After a night of heavy rain, the morning was surprisingly mild but the waters were still on yellow and the rivers were still rising.

After we get the ok, we loaded the boats and were the 4th to leave in the staggered starts.  We pushed through the first stretch down the river and overtook the 3rd place and pushed towards the first corner.

We went wide and took to the corner close with a photographer boat on the exit of the turn (I hope the shots were worth it).  We started to push towards 2nd place and after overtaking them, we were faced with a row boat sitting over the bank side which we were trying to race on. We started to gain on the last boat up front and tried to gain a boats length for that all important last corner.  We took the outside and trying to gain the advantage, but they fought back and we ended up taking a wide corner and ended up push to overtake them towards the finish line.  After our final effort, we crossed the line and finished... It was an awesome effort, with a mixture of Batworth and Typhoon paddlers, the majority of the boat having been on or tasted the training of a GB boat.

Unfortunately, the results didnt reflect the results we had expected.

1 Rafters DBC 30:45
2 Amathus Dragons 30:57
3 Kingston Royals 31:47
4 BA Hurricanes 31:54
5 Bristol Empire Dragons 32:21
6 Batchworth Typhoons 32:26
7 Henley Dragons 33:17
8 Secklow 100 34:15
9 Wraysbury Dragons 34:41
10 Amathus Bees 36:33
11 Raging Taniwhas 38:05

We didnt expect the staggered started to be so varied, but even we didnt take what we had hoped, we did take a great days worth of racing with us and at last, we finally raced the Batchworth/ Typhoon hybrid boat that we had hoped to race back in November 2008.  Bring on Henley IV.

Dan