Race Report - Teeside, 14th June 2008
or "What an Eventful Day" by Captain "Duracell" Corr

The Runners and Riders

Premier Teams	Standard Teams
Bristol Empire Dragons Thames Taniwhas Three River Serpents Amathus DBC Amathus Bees Thames Raging Dragons Typhoon Tigers	Notts Anaconda Cool Runnings Powerhouse Powerhouse II Pershore Pheonix Pool Of Life

The Report

Friday 13th June, meet up a Stu's and Ian’s, a challenge in itself due to the heavy traffic on our wonderfully swollen motorway system.
We had a picnic lunch made by Candy’s fair hands with the extra benefit of race conditioning Cider and wine, all this at the great value of £10 each towards the club funds (which was loaned out to some Taxi drivers later)

We eventually get to Teesside just after midnight (Yeah it is race day 14th June already) thanks to Scots smooth minibus handling.

200 metres racing

The crew is feeling strong and is working together as a well-oiled machine, plus there is fun and laughter to be had off the water. Our first races pass with out to much problem, apart from the fact that the 200 metre course seemed to be about 300 metres long, the finish line was kinkier than Dells warped mind so it was really hard to judge where the finish was and who was the winner, hence we just kept paddling until the hooter went off. Fortunately Matt called a halt after about twenty metres past the line, as there was no hooter, else we would have been in the City Centre.

We managed to get through to a three boat race Major final, pipped at the post by Typhoon Tigers proving to be worthy rivals and with Amathus (we will beat them one day) winning.

We finish third, only the second time we have achieved this great result.

500 metres

Funny enough the start line only seemed to be about 100 metres from the 200 start, hey ho.
This time we had some much harder battles, one with “Cool Runnings” giving us a really good battle down the course, we managed to loose them nearer the line, but these guys look like they are going to be strong competition.
We made the Major final, this guaranteed us third place, and our best ever result in the 500m with some very respectable times. Quite emotional for the crew, happy days.

The final was memorable

Half way down the course with Amathus in front and Typhoon Tigers giving us another run for our money we had a battle with some yellow buoys, with paddlers on both sides losing stokes and even losing grip of their paddles, but the team held together well, we were then at the back by a long way. Bristol then put on the greatest hardest spurt, all controlled aggression what a performance, Typhoon Tigers had to keep pushing really hard to stop us from catching and what a good job they did.
Third place but no shame.
Well done Bristol what a team.

Now the journey home

Happy as pigs in xxit, we stopped at a supermarket to gather celebration fuel for the paddlers and diesel for the minibus; I think we ended up with more litres of alcohol than diesel.

Singing away to “we are the champions” and waving our trophies we were having to sing louder and louder but in end we couldn’t drown out the funny noise coming from the back of the bus, pulling over about 10 miles out of Teesside to find a punctured tyre, and discover that the mini bus hasn’t got a spare.

The nice man from the AA said that they don’t cover for people with no spares but was kind enough to help us sort the situation, for a fee!  After many phone calls and decisions, a rescue plan was given as follows;

• Collect the minibus and all of us;
• Transport us all to Preston (the other side of the world) so that a new tyre could be fitted.

So we sat in our scenic lay-by, we had a delightful picnic with wine beer and cider (we had no danger of starving), played some very silly games (I didn’t like the spoon and fork game, it made my head hurt). The toilet facilities were extremely large airy and open with some great plant life, such as trees and wheat.

Just before dark we set off in three taxis and a recovery vehicle for Preston, 2 hours away.

A beautiful drive through the Yorkshire moors, past Ilkley, one of the taxi drivers was obviously related to Burt Reynolds as he thought he was participating in the Canon Ball Run, with some very hairy blind bend overtaking.   We offer him more money to slow down and get us there in one piece but he sees this as a challenge and drives faster!!!

We arrive at our destination with two of the Taxis only beating the recovery truck by about 10 minutes, apparently the driver was Burt Reynolds and he was taking part in the canon ball run.  The third taxi found another Lancaster Road in Preston, I gather this one was very scenic, full of very young, scantily dressed females (but despite the detailed descriptions, apparently Bill and Ian said they weren’t looking), arrived shortly after the recovery truck!  This Taxi journey set us back a mere £600 was there a tip – yes, make sure you have a spare wheel!!

After such a boring journey, Heather decided to liven up the party by skydiving from the rescue truck down to the tarmac floor and lay there like the chalk around dead people that they show in the detective films, she was okay though as she said “she has only hit her head” lets hope that it hasn’t effected her brain power as this lady has just managed to attain a first degree.

Of course the garage was shut, but the New Holly Inn across the road was still openish!  We crash in the lounge and the staff are quite happy to stay open after hearing about our escapade.  After a short 40 minute wait we had our knight in a shiny van turn up to perform the 25 minute repair to the bus.

After travelling 100 miles across the country we found that we had actually only gone 28 miles south in 7 hours!! - We were on our way at last.

There wasn’t much singing going on now as it had just turned 1am, 15th June.  Scott now also known as “The Legend II OBE”, again did an astounding job of transporting us all back to the pick up points. I managed to get home by 5am Sunday, anyone up for training today Fxxxxxxxxf!!!!!

The Bristol Empire Dragons' Boat

Drummer	Alicia - from Powerhouse
Crew	Left Side	Right Side
	Del (Coach)	Shaw
	Candy	Ian
	Pam	Gary (Captain)
	Chris W	Simon
	Chris R	Bob
	Heather	Scott
	Ginette	Janet
	Ben C	Rob
	Bharti	Stuart
	Ben E
Helm	Matt Hodgson
Team Manager	Shaw Beattie

Results of the 500 meters

Premier	Crew	Points	Position Overall on the Day
1st	Amathus DBC	16	1st
2nd	Typhoon Tigers	15	2nd
3rd	Bristol Empire Dragons	14	3rd
4th	Thames Raging Dragons	13	4th
5th	Thames Taniwhas	12	5th
6th	Three River Serpents	11	6th
7th	Amathus Bees	10	7th

Standard	Crew	Points	Position Overall on the Day
1st	Cool Runnings	16	8th
2nd	Notts Anaconda	15	11th
3rd	Pershore Pheonix	14	12th
4th	Pool Of Life	13	13th