On the 15th of March the Year 7 and 8’s went to the Manukau Outrigger Canoe Club to have a go at canoeing.
When we all got off the bus and sat down near their garage we made teams of 5. The coaches taught us how to use the paddles and what to expect in the wkak. We all walked down to the canoes and got to our positions.
We started paddling, it was pretty fun until after 5 minutes and my hands were hurting like crazy. I hit my hands on the canoe by accident slamming them with the paddle. The salty water got into my eyes, just everything was hurting. Our coach told us to not paddle any more, have a break and enjoy the sea. He talk about the back story of the area. It was a nice time just chilling out from all the paddling and looking at the beautiful sea. It was only for 5 minutes UNTIL WE RACED THE OTHER TEAM. We had a lot of strong people on our team and they have mostly girls but the thing is we didn’t HAVE ANY COORDINATION while the team we were racing against were counting every time they paddled. They were incredibly in sync while we are off time. Our coach didn’t say anything but it ended in a tie cause our brute strength still kinda worked.
After that the second race happened it was basically the first race but we were extra tired as we didn’t get a break after, and we lost to be fair they had better paddles with wood and a better canoe I’m just trying to make an excuse for why we lost. Then 1 minute after the race, the third race we used our hands which we actually won cause we had a lot of boy’s on our team with big hands.
After we got back to the shore our coach immediately chose me to get off cause I looked the most tired and the others who were tired I wasn’t even mad…I was tired. When they were all done canoeing we got the canoes back in their garage, changed, ate our morning tea and got to the bus to go school safely. It was a good experience I do want to learn more and I can’t get more excited when we go again in Term 2.