OC6 Summer With Shakabuku

This summer the Shakabuku OC6 team has been mostly focusing on open water, long distance paddling. Venturing out of English Bay into the Burrard Inlet and circling the tankers around Jericho Beach has become a regular practice run.

We therefore thought competing in the 500m sprints at the North Vancouver OC6 Regtta would be a proverbial walking the park – Cates Park. It however turned out to be tougher undertaking than what we had expected.

This was mostly because we were no longer accustomed to the dragon boat-style short-distance racing. By the time other teams were looking at finishing the race at around the 400m mark, we were just starting to get going and steadily gaining on the competition. So, in longer (1k to 2k) races we would have been serious contenders. None the less, our best time of 2:24 was fairly respectable when compared to the fastest run time of 2:17 by one of the top local OC6 teams.

Deep Cove Classic Regatta, 2012

This summer I started rowing at the Vancouver Rowing Club (VRC) as part of their LTR (Learn To Row) program.

The four months of rowing at VRC starting in April and  ending in July made for an extremely exciting learning experience.  During this time I worked with some really great VRC coaches and staff who went out of their way to make me feel at home at the club.  In addition, I was fortunate enough to have also met some great people that enrolled into the LTR program, with some of whom I now share a strong passion for rowing.

As we all now eagerly await to be inducted as full fledged novice members of VRC, some of us have taken the initiative of rowing at the Deep Cove Rowing Club (DCRC) through their drop-in program.  This introduced us to new dynamics of long-distance rowing in much more challenging waters in terms of being choppy and riddled with waves from boat-traffic.

To our excitement and complete surprise, and thanks to a personal favor from a good friend, we were graciously given a boat to test our mettle at the Deep Cove Classic Regatta.  With only two weeks to prepare for the regatta and after putting in some focused training time, I was extremely disappointed to not be able to compete  as a result of a shoulder injury.  However, I was just as excited to witness my crew pit their rowing skills against some far more experienced rowers.

On September 30, 2012 my crew raced in the mixed 4x division under the DCRC colours and achieved some very respectable results.  In the head-race around Jug Island we completed the 5.5K course in 24:06 minutes compared to the 20:40 minutes fastest time.  In the 500m dash we raced against the veteran masters crew from VRC.  Although official times for this heat were not release, we completed the course barely 2 seconds behind the VRC masters.

Kudos to my crew for achieving these great results and many thanks to DCRC for letting us race under their colours.

FLCC River Run 2012

After practising over the winter, this was my first test of steel paddling in an OC6 race. Needless to say, I was not really sure how we would fair in this 8 km loop around Macmillan/Brae island, on the scenic Fraser River.

So, it was much to my surprise when we did not only finish strong; we completed the course in a very respectable time of 49:07:78. Rummer has it that we won second place in men novice division. Congratulations Rob’s Rebels!