In October every year, Hydrovac hosts a successful Pink Ribbon event and this year was no exception. The team “pinked” it up for the day for a good cause.
This year we raised funds to help fund a documentary being made about breast cancer survivor dragonboat team, The Pink Dragons (https://www.facebook.com/PDDBT/) — our very own Wastewater Manager Caroline is a member of the team.
The Pink Dragons are re-building their team this year after a two-year struggle to have a full complement of paddlers. One of the downsides of being a breast cancer team is the higher mortality rate — their team attended three funerals in a nine-month period in 2018/2019 and this has a devastating effect on the team, for a variety of reasons. This year, the Pink Dragons are on the re-build — with 22 active paddlers needed plus another 3 or 4 reserves, they are searching far and wide for new paddlers.
Production company Kiwiburd Krew is following the team on this journey, which will ultimately see them competing at the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission, a four-yearly event at Lake Karapiro in 2022. World-renowned documentary filmmaker Lisa Burd is leading the charge — Lisa and her crew are following the Pink Dragons through all aspects of their lives, from original diagnosis through treatments, training, competitions, wins and losses. They jumped at the chance to be part of Hydrovac’s event.
Hydrovac are fully supportive of Breast Cancer as a cause and of the Pink Dragons as a team — to the point that GM Dave vowed he’d get a Hydrovac support crew down to Karapiro to cheer the Pink Dragons on when they compete against the 5000 other breast cancer paddlers converging on NZ for this world-class event.