In hindsight we should have seen this was not going to be easy when it took us four attempts to build and finally be happy with the raft☺.
With a crew of 6 we arrived at Mumbles supported by a few colleagues, family friends and of course our top of the range raft THE SINKING SUNFLOWER. We then saw that our raft was not in the same league as most of the other rafts (think south conference and then premier league). Undeterred and with advice from our one legged coach we entered the sea and took our place on the starting line, the next 10 minutes is a bit of a blur and chaos.
The race started and for 10 minutes we held our own and stayed at the front, Tesco’s raft, Nev and the call centre’s raft all of them continued to bombard us with eggs, flour and water bombs but we held on. Then due to what we as a crew feel was a design fault (nothing to do with us not having a clue) our raft decided to change it’s direction and float out to sea instead of a direct line to the finish.
Although out of the running for a top 3 finish (or even a finish☺) we were happy to carry on and try to get there. The first two occasions the lifeguard’s offered us a lift in they accepted our choice of carrying on but they were very insistent on the 3rd occasion and seeing as we were probably closer to Aberavon Beach than Knab Rock we let them help us in. We were dropped off before the finishing line and made our way up the ramp with the raft being cheered and clapped like heroes. All in all a fantastic day and a great laugh on the raft, lessons learned for next year and a promise to come back stronger and better prepared for next year.
To complete this we had a day at Tenby life guard station to hand the cheque over and even got to go on the boat and try out the clothing they have to wear (Abby and Connor never looked so at home☺) this was finished with traditional fish and chips and on the way home we discussed plans for our new sleek and operational raft for next year ☺
