Build It Yourself Raft Race

What would you do with four large plastic barrels, eight fat bamboo poles and 10 metres of poly rope?  Oh, really; that’s what you’d do?  Well there’s no law against it between consenting adults but actually the answer we were looking for was ‘build a raft’. And that’s exactly what the sixteen teams who entered our Raft Race did before putting their craft to the test on, or more accurately in, the murky waters of Wimbledon Park Lake.

The Teams

The Police cadets put up five teams, three from Ealing, one from Westminster and one on home turf (or should that be surf?) from Merton, the Met’s Safer Neighbourhoods Unit provided another, so did the firearms unit CO19 and the Met’s Property Services, with another home team from Merton’s Trinity Ward Safer Neighbourhoods Team. We were also very pleased to welcome Chief Supt Nick Jupp of the Safer Neighbourhoods Unit as an observer.

The business world was represented by two teams from Interserve Facilities Management (who deserve a very special thank you for the having found us the bamboo and rope and transporting the barrels), two from law firm Clifford Chance and another from UBS Investment Bank.

The charity sector was represented by a valiant team from Foundation 4 Life, and the last of the sixteen was a crew pressganged by SLF’s very own fundraiser Venetia Barton.

The Run Up

After an inauspicious start in a squall of wind and rain, the sun came out to welcome our teams and the young people from the AHOY Centre and Foundation 4 Life who were there to help build and crew the rafts.  Some teams arrived with wetsuits and their own buoyancy aids, some with bunting and some with bundles of cable ties; all came to race – and to win!

Each team was provided with the basic materials described above and all bar one (we’ll hear more of that team later) chose to build a square/rectangular frame out of the bamboo, under which they attached the barrels, one at each corner, more or less.

The experienced raft builders from the Wimbledon Park Watersports Centre who were on hand to show the teams how it was done were appalled by the teams’ willingness to ‘cheat’, shunning ropes and properly tied knots in favour of cable ties, gaffer tape and even webbing straps and buckles.

Each team of four was joined by a young volunteer, needing an extra seat on board, adding extra paddling power but challenging the traditional one team member astride each barrel seating plan.

Build time was one short hour but all the teams were ready to race when the time was up.  There was much begging and borrowing of the highly prized cable ties and possession one of the half dozen rolls of gaffer tape on site was a bone of contention between the teams but the large police presence did much to keep the peace!

The Race

The race consisted of two heats with the first, second and third from each heat going through to the final.  Both heats were hotly contested as rafts jostled for position on the starting line before paddling madly off and around the two big inflatable yellow buoys that marked the course.

To those of us on the lakeside it was a disappointment that none of the rafts broke up during the race and no one fell in, despite some vigorous paddle action aimed more at soaking other teams than generating forward motion.

The final was a more convoluted course with the rafts having to circle both buoys completely before heading for the finish line.  This resulted in some close combat as the six teams knotted together around first one then the other of the buoys.  One team applied the tactic of hauling the buoy around the raft rather than paddling the raft around the buoy but the judges, like Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen, turned a blind eye.

Both in their heat and in the final, the CO19 team, Blue Fury, took an early and decisive lead in their unusual triangular designed raft which had three barrels in a row on one side of the triangle with the fourth fixed at the angle opposite, forming a type of outrigger. Other teams and supporters sniggered about this odd design during the build but Blue Fury had last laugh, winning both their heat and the final by a convincing margin. We can expect a flotilla of three-sided imitators at our next raft race in the spring.

Medals, Money and More...

All participants were fed and watered at the park café and SLF Deputy Chair of Trustees, Dinah Cox, presented medals to the winners, Blue Fury, to Interserve's SAS Rejects who were runners up and to the MPS Property Services team The Floaters for best dressed raft.  By 9 PM, with the park in darkness, everyone was off on their way home with bags of wet clothes, bags of fun having been had and SLF having bagged some much needed funds from the sponsor money! The current estimate for how much was raised is a fabulous £7,000(!) but with the teams continuing to raise money after the race, this total may well go up. A Big THANK YOU to all who took part.

Want to take part in the next race?  Send us an email and we’ll add you to the list!

Click here to see more of the 400 plus pictures our volunteer photographer Martin (who also designed this website don’t ya know?) took on the day.

Want to know who actually benefits from money raised by SLF?  Click here to read the stories of some of the beneficiaries of the projects we support.