The last two weekends I spent the Sunday at a canal or lake, reading my book, biding my time and, oh yes, racing a few races.
I’m a member (as of yet still unpaid) of the first Dutch dragonboat club (Eerste Hollandse Drakenboot Club EHDC). Ours is the oldest and also a very small club. It’s a very mixed company and at the moment I am the youngest member. The oldest member is somewhere around 70 years old. Our club is now so small, we have trouble finding enough people to paddle in contests. Last year that was the reason we missed most of the contests and therefore didn’t really compete.
We still don’t really compete. It’s not only a lack of people, but also a lack of training that’s breaking us up. I must admit, I’m definitely not the most motivated member. Especially in weather like yesterday’s. It was just that bit too windy and cold to make it enjoyable. At the start of the day we weren’t even sure if we were going to race. In the end we were, after scrabbling together people from other teams who were willing to join in our boat. In the end we didn’t do too bad.
Times yesterday were very strange. It turned out the water sucked the boats which made racing tough. It also turned out the lanes were shallow and uneven influencing the races. The boats were real slow needing more than 1 minute to finish. Normal times for 200 meter races are around 55 seconds.
It was not a very exciting day for me. I found my book about Queen Sophie much more interesting. That’s also what I remember from yesterday; reading about Queen Sophie and eating pasta. And it was cold and unpleasant.
That’s probably the reason I never really post about dragonboating.
This is our website: http://www.ehdc.nl/
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