On Saturday, June 10, MEC London participated in the Fanshawe Dragon Boat Festival at Fanshawe Conservation, a fun one-day event designed to promote healthy activity, community spirit, and friendly competition. Sanctioned by Dragon Boat Canada, the event is attended by roughly 1,500 to 2,000 people, with about 65 teams competing. The classifications include business, health, community, breast cancer survivors, juniors, and competitive club teams.
For MEC, it all started with two mandatory practices, where we learned paddles up, ready ready, power on 10, and synchronicity. For these practices, our team sprinted from the store after it closed and somehow gathered up 20 paddlers to get out on the lake – where we belong! Practices went well, but finding a way to balance the boat always seems to be tricky for us! Luckily, with a few dry runs, we were ready for race day!
Captains meeting began at 6:30 am, the MEC tents were set up, as well as chairs, games, music and, of course, our potluck items. A boat of 20 paddlers, one drummer, and one steer person set out for our first race. At 9:00 am in the business division, paddles were up, we readied, and we made it down the 500m course. We placed first with a time of 2:22:89, a personal best! Once everyone finished the first round of races, our ‘place’ was set – fourth out of 65 teams!
In our second race, the weather had changed and a head wind had picked up. It was hard and very close, but we placed second with a time of 2:27:23. This placed us in the Division ‘A’ final, which was quite amazing, really, as MEC only practiced twice in total and were racing against teams who practice twice every week!
The final race had very steep competition. When the race began, MEC felt in sync, and we did the best we could to get down with as much power as possible. In all, we finished fourth with a race time of 2:28:48, which was an improvement against the elite top three teams.
A huge thank you to team Rowbust who organize and volunteer to make the whole Fanshawe Dragon Boat Festival event possible. This was an amazing day for MEC London, and it was a great local team-building event. We can’t wait for next year!
Submitted by Mountain Equipment Co-op
