paddling
About Me
television
adventure
books
speaking
contact us
biography
The Vogaloga is a 32 km race (just short of Channel crossing distance) around the canals and lagoons of Venice. It was the perfect way to keep The Sisterhood motivated to work hard through the cold, dark winter months. The Sisterhoos coach, Cam Taylor, had done such an incredible job that The Sisterhood breezed through the Vogalonga and had the weekend of their lives. A movie of The Sisterhood taking part in the Vogalonga can be viewed on the Dragon Movies page.
©2008 Shoal Projects Ltd. All rights reserved
After 10 months of training at 6.30am on the River Thames and weekends at the coast the day finally arrived. On Saturday 25th August 2007 18 paddlers and one helm set a world record as the fastest and first ever all-female crew to Dragon Boat across the English Channel.
The previous male record stood at 7 hours 45 minutes. The Sisterhood smashed that record and completed the crossing in just 3 hours 42 minutes, only 12 minutes behind The Brotherhood. Not bad for a bunch of girls!
With 6 miles to go I shouted the news down the boat to the girls and told them we really could win this. Our stoke pair, Amanda and Amy, who set the rate of strokes per minute responded brilliantly. They picked up the rate and the 16 girls behind hung on in there for what was going to be a painful last 6 miles.
The lactic acid was burning as we held onto a sprint race pace over a marathon distance course. With 3 miles to go we could see the Brotherhood and their support boats crawling up the coast at 90 degrees to our position, both of us trying to converge on the same point. It looked like we could still do it. I pulled even harder, now grunting with every stroke.
With one mile to go my heart sank as the Brotherhood came to a stop on the beach. We could make out a large group of spectators around them, which could mean only one thing – they had beaten us.
We pushed hard all the way across the finish line with the Brotherhood and our supporters cheering like crazy. As we beached the boat there were hugs and tears but not of sadness at loosing the race. The tears were of pure joy at the sense of achievement we all felt and that special feeling of knowing that we had pulled together to achieve an incredible goal.
dragon journal
DRAGON boating
GREAT BRITAIN team
THE Sisterhood
VOGALONGA in Venice
To read Jo Rogers Journal on the Vogalonga please CLICK HERE.
“I’d go as far as to say that this was one of the best weekends of my life. To see Venice from the vantage point of the canals and the lagoon and to have hundreds of Venetians hanging off the bridges cheering for us was just breathtaking.” Debra Searle
WORLD RECORD holders!
DEBRA’S CHANNEL CROSSING race report
Link to Debra’s blog in the Telegraph
“It was a minor miracle that the conditions were near perfect as we lined up off Shakespeare Beach, Dover with the boys crew, The Brotherhood, next to us. The boys were super confident that they would beat us. Shame the same could not be said of their navigating skills.
The night before the race they came to me and asked me how to read a tidal atlas and which way they should point the boat! After having spent weeks working out the tidal vectors and researching the prevailing conditions there was no way I was going to throw away the one competitive advantage we had over them.
The differences in our approaching to calculating tidal drift was obvious as soon as the starter horn sounded as we watched the boys heading off on a bearing for Portugal! They quickly pulled away but we had mentally prepared ourselves for that and stuck to our tortoise and hare game plan. I was delighted that they were ahead of us as that way they could not follow our course, which I had every confidence in to take us directly to Wissant, France.
Our pace was fast but controlled at 62 strokes per minute. The GPS in front of me was fluctuating from 5.5knots and 6.5knots, significantly more than I had hoped we would manage. I prayed that it wasn’t just everyone getting carried away with the moment and that we would be able to sustain it.
By the end of the first hour I had my proof. We had sustained the pace and a sub-four hours crossing now seemed within reach – unbelievable! The boys, way off to our right, were only just visible in the foggy haze that was sitting over the Channel.
But they ceased to be a concern for us as our attention turned to the SW shipping lane that we were crossing. A huge red-hulled tanker was munching through the water towards us. Emma the helm called a power piece and we pushed the rate up. We were storming along with such strength that we easily passed in front of the tanker. Another victory to boost our confidence.
By the end of the second hour we were into the NE shipping lane and found plenty of big gaps to cross the ships. Then we saw the Dover to Calais Fastcat heading straight for us. The wash of the back of it was mammoth. I decided not to mention at this point that the previous team to cross had been capsized from the wash of this exact same ferry.
We altered our course slightly and Emma called another power piece. We were out of its path by the time it passed but the wash eventually caught up with us and the water pumps went into overdrive. For some the waves were a fun rollercoaster ride producing screams of delight. For the more nervous members of the crew there were shrieks of terror.
Our first glimpse of France through the haze was very exciting and produced lots of chatter and shouts of ‘where?’ from the girls. Our support vessel told us that the boys were only just ahead of us but were way off track down the coast. I knew that the tide would be against them as they fought to gain ground back towards the finish line off the town of Wissant. This was our big chance.
(c) Christopher Jackson
We did it! And we did it in style. From now on we will always be able to say that we hold the world record for being the first all female crew to dragon boat across the English Channel. The previous record for the crossing was 7 hours 45 minutes by a male crew. We smashed that and crossed the line in 3 hours 42 minutes, only 12 minutes after The Brotherhood. Not bad for a bunch girls!”
Debra Searle
Debra started Dragon Boating in 1997 and was very quickly selected for the Team GB. Her first major championships were the Europeans in Rome in 1998. Debra competed in the women’s squad and the mixed squad and returned home with two silver medals and 2 bronze medals.
The World Championships had traditionally been held in Hong Kong or China but in 1999 they came to the UK and Debra again joined the team to win 1 silver and 2 bronze medals in Nottingham. The Championships had been a challenging one for Debra as her father had died between the Europeans and the World Championships. Without Robin Newbury cheering on the sidelines it just didn’t seem right so Debra bowed out of Team GB and gave up Dragon Boating altogether.
The paddle came out of retirement in 2006/7 when Debra joined The Sisterhood. The Sisterhood are a squad of girls who had set upon the idea of Dragon Boating across the English Channel, gaining a World Record in the process. The plan was to race a boys team called The Brotherhood, and to use it as a fundraising event to raise as much money as possible for two children’s charities. The trouble was none of them knew how to paddle or navigate across a stretch of water! So Debra took up the role of Boat Captain and Navigator and set about bringing in sponsorship, getting a boat and kit, taking them to Venice for a training race, and planning the logistics and safety of the channel crossing.
The Sisterhood was led by Emma Sayle and coached by the brilliant Cam Taylor from OCUK but this is a real story of how anything is possible with the right attitude. The Sisterhood were not a bunch of elite athletes. They were a group of predominantly London based girls who had never done anything like this before. Some hadn’t even taken part in sport since they had left school years before but with a grueling training program, excellent coaching and a phenomenal team spirit The Sisterhood were unrecognisable as that same group of novice paddlers that had first launched off the side of the Thames 10 months previously.
Debra wrote a number of reports for the Telegraph Newspaper. To read more about the lead up to the Channel Challenge click on the telegraph logo.
