Dragon Boat West

Here's the top 10 results..

Platnium - Final
1.) Team Victoria Gorging Dragons
2.) Koi Dragonauts
3.) Kai Ikaika
4.) Pacific Reach Echo
5.) Wasabi Mixed

Platnium - Conso.
6.) Pacific Reach
7.) Capital Iron
8.) Fresh off the Dragon Boat
9.) Specialty Subaru WRX
10.) Acme Canoe Club

I'll post up my thoughts on it later since I'm in the office at the moment... My prediction wasn't all that off...

Considering the Gong show they had for the race placings it could have been a lot different! However they created the grid is mystery to begin with. At the end of the first day you have teams that are undefeated (some winning with times more suitable for the Silver division) due to the fact they are racing weak or all women's team (no offense ladies!) and other heats where teams have 2 or more tough opponents in thier heats. At the end of the day you have 14 undefeated teams and 6 teams with a 1st and a second placing. Of those 14 undefeated teams (based upon combined times) 4 of them had times similar to the Gold/Silver division.
the end result was a good Platinum divsion (kudos to the Captital irons for standing their ground and making a protest!) and a weak Diamond division. If you check the qualifying heat time for Jade they beat all the Diamond times including the finals!
Oh well. Crap happens and maybe next year they'll fix it right

My only BIG complaint is the beer running out on both days and worse yet...being forced to drink Labatts low card beer!!!!!!!!

what was the protest from Capital Iron about?   just curious, cause I didn't hear about any protest, and I don't think it would've affected us (Fresh).

I think 1 of the biggest problems was the lack of marked lanes .This caused alot of grief for some teams as they fought just to maintain postion in their lane while being pushed over by other teams trying to make a straight line out of a slightly curved course . We ran into that in our semi and ended up doing somewhat of a slalom just to stay in our lane and ended up in the wash of the team next to us while trying to avoid a potential collision . We paid the price ........so goes racing on to the next race .

 I have to say Hugo's was alot of fun though  :wink: good party acme and I'm surprised they did as well as they did as they pulled a late one while everyone else went home .

Damn right it was a good party- maybe because I sold about 60% of the tickets by myself.  I know how to persuade the men (and the ladies)!!
Thanks to everyone who came out, we had so much fun with you all.  Come back next year- same place, on the Saturday of the Victoria festival...  BTW John...we can handle our liquor and late nights...can you handle the metamucil?? :lol:

The protest was that 2 top teams were is the same heat (captial Iron were finalists last year, and Kai )
If they had kept the points (Capital came in Second) they would have been knocked to Diamond (maxed at 17 poitns while teams who were racing weak teams got 20 points)
Kind of unfair and a just reason to complain

I'm still miffed at the lack of beer though.....

It's not that they lacked beer...it was that they lacked GOOD beer...who was the genius who decided to buy that Labatt low carb p!ss?  Anyways, I paddled on the PR Echo boat...we were pretty happy with our result.  After all, the Echo boat is supposed to be the "B" team and we were just .3 seconds behind Ikaika.  PR has a great bunch of hard working paddlers...and drinkers! It was a real pleasure to paddle with them.

Also, have to give credit to Capital Iron and FODB...we were lined up by the dock watching the Platinum consolation round...they had a real nice surge and kick right at the end.  From my angle, I thought they were gonna take the race.