Pool of Life News 2009
West Kirby Marina Have a go day
It was an early morning start in order to be at West Kirby Marina by 10am and the weather wasn’t looking too good – the usual grey skies and rain!
The Pool of Life had been invited as guests to give a demonstration of paddling a dragon boat and this also offered an opportunity for a recruiting exercise.
The West Kirby Sailing Club was founded in 1901 and is now one of the largest sailing clubs in the UK.
Blue skies greeted us as we arrived in West Kirby and our boat “Hope” had arrived with Dave B. Off the trailer and onto the water with her head, tail and drum she soon became the attraction for many of the visitors!
We proceeded to erect our gazebo so that we could sell our cakes and merchandise as well as to raise the team’s profile. Ali, once again, did a brilliant job selling our goodies as well as putting her PR skills into operation!
The day’s proceedings began with the official opening by the Mayor at 11am. Everyone was taken unaware when the maroon went off and we all nearly jumped out of our skins! Poor Roxy, Dave and Anne’s dog, tried to take off but fortunately Dave managed to hold him when a second loud bang happened! Roxy, not liking loud bangs, was now trembling and everyone was trying to pacify her just hoping there were going to be no more!
During the day, demonstrations were being given on sailing the many different types of sailing boats. There were small yachts called Illusion OD, these being a scaled down version of the 12ft “Lionheart”. They were single handed keel boats in miniature bobbing about on the water as if no-one was sailing them, until you saw a head just popping up out of the boat!
Tiny remote controlled yachts were skimming across the water – here, at least, you had your feet on dry land!!
Power boat rides were available, however, for the more adventurous!
An announcement was made over the loud speaker to tell everyone there would be a demonstration by the Pool of Life. The dragon boat attracted much interest and, after the demonstration, the Pool of Life paddlers took out eight different novice crews so they could experience a 200m race. To make this more interesting, each team was timed and the winning crew was .......... in a time of ........ The teams had given themselves names such as Stars, All Stars, Sheilas’ Wheels (an all ladies team), Sea Cadets 1 and Sea Cadets 2! However, for their first time in a dragon boat everyone did extremely well and certainly enjoyed the experience!!
Visitors to the tent asking for more details about the Pool of Life and dragon boating kept Ali very busy and by the end of the day she had her spiel down to a fine art!!
Everyone had a brilliant day with the Pool of Life looking forward to being able to do it all again!
We would like to thank the WKSC for making us so welcome and to the Amathus DBC paddlers who again joined us on this “fun” day. Also thank you to Dave and Barbara for their help in making the day possible.
The day may have started off with grey skies but they soon vanished leaving memories of a happy, sunny and successful day!!
Happy Paddling!
Big G