One day a year, the shores of Vancouver’s Jericho Beach are swarmed by hoards of college students ready for war. Ridiculous outfits are donned, gauntlets are thrown down and The Day of the Long Boat begins.
For the benefit of those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, (in other words everyone), the Day of the Longboat is somewhat of a rite of passage here at the University of British Columbia. To the casual observer it may just appear to be a large group of idiots (over three and half thousand) paddling around the harbour in the rain, but to those who participate it transcends the realm of being merely a boat race. It’s a test of skill, of endurance and perhaps most importantly, how well you can coordinate your team's outfits. But as interesting as the event is, this is a story about so much more than The Day of the Longboat. It’s a story about a courageous group of foreigners who are fated to live forever in Long Boat folklore as simply “Team Deli Sandwich”.
Our tale begins at an appallingly early hour on a drizzly Saturday morning as my team and I assembled at the registration table at Jericho Beach. Despite the traumas of sleep deprivation it was plain for all to see that we were a crack outfit, with even the formidable looking side wearing their underwear over their clothes throwing us wary glances as that told us they knew we were coming for them. Australians and Germans, the Swiss and the French we were the best International House had to offer. An eclectic mix of nationalities perfectly formulated for the Long Boat Challenge.
As we mingled around the warm up area preparing for our heat, confidence was high and even the below-the-belt comments the Kiwi-dominated side were throwing in our direction didn’t manage to phase us. Before long we were in our trusty vessel, oars at the ready as the starting gun rang out and our runner exploded from the starting blocks, flying down the beach and jumping into the boat with lightning speed. Once the runners were in, all ten tightly-packed boats tried to pull away from the shore. Carnage was unleashed as stray flying oars beat other boats and competitors into submission almost as often as they were aimed at the water.
By the time we rounded our first marker, we were sitting comfortably in third place perfectly positioned for a late move to the front in the closing stages of the race. It was a glorious scene to behold, our boat carving through the water, oars pulling in perfect unison. It was as we reached the halfway point at the beach across the harbour that disaster struck. Our task at the beach was a simple one. Our trusty runner, Ritchie, had to jump out onto the beach, collect a baton and jump back in. From this point we could paddle to the finish or, as I like to think of it, to victory. It was, however, at this point in time that another team member (let’s just call him Mr X) decided to take charge and in a stroke of brilliance shouted “When Ritchie gets out the boat’s going to go right, so everybody go left.” A simple instruction that in the heat of battle we were all too ready to follow. However unfortunately for Mr X and the rest of us the laws of physics ensured that the disturbance caused by one person jumping out of a boat isn’t quite proportional to the remaining nine people blindly throwing their weight to the other side.
As the boat flipped I had a brief moment to ponder the water rushing up at me before my dreams of longboat glory were drowned in a mess of flailing limbs and ice-cold water. There was little sympathy to be from the other teams as they began to pass us one by one, laughing at our futile attempts to bail the water out of our boat and fix the cuts and abrasions we’d picked up from the rocks and shells that encrusted the bottom of the bay.
Our bodies broken and our dreams shattered, it was through sheer force of will we fixed our boat and began to paddle for home. The only thought that kept us going was the promises of all sorts of glorious consolation prizes for the first team to get wet. But even this was ripped from us as the beach came into sight just in time for us to witness the second last team from our race casually climb into the water after they crossed the finish line, before running straight into a nearby hot tub.
When we finally reached the shore our frantic claims that we had been in the water some 15 minutes before these usurpers fell upon deaf ears. In more of an attempt to shut us up than in any meaningful recognition of the trauma we had endured, the organisers handed us a couple of McDonald’s Deli Sandwich coupons and showed us the door. Thus, as we trudged to the showers bruised and bleeding (though too numb from the cold to feel it) Team Deli-Sandwich was born.
Despite the injustices of Longboat, the spirit of Team Deli-Sandwich lives on and we’re already planning our next campaign – An Assault on Gladiator. Yes, it is what it sounds like, a UBC recreation of the hit 1990’s TV show Gladiator. So stay tuned for more tales of Team Deli-Sandwich, as we pull on some spandex and fight for redemption the way it was meant to be fought for – by beating the rest of UBC into submission with foam-covered sticks.