GEMMA'S EXCELLENT DRAGON BOAT ADVENTURE

Another Navy Chicken Run dragon boat fun day is in the books. I don't know how we did (we'll have to wait, I guess, until someone forwards the results, and then I'll add that in here; editor's note—we finished 7th out of 18 teams). It was going to be too long a day to leave Gemma crated at home, so since this wasn't an official festival type of event, Gemma came along to see what dragon boating was all about. As usual, she was a hit with everyone who saw her, and she made friends with paddlers from many different teams.

For our first race, Gemma stayed curled up in her crate, as this race was a relatively short one. An A to B race, with several twists. The Navy folk sure put their devious minds to work to come up with this variation on a short sprint. Normal paddling to first buoy; all paddlers turn around and backpaddle to second buoy; all paddlers swap paddles with their seat partners and turn the paddles upside down and backpaddle to the third buoy (this was obviously the slowest part of the race); then all paddlers turn back around to face front, flip their paddles back to the normal, blades-down position and paddle like mad to the finish line. For bonus points, you could do a 360-degree turn between the last buoy and the finish line, but we opted not to do that.

The second race was the "stations" race, which puts you out on the water for an hour, paddling to eight different stations to perform a variety of bizarre tasks or mental challenges. This is the race that Gemma got to go out in the boat with us, as assistant drummer. I had been delegated the task of drummer for the day; I really need to develop a drummer's voice, however, as I really didn't have the pipes for everyone to hear me down the length of the boat. That would take much more practice! Gemma adapted well to the movement of the boat, and once she figured out how to brace herself, looked like she was having a fine time.

Assistant Drummer at work.

The third race was a manouvering race, and Gemma was once again relagated to her crate for this one. But Sheila put in an appearance and immediately went to retrieve the little girl, so Gemma got to watch the race from the dock with Sheila. Mind you, she was much more interested in the Purple martins that were whizzing around the birdhouses on the dock than what was going on out on the water.

After a day of much socializing and sun. she crashed happily when she got home, after telling all her canine buddies about her exciting day. You can see more photos of the day at my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26205675@N07/ .