07 Jun Maldon and District Sea Cadets come out at the top
MALDON and District Sea Cadets battled tough terrain and gruelling challenges to triumph at the Falkland Tri Service at the weekend.
The annual event, based in land around Cherry Tree Lane, Colchester, started in 1983 and features three teams from army, air and sea cadets from Maldon, Chelmsford and Colchester and various other districts.
The event took place from Friday June 3 to Sunday June 5, with teams made up of six cadets aged between 13 and 17 years, and involved individual activities to push each team’s abilities to the limits.
Activities are scored on time, leadership, skills, and knowledge and judged by a member of staff from each service per activity.
Teams had kit inspections and presentation assessments, cooked their own food and were sent out to various physical challenges with only grid references and no knowledge of what the challenges were.
The final challenge on Sunday afternoon saw the cadets heaving a replica missile made from tubing full of stones across a huge obstacle course, lifting up tractor tyres and navigating rough terrain, with penalties being added if the missile touched anything.
Maldon and District Sea Cadets, from Park Drive, came out first in all events over the weekend, receiving the least penalty points overall.
The cadets were overwhelmed with the result; it was lauded as a monumental improvement over coming seventh last year.
Ex-Royal Marine Lee Diss, 46, serves as the cadets’ Detachment Manager, described the team as ‘monumental’.
He said: “This weekend’s victory has completely turned the cadets’ lives upside down.
“Coming seventh last year and going on to come up at the top this year is absolutely fantastic, everyone in the club was completely over the moon.
“When the results were being read out the guys began to get more and more excited as we got into the top three. When number two was announced and they effectively discovered they had won they just fell about the place.”
