The Fireflies out of Garden Bay – longtime repeat champions at April Tools – were finally dethroned by the Gunboat Bay Challenger at the 15th annual April Tools Wooden Boat Challenge in Madeira Park on April 30.
“The fireflies from Garden Bay firehall have won something like 12 or 13 out of the last 15 years,” head organizer Jacqueline Ordronneau said. “They came in sixth this year, so it was like, somebody else won! But I think it was because [this year] it took more finesse than strength. Paddling it had to be a bit on the delicate side.”
The twist in this year’s April Tools challenge was that competitors had to build coracles to race in. A coracle is a round boat that mostly spins in a circle if you don’t know how to paddle it.
“Obviously we were trying to make something that would be entertaining,” Ordronneau said.
The proper way to paddle a coracle is called sculling, Ordronneau explained. It’s basically a figure-eight motion done in the water in front of the boat.
However, this is not how the Gunboat Bay Challenger team won the race. They put two people – Trina and Kira M’Lot – in the coracle and paddled it sort of like a canoe.
Team leader Jan Verwey from Madeira Park attributed their success to “good boat building design and two girls who are awesome at paddling it.”
Good boat building was certainly a factor in this year’s April Tools. Boat racers were told beforehand to bring a blowtorch with them – not knowing that it would be used to bend the doorskin plywood used in the coracles.
“I think that was really the crux move for a lot of them,” Ordronneau said. “Some of them – instead of making a gentle curve – made sharp bends, and doorskin is a really thin plywood. I was standing on the pier when some of those were launching – you could hear them go crrr-ack! when they tried to get in them.”
Out of seven boats in the first heat, only four made it past the start line.
Five teams of teenagers competed as well as 13 teams of adults. Ordronneau estimated that 300 to 400 people came to watch.
“It’s great to see the community all show up for it and all the people involved in volunteering and setting it up,” Verwey said. “That’s really awesome.”
Visit us online at www.coastreporter.net to see more photos from the event.
