Update Finally!

I'm so sorry for the lack of updates to my blog!  My brilliant idea of keeping a blog of our trip to HK was hindered by the fact that there was no free Wi-Fi at the Panda Hotel.  I'm going to give you a quickie update of what happened this past week:

Hong Kong was hit by a Level 3 typhoon shortly after we arrived.  As a result, our scheduled practice on Thursday was cancelled and the regatta schedule was adjusted from a 3 day festival to a 2 day festival.  The arrival of the typhoon caused smoldering, humid weather in HK and an unbelievable amount of rain (more than anything we get in Vancouver - it felt like the sky was seriously going to fall down on us).  We got an extra day to sight-see around Hong Kong but we were getting antsy to get on the water...

We finally got our first practice in the dragon boat Friday afternoon.  It was chaotic because there was a misunderstanding.  We thought that we would be able to get 2 hours of practice time so we could have both mixed crews practice in the first hour and the men's and women's crews practice in the second hour.  Unfortunately, what ended up happening was that the organizers counted our hours on a per dragon boat use basis.  So, when we took out two dragon boats for our mixed teams, the organizers counted the hour long practice as two concurrent hours so we had to rush through the women's and men's practices in the last 15 minutes of our hour.

Paddling in the waters of Victoria Harbour was quite a change from the flat waters of False Creek.  The water stank pretty badly and the salt content was higher than what we were used to so getting splashed stung a lot.  We had to learn to get out of the boat and on top of the blade without compromising the hinge and catch that is characteristic of our team's stroke.  There was quite a bit of hesitation from the paddlers in the boat to trust ourselves to get out on the blade with the boat sliding around back and forth under us.  Due to the wavy conditions, we filled our boats with 18 paddlers, leaving seat 1 empty.  Catherine built two "super bailers" which were much needed since we took on quite a bit of water during our pieces.

While we were waiting for the start of our practice, a bunch of Chinese tourists came around to where we were stationed and started playing with our carbon fibre paddles.  When I went over to see what they were doing, they turned around and started chatting with me.  Then, they grabbed my bicep and said "wow, you Canadian women are so strong!  Look at you, you're so big!!"  Aiya...that is definitely not the way to speak to a delicate flower!