Day 2

Page 1

Anyone familiar with just how fast weather conditions can change in the mountains will understand when on Saturday 8th September, the relaxing calm of the previous evening where temperatures languished up in the 70’s after the sun had set, had somehow been exchanged overnight into a fiercely cold gale with slicing winds that took everyone by surprise.

For the ESCA team, this was perhaps one of their worst nightmares and standing on the beach in the morning, the team looked on in concern as waves whipped up by the relentless winds rushing across the nine kilometre long lake crashed heavily on to the beach. Booked to run an event “in the safest and most professional environment”, it soon became time for our Dragon Boat Events Ltd. team to prove just how good we really were!

The dragon boats used on the day were supplied by a team from dragonboatevents Switzerland (no relation) who had travelled around four hours from Zurich to the Lac de Joux. In terms of skill and ability, the Swiss team (made up of three boys and three girls, all in their late twenties and early thirties) were very good but, having only paddled club and corporate teams had little experience working with novice crews in rough conditions. Despite that, they soon proved to be very capable helms and with the exception of the first race, were able to tackle the tough conditions with ease.

During the early races, expert kite surfers could be seen on the lake, zipping to and fro across the water as they tackled the strong winds.

The first race proved to be a steep learning curve for the Swiss helms who loaded their boats in normal race mode (ie, with the crew evenly spread throughout the boat). Normally this is the correct way of loading a dragon, but in rougher conditions it is advisable to have the crews sat further back so the nose of the dragon is kept up more.

Poor Andrea in her first race found that once out in the lake and away from the protection of the shore, waves were able to slosh over the front of her boat soaking the crew. When three large waves came together ... she took on so much water sank – much to the delight of her Cargill crew who for some strange reason, thought this was just fantastic!

For the event team on the shore though, this was not a good omen. Capsizes we can deal with, but conditions that cause boats to swamp are far more of a challenge. Processing twenty nine novice teams safely and making sure each team gets three races in conditions far from ideal ... this could end up being a very long day!

As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. The Swiss helms were all exceptionally good and quickly made the necessary adjustments when loading their next teams, making sure the crews sat well to the back.

Whilst not the best position as the dragon's raised head is more likely to catch the wind and make steering more difficult (dragon boats work best when level in the water), but given the conditions out on the lake that day it worked alright.

So as it turned out this was the only sinking of the day. Their style of racing and eventing was very similar to ours so after emptying out the one sunken dragon, things started to move much more slickly.