Wednesday 20th May saw the re-introduction of paddling on the water at Exe-Calibre under the social distancing guidelines. The O1 canoe has an outrigger and can therefore be used individually for dragon boat style paddling. This is a welcome step in the direction of restarting dragon boat paddling proper at some appropriate time in the future. The O1s are often used during the season for time trials over a distance of 500m to assess an individual paddler's fitness and ability. Pictured are Pete and Jason who are a couple of our more experienced paddlers who have also both had the honour of representing Great Britain in this fiercely competitive, yet very friendly sport. 

The British Dragon Boat Association has now wisely cancelled the first half of the race season, which unfortunately has included our own regatta here at Exeter. However, this leaves the potential for our first race of the season to be at Nottingham on the River Trent on Sunday 26th July. Last year Nottingham was an excellent regatta for us with Exe-Calibre winning the 200m Mixed event by one second from Raging Dragons in a time of 50.92s. We later came second in the Mixed 2100m event. This time Raging Dragons overturned their earlier defeat to beat us by just a second. Our time for the longer race was 11m 14.32s.