Theft of gear devastates Tu Meke Dragon Boat Club

On the night of the 24th of March 2018, Tu Meke mixed and woman’s team had an exciting night celebrating their success of winning medals at nationals to come back to a devastating low of discovering that’s their belongings were ransacked and stolen. The club was staying at Allenton Hall in Ashburton while competing at the 2018 Dragon Boating Nationals at Lake Hood. When returning from the prize giving ceremony the team had found out there was a huge amount taken from them. There was over $2000 worth of stuff that had gone missing, the items include the raffle money that the crew put tremendous amount of hard work into, two UE Boom Speakers, jewellery, car keys, prescription glasses, medals, donated caps and an assortment of skin care was taken along with some other belongings as well. Unfortunately, with the paddlers being so young items like these are hard to replace especially with some saving for Waka Ama worlds in Tahiti in a few months time.

It cost the club around $60,000 to compete at a location like Lake Karapiro, and being a non-profit and "not really high profile", every dollar that we had raised would have helped the team be set up for next season when travelling to Nationals. The loss of the fundraising money has been particularly hard for the team along with feeling very violated.

The incident has been reported to police.

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