learned we had to race against each other.  Dave and Harris quickly huddled.  They rearranged the teams with the more experienced paddlers moving into Cheddah and the rest of us into Gouda.

Cheddah had the better boat and the better lane.  Match that with the better paddlers and Cheddah crushed us.  On the plus side, Harris - who had moved to our captain - was much more comfortable steering.  We went straight.

****
Cheddah, Quarterfinals

Cheddah went out in the quarters against the highest ranked qualifier and it looked it.  The rival boat clipped across the inside lane and rolled its way into the finals.

Cheddah finished strong with its head high and then Dave uttered the fateful words.... "At least we didn't flip over"

And Cheddah flips over

That's not the boat you left the shore aboard....

It was a nice day.  I had some awesome Teriyaki and sticky rice.