Dragon Boat West

First of all, I would like to say it was a great festival much like the previous years.  Other than the replacement of the 6-16's and D2 for the Millenium Boats and the Race Marshal guy (sorry, I can't remember his name but those that raced in Victoria and previous year's Kelowna should know who I'm talking about) in the marshalling area, you could hardly tell the difference that Water's Edge was running the race side of things instead of Foundation 2000.

The races were relatively running on time. I think the last races on Sunday were about 30 minutes late but that's pretty much expected.  Unfortunately there were not enough volunteers, especially at the docks so paddlers would volunteer their time to work on the docks loading and unloading boats.  After working the morning shift on Saturday morning, I've got a lot more respect for the dock people.

The weather was  just a we expected.  Rain on Saturday.. sunny on Sunday.  It didn't really get too hot on Sunday though.

The D2's didn't garner too much of a wrath from the paddlers.  The biggest complaint I heard over the weekend was that there was a lot of boat flex. I've also heard that that the lack of the center beam didn't allow some paddlers to brace themselves properly. I guess it just shows that being brought up with the 6-16's, they will always be the boats that West Coast paddlers will be comparing other boats to.

The seeding worked out ok.. there were a couple suprise placements by some teams but all in all most teams placed roughly where they should have been.

On the water, it seemed that the outside lanes had a slight advantage than the inside lanes, much like the previous years.  I'm guessing this is due to shallower waters in the closer lanes to shore. Of course this wasn't as prominent as previous years since they moved the race course further out this year. Lane marking could have been a bit better.  There were buoys that marked the edges of the race course with orange buoys for stagiong line, start line, 125m, 250m, 375m and finish line. Problem was that there were two orange buoys that did not belong to the race and could not be removed.  One was a bit past the finish line and another in somewhere are the middle of the race course. These confused some teams since they did not know where the finish line was and would think the last buoy was the finish line when it was infact a non-race buoy and call their finishes late... or at time.. none at all. By Sunday morning these buoys were eventually covered in garbage bags.

They also started cracking down with team that were no completely held at the start line, by calling teams back or tacking on 10 second penalties to teams that had a couple of their seats taking stokes when the starter was calling the "Paddles up! Attention Please!" The starter was being a hardass but it lead to a more fair race... and apparently the race announcers dubbed him, "Guido, the Race Warden" over the PA system. I guess there were some DBW readers at the announcer's tent.

On the festival side, it was great that the festival orgainizers were allowing teams to use their beer garden tents as their team tents if they did not bring one of their own, especially during the Saturday rainfall.  A complaint I heard was that the awards cermonies took too long especially for teams that had to make that 5+ hour drive back home to Vancouver and the Island. They also stopped allowing teams from picking up their medals once they started the ceremonies so teams that medalled in the higher divisions had to stay till the end.

But the thing that raised most of the team's ire was the fact that they stopped selling tickets for the beer garden by 6pm and stopped serving beer altogether a half hour later.  This meant that the teams that just finished their races in the higher divisions didn't get much of a chance to hit the beer garden.

The Platinum teams for this year were (in no particular order since I had to leave the festival before the results were announced.)
Platinum A
Links Team Success
Koi Dragonauts
Pacific Reach
Acme Canoe Club
Gorging Dragons
Pacific Reach Echo
Alpha Dragons Red

Platinum B
Specialty Subaru WRX
Pond Scum
Xtreme Reach
Absolute Mayhem
Fresh Off the Dragonboat
Navy Draggin' Anchors
Team Lifescan

Good racing everyone!

The festival went pretty well especially with new management and different boats.  The marshalling area was not the same without the Victoria guy, maybe they can hire him next year.

Could not have had lousier weather, okay it could have snowed.  You go to Kelowna to get some heat and sun and you get there only to think you are in Vancouver  :(

Races were pretty competitive.  Rankings were better than Victoria so made most of the teams end up in the right divisions for Sunday.  Some pretty good races on Saturday and Sunday, 1.5 seconds between first and last is pretty good racing.

Race course was further out but it did not correct the lane bias that much.  We will have to wait and see the results to see what lane is best but the outside lanes appeared to be faster.  Of course from what I could see they did try to compensate by putting the "slower" boats (i.e. the equipment not the teams necessarily) to the outside (okay what I perceive to be the slower boats).

Water officials have to be more strict on teams, a lot of teams kept on coming over towards shore so everyone bunched up.  More lane markers will help.  I am sure they were freezing their a$$es off on Saturday.

Starter was pretty good, sounded like that crouchity old guy from Vancouver  :D.  Unofficially, I heard from some at the finish line that the starter called the annoucers to say they had it all wrong the starter's name was not Guido but the Italian Stallion.  Never heard the announcers correct the name, maybe they know more than we do.

Strangest moment was when a drummer fell off at the start and the team kept on going.  Everyone finished the race and the team rushed back to pickup the drummer.  The drummer was just laying in the water waiting for the team to come back, wasn't yelling or anything just laying there.  Maybe it was the same person who justed laid there in the Hudson earlier this year  :wink:

Mighty strange, if I was the team I would stop out of fear of hurting the drummer.  The team got DQed cause you have to finish with the same number in the boat as what you started with.  

I would rate it B+ (weather and small things knocked it out of an "A" festival).

Whee, I got to paddle as a last minute addition to PR Echo...had to miss the Saturday races b/c of work but they did just fine with 19 paddlers.  Lucky for me I guess since I missed out on the rain ;)  The lateness of the races were to be expected but did kind of suck because even though I took off right after the last race, I didn't get back in Vancouver until 10.  

As for results, my buddy who stayed left a brief message on my phone to tell me that PR Echo came in 5th, PR came in third and the biggest shocker was that Gorgin' came in 4th?!?  Can somebody confirm this??

I also heard that the team that had there drummer and drum fall out was Scaly Justice...the Farris & Co. law firm team.  

I was talking to a friend on Drunk'n Dragons, their "B" team (can't remember what colour), was assessed a 5 second penalty for a false start...thing is, she says that the marshall told them to move the boat up and then their coach didn't protest in time.  That kinda sucks if true.

Anyways, that was the first time I'd paddled in Kelowna...had a great time!  And this might belong in the hottest paddler thread, but some of those girls on Liquid Assets were pretty nice! ;)

PR Echo came 6th and Gorging came 5th.  Acme came 4th.  So Plaitnum A was:

Platinum A
Links
Koi
PR
Acme
Gorging
PR Echo
Alpha Red

Platinum B
Subaru
Pond Scum
Xtreme Reach (this is the team that lost their drummer in the semi)
Absolute Mayhem
FODB
Navy Draggin Anchors
Team Lifescan

Diamond A
Roli
Exstream Currents
Topmade
Storm (must have been the boat not the lane)
M-Power
Scotia
Drunkin Dragons

I didn't like the D2 boats either.  I heard these boats are also illegal copies of the 6-16 just like the F2000 boats. These D2's are made by a guy name Mac who used to work for the Vancouver festival until he was fired by the festival. I'd recommend to the board not to rent boats from him again.

In my opinion, I thought the D2 weren't bad boats. However, I must agree that b/c of the lack of lateral/outside strength, the boats might bow and have a reduced life-span.  They were a little tippier (but not much), the bracing was a bit harder, and I thought that they were lighter than the 6-16's...which makes sense b/c a lighter boat is usually more buoyant (unless you have a big, fat, heavy team), and thus, more responsive to side to side motion (ie, tippier).  

From what I gather, I thought that the time variance was anywhere from 3-5 seconds difference (which gave the last spot for the Platinum final an advantage to the team who was racing in the semi-finals in the D2 boat). However, what was the weight of the 6-16 dragon head and tail??

I thought the finish line was a bit hard to judge, but it made people paddle all the way through which wasn't a big deal. But the award ceremony took way too long esp for those travelling home the same night. As well, I hate the fact that the festival states that they can run a race ahead of schedule if they want...

The speed of the marshalling and actual race time was awesome!  Good job to Water's Edge!

was anybody listening to the races on the radio at 103.1FM?

wow - that was a close race.  It felt incredible, but the anticipation of finding out the results was killing us all at the awards ceremony.  Many of us had a long drive home, and not knowing whether or not we placed in the top 3, none of our team wanted to leave the beer gardens.  It got really cold for those of us waiting to hear the results who may have gotten a little wet in our final, so the wait was almost unbearable.  

I am very happy with how much Acme has improved this season, a little dissapointed we couldn't hold our lead in the final and finish 1st, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  

Despite being violently ill on Friday night, spending much of the ride up in gas station washrooms, and not eating for 2 days, I had a fantastic weekend, and look forward to bringing home some hardware next year!!

Just curious... I know many teams went up to Kelowna with borrowed paddlers, how many paddlers did Acme borrow?  And from what teams.  Just seems real interesting how much they've improved since Alcan.

Actually, Swordfish, it was the Blue Drunk'n Dragons team (the "A" team) that was assessed the penalty, in the Diamond A final.  That put us in 7th place - although we wouldn't have come in first regardless.

I don't know what was happening at the back of the boat (I paddle seat 3) but my team members say they were not taking any strokes when the starter called the race.  And yes, we were told to bring the boat up, and then immediately prior to the start we were told to hold hard.  As far as I could tell, we held hard.  Not sure what happened with the protest, especially considering our coach is on the protest committee.

Anyways, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves (particularly on Friday and Saturday nights!) and were very happy with the way we paddled.   It's a great feeling to race against teams like Pacific Reach Echo and Scotia (and we managed to beat both on Sunday morning) !

I can't wait until the festival next year ... I'll have forgotten how bitterly cold and wet I was by then.

I liked the D-2 boats and would take them any day over the gemini.  We got to paddle in them a couple of times over the weekend and adjusted well to them.  Kudo's to the cup holders and to the luxury of the extra leg room for those long legged ones.

Any suggestions on what to do when you lose your drummer off the boat?  I don't know if I agree with the DQ Extreme Reach got, they should have restarted the race.

Kelowna was exciting i didn't really mind the cruddy weather we had on saturday.

it was quite entertaining listening to the announcers...one was on a caffine rush ALL the TIME - think his name was Daryl - he jinxed the scaly justice b4 they started their race - said something about them going down - i don't fully remember- and he kept calling the female drummer who fell in with the drum a he  

i still don't have my voice back from cheering on Roli, Links, Subaru and other teams that had a few paddle sluts with them. i was overjoyed to meet all the Roli paddlers again ^^ miss yu guys! -till next year!!!

Did any one else notice how well teams that raced in lane 7 during the finals (esp. Gold final - Platinum) did.  I never got to race in this lane.  Any thoughts on why this lane seemed to run faster than the other lanes.  Was it shorter?  Current?  Lane 7 almost always won their final, the slowest time from the semi was placed in lane 7 with the fastest in 4, doesn't make any sense to me.

lane 7...the express lane (I know I'm going to get some comments regarding this, but here goes...)!

since it was a lake, current should be minimal...

with a tailwind, lane 7 (the outside lane) will be faster! with a headwind, it should be reversed (ie, lane 7 is slower and lane 1 is faster)...

so your best bet is to get lanes 3 to 5...

I'm not sure how many we borrowed- maybe around 7-8...we had 3 from Absolut Adrenaline, 2 from dragon ladies, one from cc mac, and I'm not sure about the rest.

Wow!  That's almost half your team!  You guys must have gelled well.  What did you think of lane 7, or as it's called, the express lane.  It did seem to be the fast lane of the festival with help of the tailwind.

Yes I would say that lane 7 did play a factor in the overall results. However that was to be expected because of the deeper water and the winds that usually help especially if it is a tail wind. However nothing can be done about that. You just have to deal with it and paddle 'til you PUKE!

Good job to everyone!

It is funny to see a picture of False Creek on the Kelowna Dragon Boat website.  :oops:

From what I heard this year's dragon boat festival in Kelowna is ran by the same group of people who did the Alcan one in Vancouver....hence you see Vancouver db photo in Kelowna website.

Sooner or later the kelowna one will become like the one in Vancouver....no more free admission and higher entry fee.

FYI the Kelowna Dragon Boat Festival is organized by Maximum Sports Entertainment Ltd.  Water's Edge have nothing to do with the actual festival portion of it.  The race portion of it was run by Water's Edge.  Max Sports kept the same format, and everything else from previous years.  Water's Edge was only in charge of docks, marshal, referee, start, and finish.   Previous years it was the Foundation 2000 Group that did the job.  So I don't see how Water's Edge would have an influence on entry fee ect... :roll: