York Dragon Boat Race

by Phillippa Merrick, October 2006

Portasilo, a manufacturing division of the Shepherd Building Group, entered York's annual Dragon Boat Challenge for the first time this year and raised £1,888 for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, which was the matched by Patrick Shepherd of the Shepherd Building Group to boost the money raised to £3,777. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the final amount...)

Dragon Boats are of Chinese origin, and are the largest flat water racing canoes in the world. They have up to 16 paddlers, plus a drummer to pace them, and a helmsman. The money was raised by holding various raffles, bonus balls, world cup sweeps, car parking spaces and horse shoes. The first race caused a stir when all the Shepherd Teams raced against each other....SES (with team name Ouse the Daddy) capsized, followed closely by Shepherd Construction....leaving only Portakabin (Kabinaeros) and ourselves (Hawaii Silo) in the race, unfortunately we couldn't catch the Kabineros who are race veterans but at least we stayed upright.....well for that race anyway.....!

Our second race saw us capsize, right in front of all our supporters in the gazebo on the river bank, we know how to do it properly.... Wigs and flip flops went astray but we managed to gather ourselves together and dry off for the third race which was our best of the day, knocking five seconds off our first race time. Although we were nowhere significant in the times, we were awarded the Growler cup for the Best Dressed Team. The prize was of course a pork pie (now gone but not forgotten) and a £50 cheque for our nominated charity, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. A great day out for all.

On 2 November Regional Fundraising Manager Pat Reed went along to the Portasilo office to meet the Dragonboat team and collect the cheque from Phillippa Merrick. The final total, with gift aid, was an amazing £4280.60.