It’s a crisp fall morning, the sun is shimmering on the water at Jericho beach and you can hear the pump-up music blasting from UBC Recreation’s sound system. It’s my fourth year at UBC, but my first Day of the Longboat.
I’m with a team of people from all different faculties and friend groups. We’ve organized ourselves to wear the Thunderbird blue and gold and painted each other’s faces. It’s fitting with our team’s main goals as we signed up in the "Just for Fun" category, after all. Or so we thought.
After chatting with an opposing team, they seemed to think that if we’re racing this early that we must be in the competitive category. I could tell they were in the competitive category between the war chants and bulging muscles. I was wondering why they were here and not rowing for the Canadian national team.
So at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning, standing in line to run and jump into our longboat, our team realized we were competing against UBC’s die-hard athletes.
When we pushed off, nautical mayhem exploded between the boats. Luckily, our team managed to grind ahead of another longboat we collided with and set off ahead of the pack. Our team captain kept us rowing in time with a war-like “STROKE!” chant. Since it was so early, we glided across the glassy ocean without threat of capsizing.