Windemere Paddlers for Life Regatta
- Sally Haydock
- Sep 21, 2015
- 1 min read
On a miserably wet Saturday in early September a group of paddlers from Port Edgar travelled down to the Lake District to take part in the second Windermere Paddlers for Life Regatta and to attend the Northwest Cancer Survivorship Conference.
Unfortunately because the bad weather made travelling slow we missed all but the last talk of the conference, however this was an inspirational talk by Jenny Yule from the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission who has been involved in Dragonboat paddling since the very beginning of its role after cancer treatment and continues to paddle regularly twenty years on!!
Fortunately by Sunday the weather had improved and the shores of Low Wood Bay were taken over by a cheery crowd of enthusiastic paddlers and their supporters and we met the wonderfully friendly Manchester Paddlers for Life to make up our joint team.
After one of the longest warmups ever the races started. We were glad not to be in the first heat – we needed to catch our breath after the warmup!!
The first race was enlivened by one of the three boats coming very close to sinking! Fortunately the rescue boats were ready and supported the stricken dragon while the slightly overenthusiastic crew set to work bailing out the water!!
The next few hours were spent racing, sunbathing, chatting and admiring the very inventive costumes worn by many of the teams.
While we were unable to repeat the success of last year’s competition we came a very respectable 6th out of 16 teams and, more importantly, we all had a fantastic time!!!
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