Big Glitter Day?

Once a year the strange underwater folk of our paddling community all gather in themiddle of our fine country to crown the king of concrete!

The sun always shines on an August bank holiday, so it’s a perfect time for squirt boaters from all over the UK to show off they’re glittery composite boats. OK, so this year it was raining and blustery but the sun came out long enough for us to get together to crown the 2010 King of Concrete. The formula is quite simple, he who sinks the most walks away with the crown…

This sounds odd, by sinking I mean mystery move. A mystery move is a special move you can do in an ultra low volume kayak called a squirt boat. You can key into the currents in white water and sink with the flow. It’s harder than it sounds!

Saturday was a little shaky (especially on my part!) with the locals moaning about some bubbles going missing? But some got on with it anyway West Country bumpkin Mav showed off his new glow in the dark boat by hitting a 10 second mystery in the top pool! For all the Old Skool squirt guy’s this is great news – yes the top pool is back on form, as long as you can find the bubbles – apparently?

But being squirt boaters the rest of the day was sacked off for some mystery based fun and general laziness

So determined to actually get the competiton nailed on Sunday and with our competition heads on we headed off to the pub & a curry. I think we were all safely tucked up in bed by 2am?

Sunday, an early 1pm start bought the start of the competition, 6 rides in the new Pyramid pool, 3 with the flow, 3 cutting back. Mystery move times totalled together = longest time under water wins!

Chris Jones, showed off his local boy skills to take the crown totalling 58 seconds in 6 rides! Tom Bailey bagged the longest ride 13.4 seconds.

We had a load of fun, if you want to have a go or just want to dust off that old squirt boat it’ll all be happening again next year, same place, same weekend…

Thanks to Chris Jones for organising the event. Thanks to UK freestyle / BCU for supplying us with a trophy (Chris hasn’t sent me a picture of it yet, but has assured me it has pride of place above his loo!) and a huge Thank You to the guy’s at Nookie for supplying the prizes – although the squirt guy’s weren’t too sure what to do with the bag marked ATTENTION KAYAK PADDLES, there was a nice mesh pocket for the hand paddles but it wasn’t quite big enough for a squirt boat?

Ben