Be Excellent To Each Other

On the 18th June, Macmillan Cancer Support are holding the Macmillan Coracle Relay World Championships at the Pengwern Boat Club in Shrewsbury.

The company I work for, Source Design, are asking for sponsors to help support our team and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Our team of four have precisely zero experience of driving coracles - is "drive" even the correct term? - so the entire afternoon should be really quite interesting.

Any sponsors would be greatly appreciated, it's for a great cause and how many other opportunities will you get to sponsor me for making a complete tit out of myself and possibly drowning?

Our JustGiving page is here: http://www.justgiving.com/SourceDesign

Cheers in advance for any support, guys and gals

First!

epic reading fail by me there. read the thread title as Colin McRae's Rally World Championships.

Cheers to Grim... and Craster for their generous donations

De nada. Macmillan are an exceedingly worthy cause.

A few quid heading your way - Macmillan nurses really helped out with Mrs Squirt's Grandfather, and I'm a sucker for a coracle relay anyhow.

You're gonna get soaked.

I'll see if I can spare a few quid at some point before you do this. Can't right now, but hopefully eventually.

Good luck with it. How big is the coracle, and how stable are they?

Remember: leave your car keys on the shore!

I can't actually think of a worthier one.

No idea how big the coracle is, but I'm assuming it's big enough just for one (as they usually are) and that's where the relay element comes in to it.

Stability wise, I imagine they're fine but from what people tell me getting them to go forward is something of an art form.

Cheers to Squirt and Kern for their donations

I imagine getting them to spin round and round without actually going anywhere is a lot easier though. You could try incorporating that into your tactics.

Cheers to Trooper for the incredibly generous donation

Awesome people, really helped when my mum recently passed from cancer.

You are more than welcome

Donation duly donated. I like JustGiving - Having one account and accepting Paypal makes it a doddle.

Cheers devilman. Yeah, JustGiving is almost too easy to donate with

Cheers Blucey. I don't know whether to be bothered or not by the fact that all of the donations so far have been from BeEx - either none of the other people on our team have any friends, or they're just not bothering to publicise it.

Exceedingly generous you lot

You do know that we all want our money back if you don't come first, don't you?

A friend and work colleague died on Monday, from cancer, a fella I've known and worked with for over 20 years, so this is a great cause for me to donate to at the moment.

Good luck with it.

By the way, this would appear to be a coracle:

Sorry to hear of your loss, Agent Starling and thank you for the donation.

That is indeed a coracle - and apparently they're not that stable on the water at all! Time to learn to swim, methinks.

Thanks to Jonarob also.

Thanks - and yes, might also be an idea to wear a life-jacket or two! (Or just hold on really tight and hope for calm waters).

Remember: With coracles you draw figure-of-eights to go forwards, and draw figure-of-eights backwards to... go backwards!

Coracles look as if they've been especially designed to dump inexperienced users into the water with the minimum of fuss.

Thanks to EoaE and Trousers

Sorry GazChap, putting all my moolah toward my daughter going to college in August, but remind me in September if you're still collecting.

However, I've actually had a go in a Coracle when I was a kid - it was a school field trip. All I'll say is this - yes they are very unstable and slow, so be patient and concentrate on a technique of getting it to go forward consistently while keeping your weight as evenly spread and low as possible, which is easier than it sounds. Just remember you will be slow, but not as slow as someone rushing.

Either that or sneak in the night before and stick a big weighted keel on the fucker ;-)

No probs DBSnappa

I've been checking YouTube religiously and watching any coracle-related videos on there. I think I've got a handle on it now, and fortunately I'm generally pretty good at balancing things so hopefully I can avoid getting wet.

Also, BeEx Fame. Cheers to all who've donated so far, your generosity has not gone unnoticed here in the office

You've smashed through the barrier! Good stuff!

Excellent stuff.

Have you started going through every person in your address book and facebook profile yet? That worked really well for me: people I hadn't spoken to in years seemed willing to cough up.

I've posted it on my Facebook wall a few times, and on the GT-Four Owner's Club.

So far no-one has donated from either group, making you guys the bestest ever. The other donations we've had have been from clients at work