Vaka Eiva Muri Sprints

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So the way the Vaka Eiva worked is you had the Opening Ceremony, the Iron Races the next day, a day off, Sprints, a day off, and then the Round Raro. On the off days the juniors and stuff had races too I guess. I forget when the Singles were. Anyways, this was the Sprints day, which was a pretty jokey day and basically an excuse for a party.

Ngakau Toa raced two boats that day in the Sprints, which we never practiced for. I was actually pretty disappointed about it because it was blatantly clear that my team didn't care at all, especially when almost no one showed up. Despite that, we did get on the water and tried to do a race we had never practiced for. In both races, an A and a B boat, we got disqualified for taking the turn too tight. I was in the B boat and was stroking, which I had never done for a sprint race. I think I set a decent stroke rate but I wasn't used to paddling that fast so I got burned out kinda quickly. And I had never practiced doing a turn, so our getting DQ'ed there was probably my fault a bit. But it wouldn't have mattered, we did pretty horrible anyways. For your reference, I think the sprint was 500m or so, on a 250 course. So you go to a buoy, spin, and come back. Pretty full on.

After the races ended there was a series of fun events, like a fly the ama competition (ama is a name for the outrigger) and a chug and paddle without paddle things. That's what I think these pictures are of.

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