Cranberry Festival

Despite a constant sprinkle or drizzle of rain, and cool, crisp weather, we headed out to Fort Langley for the Cranberry Festival to race the voyageur canoes. I thought it would kinda be like dragon boating, but boy was I wrong! Here's what I noticed: DB-20paddlers, drummer, steers person versus Voyager-10 paddlers, one of which also steers with a regular paddle, making it very hard to turn..and this race required much turning! DB-straight 500m race versus Voyageur-2 races at 1000m, 1 race at 2000m...all of which required doing laps around buoys in a certain order. Last race included gathering pumpkins, balancing cran. juice and tromping thru water..lol Here's another big difference: DB-boat on boat contact is frowned upon in the least, and can easily get you a time penalty or even DQ'd depending on the severity of the collision versus Voyageurs-if you ain't rubbin'..you ain't racin'! In other words, major collisions are all apart of the race when you're trying to squeeze several voyageurs around 1 buoy. Yep, one crazy day! You can see what the voyageurs look like in the picture below..they're tied up to the dragon boat. I believe that this is the only picture I took out of the ones I posted. All other credit goes to Ryan Kononoff..and a special thanks to him for coming out and spending 4 hours hanging out and taking photos because I asked him to! You rock, Ryan!

Team photo..half Water Warriors, half Pirates = the Pirate Warriors
Start of the first race..we're in the lead! But...
...we hit the first turn and EVERY single boat hit us! Ya, that's us in the middle of it all! You can see my grey hat, yellow shirt, black arms and red pfd. After getting stuck behind them all, we never did get it back and lost the race! lol

Me and my cut forehead..nope, not from racing..that would be a work injury. Yes, unloading the dishwasher can be near fatal...hehe

Just me!

I have no idea why Chels is giggling at the front..somebody said something funny I s'pose!In the lead in our 2nd race! We won that one by a long shot! This is what it looks like going around the corner..Chelsea at the front drawing (pulling water to the boat at a 90 degree angle) and my at the back on the opposite side doing the same. And now my lats and hip flexors are paying for it..ouch!And there's the draw stroke at a closer angle! Ya, I didn't realize I hung out the boat that far! Cool!

Gettin' wet coming across the finish! Poor Adrian..he's the fellow in front of me. He's never dragon boated or paddled or raced..and he came out because we were short a paddler. I can't believe how exhausted and sore we were after racing these extra long races..we trained for 500m races since March and were hurting...poor Adrian..no training and then this! I was impressed he survived!And again..somebody must have said something funny..cuz we're all smiling or laughing! But..we don't remember why..Lining the pumpkins up on the bridge. After the race starts, they toss them off into the water and 10 boats fight for position to get a pumpkin into the boat and continue racing. In our race, we got out quick and clean, but there were 3 boats left behind that crashed and then one crashed into one of the pillars under the bridge..hehe It was a pretty loud bang!

Here we go! All headed for the same pumpkin, I'm sure!Picking up pumpkins and heading for the race course!After the LONG lap past the bridge, we came back to the start, went around a buoy and went to the beach where Chelsea had to jump out, and use her paddle to balance a cup of "cranberry juice" (which turned out to be Fraser River water with red food coloring..hehe) all the way to the lady with the bag of cranberries, take the berries and head back to the boat!

The cup o' juice

Getting back into the boatTrying to get the boat off the sand to keep racing (did I mention that this race was 2km long??)Still trying to power the boat off and get away from the other boats.I love this photo..LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! You can see me and Chels. at the front and the back doing the draw while everyone else paddles forward. We do this so we can pivot the boat around the turns. It's really hard on the body, cuz you're at a funky angle! But, I really love this photo cuz it just looks so cool!

After the turn and back towards the bridge to the finish line.Under the bridge, about 100m to go..After the finish, this is the traffic jam to get off the boats..we're the third in line, if you can see!
Me and Michelle..so photogenic!Chelsea and her pumpkin and Cranberries that she earned!On the bridge and gettin' ready to go warm up in the car! Oh..and ya, that IS a train behind us..there were SO many of them!