North Down's Floating Zoo makes a splash at Maidstone's River Festival 30th July, 2007 Following the fun had at last years river festival, North Downs YFC decided to team up and enter again. Our goals: to raise more money for the Heart of Kent Hospice, and to win for the second year running! Whilst we were unsuccessful in the latter, we did achieve our ambition of raising over £200 for the Heart of Kent Hospice - money that was gratefully received, and will go towards improving care for cancer sufferers in and around Maidstone.
Because we were already known for our floating farmyard last year, we decided to try something new this year - a floating zoo. As well as our elephant, Dumbo (who soaked other competitors with a 40ft jet of water from his trunk!), we were joined on the raft by our display board cow - Daisy - who had a makeover to look like a Zebra, and a giraffe. Pruned willow trees were attached to either side of the raft, just to finish it off, with a North Downs Zoo sign attached at the back.
Sammy dressed as a Lion, with Gina doing an incredible job with face paint. Louise came prepared as a penguin, and took her place with Miss Stevens at the port bow. Steve came dressed as a safari keeper, meanwhile Sam, Gib, Carl and Gina donned their rough clothes in preparation for the mess that they were about to succumb.
As with last year, the race involved paddling the raft (the biggest entered into the competition!) for a mile against the river current. There were two races - fastest raft, and fun raft. Whilst the fastest raft competitors took the race more seriously, the fun raft entrants preferred committing open warfare on the river - to see who could soak the other most!
This year, North Downs managed to enact revenge on the British Gas raft, who last year gave us a soaking. They weren't expecting Dumbo to soak them with 4 litres-per second of mucky river water, after starting hostilities with a barrage of eggs and flower bombs. At one point, their rafters ambandoned ship - only to board our raft and try to turn it around. Judge! We fought them off ok, and they were soon back on their raft retreating.
Other rafts retaliated against were the Spice Girls Reunion (and my, have they let themselves go - hairy chests and all!), a raft entered by the army, and various pirates and vikings.
Only one member managed to fall in - Gina - becoming the first North Downs young farmer to fall into the River Medway! She was saved by Steve, who jumped in after her.
Whilst the raft didn't win this year's fancy dress competition (our rivals, the pirates, beat us to it), we managed to raise a lot of money for charity - and had a fun time in the process. I guess the question now is... what on earth are we going to build next year?!
Watch our raft in action!
See photos of the raft being built
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