Putting the Boats up

Last Saturday, Robin, Muriel, Tony and Walter were part of a dragon boat program work party that hauled out the A boat and scraped and cleaned it. Today Marie-Eve, Nina, Jane, Claude, Art, Chark, Harold and Tony were part of much larger party that carried the A boat to the compound, pulled the B boat, turned it over (it's a heavy brute) washed it and carried it to the compound. The work was well coordinated by program leaders Mike Fox and by the club's go-to guys, Dale and Doug. Everyone walked away dirty and wet, but whole and healthy.

The boats were not in good shape - both showed signs of close encounters with rocks and other damage, which was discussed at a what amounted to an informal meeting of the VCKC Dragon boat program. Mike has some ideas about a committee involving all the teams to discuss care of the boats, training the steer-persons for all boats and promoting and training some coaches.

There are some people in the program who think that in the future novice paddlers should practice and race as a novice team and then be recruited into the established teams. Some established teams lose members every year, but they don't want to take novices into their team.

Loco Motion isn't impressed with this idea on a retroactive basis, and we saw some doubts about whether the bonding of a new team could be prevented or legislated. Our experience was that we fell into the routine of practicing together and discovered our strengths as part of a team.

Some team members had been paddling OC-6 outriggers before joining Loco Motion - Jane, Fiona, Muriel. As the dragon boat season wound up, Raymond, Tony and Marie-Eve seem to have found places on the spare list for some of the Club's OC-6 rosters, and many are becoming more active in the canoe and kayak programs, and positive about taking an active role in the Club's volunteer programs and club governance.

Windup

Our social director Raymond was the host for our windup Saturday evening (yesterday). He has a large yard, and he had a net for badminton and volleyball, and a fire pit. We had good weather, and were able to eat, socialize and play outside. Most of the team were able to make it, and our coaches and their helpers and spouses. Some of us are talented at other sports, and everyone was enthusiastic.

Everyone on the team was able to make something interesting and tasty - we had a variety of schools of cuisine represented.

We have to give the accolades to Walter for his Tiramisu. Walter comes to the kitchen with an advantage though - he used to be a professional chef.

We have some consensus that we should stay together, make sure we support the Club and paddle as a team next year. This is amazing. We started as strangers, and our personal styles and interests are diverse - but over a couple of weeks we got to know each other and we see the potential in this team and in each other to set new goals, and to paddle together next year.