Peterborough Festival 2023 – June 10th

We all arrived the night before, and the majority of us gathered at Fleming College, and a gang went out for supper at Kelsey’s. We were initially going to be 23 strong in the boat, but circumstances had us drop to 20 strong in the boat, plus Huw as our steer and Sarah in the drum seat. We were introduced to our new mascot (yet to be named – suggestions welcomed).

The morning of June 10th the air was fresh, the skies were clear and Little Lake was calm and the dragons were awakened for the races of the day.

As a BCS (breast cancer survivor) team, we raced two races in the morning in order to qualify for the MacKenzie Cup Challenge and our times also placed us in the Open Women’s Division for the afternoon slate of races. There were 6 BCS teams in attendance: Survivors Abreast – Courage & Survivors Abreast – Spirit (from Peterborough), Pink Crusaders (from ), Barrie’s Ribbons of Hope, Prior Chestnuts (from Arnprior) and Chestmates Kingston. There were 4 other crews making up the Open Women’s Division for a total of 10 boats.

We knew going into the MacKenzie Cup qualifying heats that our competition was strong.  

Only 2 seconds separated the first 3 bcs crews.

There were two BCS qualifying heats to earn a spot in the MacKenzie Cup Breast Cancer Survivors final. We knew going into our Heat that the first two teams across the finish line from each Heat earned a spot in the MacKenzie Cup final race.  We won our Heat and were really pumped, because we had made our sought after goal from the evening before when we all stated “let’s make into the MacKenzie Cup final”.

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Our time of 1:27.07 was fastest of all 6 BCS crews, but because we stayed on the water after our Heat we did not know our time with respect to the other BCS crews – all we knew was we made it into the final and we had to turn around head back to the start time and race again in the Final.

From my perspective in the drummer’s seat – I knew our Chestmates crew had it in them to paddle hard – our motto for each race was “5% more, just give 5% more power” and we were paddling for Christine and all the other members of Chestmates. We were “READY READY”!

At the start line were heard “All boats hold, attention please, ready ready, go”.  

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Our new start of 12 strokes then POWER NOW had use in 3rd place, but then we just kept adding power, and more power as Huw called a POWER NOW series, and we lengthened and lengthened adding power and then we powered into a FINISH. And then it happened. Words cannot express the joy of our Chestmates crew when we crossed the finish line – we knew we had won because there we no crews ahead of us. The look of joy on Huw’s face said it all – because he knew we were first from his vantage point.

In the AFTERNOON CHALLENGE races the currents and wind had picked up so times were slower and staying steady at the start line was challenging, but Huw did a wonderful job of getting our crew to the start line and in good position. The Tigers section of the boat showed how much INFLUENCE their section of our boat can have on a race result – we won by .07 seconds because of the push all the way through the finish line (it was a photo finish).

What an amazing day, each paddler gave 5% more and then 5% more, and Huw’s steering sliced off milliseconds off our times.  We were determined to paddle hard and to see if we could make the OW Division FINALs but again only the top two finishers made it into the OW Finals. We finished 4th in our semi-final OW Division race. However, our race time was 6th overall out of 10 crews.

So proud to be a member of this awesome team!

Paddles Up!

Sarah, Coach

Chestmates 2004