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- By Lachie Kirkpatrick
I joined Tuakau District Sea Scouts just a few months ago.
When I first started rowing it was hard and tiring, but now it is easy and I don’t get tired as
quickly.
The River Row was a bit of a challenge for everyone. The wind was unpredictable, the rain came out of nowhere, and you were lucky to end up with less than four blisters at the end of the day.
Overall it was a fun experience, and I enjoyed every bit.
Ngāruawāhia was where we started. I was in the cutter 421 AKA Plastic Fantastic, we rowed down to Huntly to have lunch where the view of the Huntly Power Station was perfect. Then we rowed down to a field at Ohinewai where we set up camp for the night.
First, we set up the tents, then unloaded all of our gear that was sent in a trailer down to the field where we were camping. We set up our beds, played games around the field, and had chicken curry with rice and naan bread. Finally, we had a game of spotlight and then went to bed.
On day two we got up from bed and packed up ready for the day. We put our gear that we didn’t need for the day into the gear trailer. Then we had breakfast which was porridge or rice bubbles.
The day was pretty uneventful except for the downpour that came at about 1pm out of nowhere.
Other than that we just continued rowing until we reached our campsite near the Meremere Dragway. Our campsite, however, was half flooded! We had to set up our tents behind the flood barriers.
On our final day we had the same breakfast as before and before I knew it, we were off and just around the bend of home!
Our boat (421) and the other Tuakau Districts Sea Scouts boat (228) were racing each other down the final straight, when we were told to form a single file line. We had to go behind 228, so they won the race and got to the boat ramp first.
