River Raft Race

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We had our 27th Annual River Raft Race yesterday. My daughter will be old enough to join in the fun now and I wanted to learn a bit about it. This is the first year the leaders have been allowed to build a raft and join in on the race. Each raft has to be hand made. We use inner tubes and wood or bamboo to build a raft. The leaders built a triangular raft with bamboo while the girls used a square design. We had trouble finding tubes that were worth using or that held air. And ended up buying new ones. We tied them on to the rafts just in time to leave for the trip to the river. We got there a bit early, but no one thought to try out their rafts before the race started. One group of girls climbed on their raft to find that the inner tubes did not hold them above the water! One of those girls got so scared she had to get off and stay ashore. All the rest of the rafts floated. We had to turn ours around backwards because our seats were too far forward. We all got going and our other leaders had to stop and retie some of their bamboo. We had a couple of short pieces come loose a bit later which caused our back tube to flip up and we were sure that it would get hung up on the rocks in the rapids, so we stopped to retie it on. We got it all tied securely and got back on the raft to get going again and SNAP!!!! One of our pieces of bamboo broke in half!! Not a short piece either but the long piece that made up 1/3 of the stabilizing structure!We were done! But not quite, we dismantled our raft, tossed it in a rescue canoe and tubed the river instead. Now I don't know if you ever rode a inner tube down the river before, but it is not as easy as a raft or boat to steer. It took LOTS of paddling to get to the side of the river we wanted to be on at any point! Our arms also rubbed on the tube leaving nasty friction burns on the underside of each. Also the tubes do not go down river as fast as raft or boat because you can't sit up and paddle it very well. Therefore we were VERY late arriving at the take out spot. So late in fact that they sent someone to look for us. He didn't find us but found a group of swimmers that had just seen us go by assuring them that we were fine. All in all it was a great day and an exciting adventure. I can't wait until next year to do it again.. I am sure some of the girls will want to do the event and I KNOW I want to.