1/14 & 1/15 - A weekend of paddling

This weekend was all about paddling - practice on Saturday was a 10km upwinder (boo!) from East Freo to Mount's Bay to drop off our canoe for Sunday's race.  I steered and we ran pretty well with Christine in 5 seat running the boat.  We fought the wind the whole way though which wasn't great.

Sunday was the Mandurah Duel Race - 14km 'downwind'... we had a mixed crew with 4 girls and 2 guys.  I sat in seat 5 and it was a hard race - though it shouldn't have been.  We popped the ama more times than I can even remember because we were sliding off waves/ being spun... this I personally feel had a lot to do with the trust of our steers.  From my experience steering I'd come over to the left when I knew seat 6 would want to poke right though she didn't - she tried most of the race to steer through a static draw which didn't work well at all - especially if it was a stroke late.  I admit, I was a bad seat 5 in that a few times (when I was sick of trying to get the ama back down) I did a few draws on the left to help us stop spinning - so that made it hard.  I got my payback for making JD paddle most of the Raro race on the left... haha.

Since it was my first race in Australia, rather than focus on the frustration I felt for most of the race I'll outline things I learned during the day...

-I still remember how to ratchet rig (so sweet)
-and I'm queen of getting impossible skirts onto the canoe
-with a brief refresher I can rope rig an ama
-my OC1 skills of bracing on the right when the ama pops also instinctively come through in the six-man
-there is no such thing as enough sunscreen
-static drawing in quartering waves is ineffective
-you can mentally tough anything out if you try hard enough
-I still crave burgers after a race
-the ocean is very salty
-it always makes sense to follow the home crew - they know the water best
-the paddling world is very small - note this conversation with a stranger as we were de-rigging:

him: Are you that Canadian girl that paddles with Fremantle?
me: Yes
him: that raced Vaka Eiva?
me: Yes (now starting to look at him suspiciously)
him: I know Karren...
and then it all made sense - I raced with Karren in the change race - on the North Queensland crew...

I'm sure there's more but for now that's all I can remember... and while frustrating I know it can only get better... and besides, at least I wasn't paddling in the SNOW like my favorites back home racing in the PNWORCA Winter Series...  I'll take 30 degree weather over that any day even though I miss them tons!