| 6 April 2014: Samsung 57th Festival of Sport - Dragon Boat Competition |
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Life in the Navy is great - you get to travel to exotic locations (Sha Tin), hang out by the beach (Shing Mun river) and bask in the warm sunshine ("Mainly cloudy. Occasional rain with a few squally thunderstorms. Fresh easterly winds, strong offshore.") In return, all you have to do is paddle for two minutes.
This includes fuel testing, of course, hence with a case of our 2014 Singha fuel in tow we made our way to the Shing Mun river to set-up base. But the more important testing was to give our new recruits - and there are quite a few of them this year - a chance at competitive racing before we head into the 'season proper'.
Thus we submitted a crew that included most of our new recruits, mixed in with some old hands to ensure some experience in the boat.
We were in lane 4, next to Stormies in lane 3 and Lamma in lane 2. Initial analysis of rather fuzzy and blurry video footage seems to indicate that the timing on the Navy boat was somewhat disjointed and stroke length getting shorter. We did improve towards the finish, but by then Stormies and Lamma were ahead pushing for the line. Another third and it was game over.
We didn't really mind packing up as the drizzle turned into full-on rain and while we may not have left as Champions of Sha Tin, it was all part of a wider plan for an exciting season of racing still ahead of us.
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Yes, the Sha Tin small boat race, or more formally known as the Samsung 57th Festival of Sport - Dragon Boat Competition, is not exactly our favourite venue of the season and neither are the results of this race really important to us. But being the first event on the calendar relatively early in the season, it allows us to do some competitive testing.
The rules of the Repechage were crystal clear ("The 1st placed crew in each Repechage will go to the Semi Final, the rest of the crews will be ELIMINATED.") and so was obviously our objective. We swapped four of our Newbies for another four, warmed up in the increasingly cooler and wetter weather and lined up for another ID check.
