L’eau Vive was a great event organsied by Le Grand Huit, in Joinville Le Pont, Paris on the 13th and 14th May 2017 where we built our Plastic Bottle sup. Carlos and I went along as part of a team of volunteers from, charity, Watertrek. Carlos and I arrived in France a few days before the event to get everything we needed to build our board. The first minor setback was thefact that the French do not drink fizzy drinks in 2 litre bottles… no they are more restrained and have only 1.5 litre bottles! We had to get creative and re-design our board – we would create a two level board instead as we really did not want to sink!
It was a race against the clock to complete the board in time for the 5 km fun race on the Sunday. You can see us holding an umbrella over the fin as we hoped the glue would dry in time… but we made it. Carlos put the board in the water just as all the competitors were in the water ready to start the race. Always good to arrive a little late for maximum impact! Jean Baptiste, founder of Le Grand Huit was delighted we were in time for the race and gave us a big shout out on the loud speaker. Carlos started the race and we swapped half way through so that I could have a go! With two levels of bottles there was a lot of drag and the board was slower than our other two that we built in Brazil. We would have to rethink the next design – one level but longer and wider to increase flotation. Back to work.
Thank you to the team at Le Grand Huit, for a great weekend in the sunshine (most of the time) and a big special thanks to Jean-Baptiste De Gandt for the encouragement and for driving us to collect the bottles.
L’eau Vive 5km FUN Race