Tonight, I came home with my underwear in a bag, drenched, a cut on my knee and a bruise on my head. I very likely have also contracted some nasty disease like hepatitis or TB.
No, I was not a participant in an orgy at a fire station. My present dilapidated condition is the result of a charity event.
Every year, my company puts on a dragon boat race. A dragon boat is a vessel of Chinese origin, more a long board with sides than a boat, into which 16 inexperienced people who've been drinking beer for an hour or so stuff themselves and attempt to row as quickly as possible. The 'dragon' is a carved wooden dragon head and tail affixed loosely to either end of the boat. Given the narrowness of the craft, good weight distribution is, self-evidently, an critical success factor. Apparently our helmsman, purportedly an experienced, well-qualified dragon boat master, forgot one simple yet vital rule: you don't put all the fat bastards on the same side of the boat.
In hindsight, I suppose we should have realized this ourselves, given that our boat, when loaded, was roughly 4 centimeters off the water and listing unnervingly to the left, but by then it was too late. You can't really change positions in a dragon boat. You stay where you are. In fact, we were doing fine until, after rowing to the middle of the dock, our helmsman thought it would be a good idea to have us all bring our oars into the boat and practice some unusual exercise involving leaning forward and back rapidly. The boat, having no ballast other than the water it had taken on during previous races, did not respond well to this.
Normally, when sitting still, the entire crew lay their paddles flat on the water on either side of the boat to steady it. In our case, all the oars were inside the boat. The absence of any sort of stabilization, combined with the oversupply of fatties on the port side and the rocking motion caused by 16 people moving back and forth in a random, drunken fashion was enough to send the boat keel over gunwale (or whatever stupid boating expression would be appropriate to describe capsizing the damn thing).
If you've never made an unexpected exit from a low-sided canoe with 15 other people, let me say, I don't recommend it. Despite wearing a life vest and being a reasonably good swimmer, the unexpected plunge into the chilly water of the Millwall Dock, along with the effect of having numerous arms and legs churning the water around you, makes it very difficult to find your way up to the surface in any reasonable time. I'd strongly advise keeping a lungful of air handy at all times, since, once you're in the water, It's really too late to get one.
On being ungracefully dumped into the reeking Thames (it's slightly salty) and being kicked in the head several times, I managed to find which way was up and swam in that direction until my head met with the boat in a relatively unpleasant manner. At this point, I was unsure where I was relative to the boat and swam left. This direction, unfortunately, took me further under the boat, and by the time I realized this, I felt that I was nearly out of air.
Obviously, I did make it to the surface (else this would be a very short post indeed), and the whole ordeal probably lasted less than five seconds. I didn't see my life play itself out, I didn't see any bright lights, no angels or long-dead relatives came down the path of golden light to take me home.
You'd think that a traumatic experience such as this would warrant blankets and a nice hot cup of tea. Not so at the dragon boat race. You get schlepped back to shore by a guy in a motorboat (once he can be bothered to show up) and then yelled at because you're taking too long to help bail out the boat. Then you get back in and do it all over again. We came in fifth overall, which is not too bad considering we were cold and wet and miserable for the rest of the night.
It was great fun and I'll do it again next year. But now I really need a shower.
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