Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
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Scouting about in boats

The March long weekend brings Tasmania’s annual Scout Guide Regatta, held down at Snug with around 800 kids and leaders. Despite a variable forecast the weather was really quite delightful for the whole three days, providing an added incentive to get out on — and in — the water.

On the first night we took advantage of the moonlight and lovely location, and invested our newest Scout down on the beach (we’d used a nearby bluff three years ago for a similar ceremony when we invested a couple of Scouts and I renewed my promise on joining up with this particular Scout group).

On Saturday morning we had the sail past, where all the boats — probably 100 or so kayaks, small dinghies, patrol boats (the big boats shown here, with La Perouse on the left with the red ensign), and a small jumping castle (!) — sail past the Governor who is on board a large motor launch. bIMG_4224

In the afternoon the events start running, with all sorts of different activities. The kids were really keen to rig and sail La Perouse; and it performed quite well, coming second in one of the races and being competitive in the others.

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The kids also did well in the tug-of-war (although I am not sure about the practicality of ugg boots for serious strain-taking haulage!).

Our dearly loved Bob — the little dinghy whose unprepossessing lines belie a very handy speed and manoeuvrability — was kept busy over the weekend, with various races including this “dinghy rescue” event. (Two people are in the water, and have to be rescued in turn by the pair of rowers. However, since speed is of the essence and having a well-balanced boat contributes to speed, the boys doing the rowing barely got the rescued girl up over the stern before abandoning her to finish the rest of the retrieval herself while they repositioned themselves in Bob. As one of the other “rescued” girls commented “That was the most unhelpful rescue I’ve ever had!”)

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With our success last year in the then newly refurbished La Perouse the kids were very keen to defend their rowing titles. They had done a little practice on recent Wednesday troop nights, and La Perouse is probably the best boat in the fleet, so the kids were optimistic about doing well. The under 15s got off to a good start in the long distance races with a win, and the following day backed it up with success in the 500m sprint. The under 13s tied for first in their sprint, which was a great effort as they had less experienced rowers. (The leader teams performed credibly but less successfully!) The photos below are from the U15 sprint event. bIMG_4311Cropped

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Last year the kids had joked about having a cake to celebrate the win; this has now become a tradition, which is threatening to get out of hand, as indicated by the fact that we had two totally excellent cakes on our first night back after the regatta (yes, the first cake has a photo on it, and for second that’s clearly La Perouse with rowers (made by one of the Scouts, too)!):

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