Dragon Boat West

Here is a list of teams attending the 2006 Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival

Abreast in a Boat
Abreast of Life
Alberni Wave Riders
Angles Abreast
Apalala
Bastion Dragons
Blazing Paddles
Blu By Y
Canadian Construction Women
Capital Iron Dragons
CCCU Later
Channel Chargers
Chilliwack Water Warriors
Chix with Stix
Comox Valley Dragonflies
Cowichan Valley Dragon Divas
Cowichan Valley Jolly Dragons
Cultus Lake Dragon Flyers
CV Blazing Paddles
Daily News Dominators
Deep Cove Perfect Catch
Dog Paddlers
Dover Bay Wave Breakers
Dragon Butz
Dragon Runners
Dragon Tails (TD)
Dragonaughts
Dragonflies
Elephant & Castle Booze Cruise
Ergon Dragons Moving Target
Ergon Dragons Overdrive
Excaliber
Extreme Currents
Eye of the Dragon
Fire and Isis
Fluid Motion
Full Throttle
Gabriola Griffins
Gorging Dragons
Gung Ho - VCKC
Haven Society
Island Breaststrokers
Kickn Bass
Kootenay Rowbusters
KVL Kruisers
Ladies of the Lake
Malaspina Ancient Warriors
Mentor Mariners
NAVY Dragon Anchors
Nusa'lon Dragons
O2P
Open Minds Open Windows
Paddle Pushers
Paddlers of the Fifth Moon
Paddling for Life
Pink Panthers
Precision Impossible (PI)
River Spirit
Save On Foods - Dragon Slayers
Selkirk Serpents
Snogard Dragons
Spirit Abreast
ssSteam Heat
St'Keya
Sunshine Dragons
Sunshine Dragons Abreast
Survivorship
Sweet+Sour Dragon Balls
TD Lightning
Team Phoenix
Tillicum LeLum
VCKC Vasuki Warriors
Wave Babes
Welly Wave Riders
Xtreme Reach

Predictions anyone?

Its a long shot, but i think Chix with Stix is going to take top honours this festival, followed by Kicken Bass.

My predictions:

Gorging

then these others in the top 10

Capital Iron
Eye of the Dragon
Sweet and Sour Balls
Blu by U
TD

I think at least some of these teams are also very strong but I'm not familiar enough to place them - PI, Xtreme Reach, Sssteam, VCKC. There's lots of teams I'm not familiar with so it's hard to predict.

Coach

My guess....

1. Gorging
2. Dragonauts
3. Capital Iron
4. Extreme Reach
5. S & S Dragonballs

The rest in top ten would be (in no particular order)
Eye of the dragon, TD, Navy, New PI,BLu by U

Good luck Everyone!

AND NO ONE loses at the best beer tent around!

i so wish my team were doing this one... looks like it'll be a great one again!

I'm going to take the cowardly route and list my predictions for top teams in alphabetical order ... and the indecisive route by choosing 11, not 10:
Blu By U
Capital Iron
Dragonauts
Eye of the Dragon
Gorging Dragons
Navy
PI
Save-On Foods
SSSTeam heat
Sweet + Sour
Xtreme Reach

PS: Eye of the Dragon not seeded for Nanaimo?? is this a different team of the same name or does Bronze Comp C at Alcan get you an outside lane these days. Seems a shame if it's the same team. just hope they smoke their first heat anyway!

Eye of the Dragon should be seeded. If Save On Foods Dragon Slayers are also strong that means one of them might end up in a lower division than they should be. Not the best.

For what it's worth ... Great JOB NANAIMO!   Awesome turn out this year.  Any chance you can get a ferry discount in the works for next year?  :shock:

Hey, the ferry discount is a great idea. Maybe ADBF can work on that for next year too.

Todd found this on the BCAA website....

http://www.bcaa.com/ilwwcm/resources/file/eb0bf70f9d63312/38028_ShowYourCard_rev.pdf

Just by way of FYI.

I would give the home teams (Vancouver Island residents) the advantage.  I'm sure that some teams from the LML will be lacking much like the island teams were at Alcan.  Not everyone can make the ferry ride.

Nevertheless, should be awesome!  Wish I were there.  :Cheers:

I'll refrain from commenting on the beer garden and get right to the "important" part:

Results!

Platinum Final A

1. Gorging Dragons         (2:07.56)
2. Dragonauts                (2:08.88)
3. Xtreme Reach            (2:16.41)
4. Capital Iron Dragons    (2:18.33)

Platinum Final B

1. Sweet&Sour Dragon Balls    (2:18.23)
2. Precision Impossible (PI)      (2:19.94)
3. Extreme Currents               (2:21.86)
4. Blu By U                            (2:24.33)

Diamond Final A

1. St'Keya                             (2:18.34)
2. Eye of the Dragon              (2:19.64)
3. NAVY Dragon Anchors         (2:20.81)
4. Paddlers of the Fifth Moon    (2:21.60)


http://www.nanaimodragonboat.com/results.php 

Damn!
So Close!
I missed the placings of 3rd and 4th......Didn't reallize how many paddlers had switched teams this year!
As side note and Selfish plug, Elephant and Castle won Gold in Jade....APPLE SAUCE!!!!
(It marks my paddling return, Thanks Bonnie and E & C for having me)

Here a few pics I snapped of the weekend

Enjoy!

(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3582Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3563Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3598Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3641Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3683Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3689Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3695Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3961Large.jpg)
(http://[size=18pt]OBI Wan Brings the Bling![/size]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4056Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3919Large.jpg)

And a few more....

CHUCK NORRIS!!!
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3811Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3711Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3886Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3657Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3650Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3652Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3604Large.jpg)

Damnit Chuck Norris.. Your blocking my head.
Congrats on the Gold E&C, damn close race it was.

I only have one complaint for the weekend. The Damn repetetive music..  Same songs every 2 hours. all weekend long.?? cmon. get some more material in there.

First off,  Great weekend!  Nanimo has always been a great festival.  Nice location,  great paddlers area and beer tent, everything ran smoothly with very few snags that I have heard about.  about the only thing I would want to suggest is getting different medals.  (Like the Alcan ones).  Or at least engrave the Division on the back of them so years form now you know what division it was! 

Great job everone!  A lot of teams have really improved a lot.  It Will be interesting to see what hapens in Victoria.

I have to agree that Nanaimo was excellent AGAIN this year.  Four years running it has been a big highlight in the season.  It doesn't have the same level of competition at the top tier as Alcan, or even Victoria, but that is more than offset by the great venue and the good spirit.  The Rec races are very competitive and fun to watch.  Lots of smiling people.  Bar none, it's the best beer garden going.  Any who is thinking about Nanaimo next year, just do it.  You won't regret it.  On a slightly different note, I stopped by the finish line tent and saw (it's true) video equipment!  If you aren't sure why this is significant, Nanaimo is run by GO, the same people that put on the Richmond festival.  There was some controversy last year at Richmond based on the lack of stop-capture equipment on the finish line.  It looks like that lack has been addressed.  In fact, while I was there a photo-finish race came in, and the officials put the image straight onto a laptop and made the right call.  It's great to see Dragonboat racing improving in all areas-racing, officiating, technology.  OK, I'll stop gushing now, but it was a great weekend. 

One thing that would have made Nanaimo better is if the race organizers spent more effort on seeding teams.

Team Phoenix won Silver by 2 boat lengths, they should have been in a higher division.
Save On Foods Dragon Slayers won Gold by 2 boat lengths, they should have been in a higher division.
Blu by U should have been in a lower division.
Malaspina, Selkirk, and Bastion were well off the other Diamond teams. They should've been in a lower division.

That's just some examples of teams that didn't end up racing where they should.

At Alcan they spend a lot of effort seeding so that at the end the semi-finals and finals are close. Nanaimo now has 75 teams, that's plenty enough to have close races in every final. It's time for GO to put the effort in to making sure that similar teams end up against each other.

I was disappointed by that aspect of the races.

You're right, there were some lopsided finals, but I don't think it was the seeding.  After about 1:30pm Saturday afternoon the times posted were ridiculously fast.  The team I race with posted times at 11:00am and 1:00pm-ish that were 1 second different.  Teams that raced after that got steadily faster.  I think there was an average improvement of 10-15seconds, which is an enormous amount of time.  For example, in their first race Ssssteam Heat went 2:20, but in their second race they went 2:06.  You can see how this would throw off the second day rankings.  I'm not trying to dis anyone, but if Blu By U raced in the later afternoon they probably got the benefit of the improved conditions, and therefore got bumped up a division ahead of a team that maybe raced earlier in the afternoon and didn't get the benefit.  If you examine the results you can see the faster conditions slowly speed up over about an hour as teams got 2, 5, and then 10 and 15 seconds faster than their morning times. This same advantage didn't hold up on the Sunday as times stayed more or less consistent from am to pm.  I also don't remember this happening in previous years, so likely it was some anomoly.  I guess my only point is that it may not have been the seeding that produced the two or three less competitive finals results. 

I guess that is why Alcan has pools to reduce.  It reduces the tide effect.  If you notice the Alcan schedules all of the teams in a pool within an hour of each other, seems fair especially on tidal water. 

BTW, Alcan used 9 rankers this year to seed teams, we definitely do try and seed appropriately.  If you have ever tried to seed it is a fair bit of work, for those that did it this year, the paddlers should thank you for all the time and effort you put in.

I am sure Nanamio tries to seed appropriately so they just need to split them into pools now and draw so many from each pool to move into the various divisions.  If they use pools then the seeding must be done as best as they can or you would get lopsided finishes (unless some teams threw a race or two, but nobody would do that, right).  LMAO

Until next year's Alcan, paddle hard everyone.

There were a few lopsided races but over all I beileve the heats were seeded to the best of the Race organizers knowledge. I for know it is pretty hard to predict what to expect of an out of town team (IE the Eye of the Dragon.) and them and FM won thier heats even though they were not ranked. Save On Foods got edged out by The Eye and were forced to race the GD in the their next race so that basically knocked them to the lower divisions. You can't really tell what teams bring to out of town festivals as well as many times not alltheir paddlers can make it.
The tides were very fast as well and when I was steering one race the boat got grounded even though I was not far from the green markers! LOL (In fact I think S&S dragonballs had to get out and push!  :shock:)
There were more close races than blow outs so I think everyone was pretty happy. Thats racing!

Nanaimo ended up with some close races and some lopsided races. In the future I believe that there can be more close races and fewer lopsided ones.

The biggest factor in getting close races is the accuracy of the ranking ahead of time. I agree that using times can be part of the problem especially in tidal waters. Like Alcanranker said using pools can help, or the other thing that Alcan does is compare the team time to the average time of the teams in the heat instead of just the actual time. And you'll get some teams that change lineups or teams that merge so you can't fault ranking those incorrectly. But the more effort in ranking accurately the better the races.

Alcan puts a lot of effort into ranking and they rank ALL the teams, not just the top teams, so that Rec D and Rec E races are close too. The result is good close races on Sunday. I give them an A or even an A+ for ranking. That's the standard that all organizers should aspire to.

GO did an ok job of ranking, I don't want to roast them, but they didn't do as good a job of it as could be so let's not whitewash it either.

If you want close races it takes a lot of effort ahead of time to make sure it happens.

I give GO a C in the seeding category in Nanaimo.

I look forward to more improvements in racing thanks to suggestions from everyone on this forum.


rb

I too had a great time! My only complaint was the lack of women's events. Last year, we competed against mixed teams on the Sat. and against women's on the Sunday for the semi's and finals. Which seemed to really work out. This year, we raced against only 1 woman's team the whole weekend (other than the top 4 women's at the end of Sat.) and had to fight to stay in it against mixed. We ended up in the Gold A Final, and got 4th by a matter of seconds. Yes, we had an awesome weeked, yes, we had some of our best times, yes, we beat some mixed teams, but we really didn't have a chance to medal. I think they should also take in to consideration that there are some all women's teams out there and use Sunday to pit women against women! :D

I would have agreed with paddlerbums predictions for the top 10 in Nanaimo except that sssteamheat was paddling with only 18 all weekend. It's been a long time since they placed in a Jade div. Having said that I still beleive the officials tried to place teams to the best of their ability; however it does seem odd that all 4 Jade final A's times beat out all 4 Diamond B's times. Special mention:  Kudos to fifth moon for an awesome first race on Sunday!!  A great event; can't wait for next year.

Oh, I also forgot to say..YAY for the women's race on Sat.! That was a great addition! So, thanks for that! We very much appreciated the honor of being able to race in it! :lol:

Yes definately a great weekend. My first festival ever. Now to address the ranking issue, having not been to a festival before, it appears that the organizers did a fairly decent job. One thing that everyone should take into consideration though, is there are many new teams, most from out of town so it is very hard to predict how they will do. I know with our team, the majority of our boat was made up of "Festival Virgins". And a few from Spirit Dragons who were not going to the festival.(Thank you to them for all thier help and completing our boat!) We made some mistakes our first race, corrected in the second and came second by 1.23 seconds. Because of this, we placed lower than we probably should have been seeded. Our first semi we did well and if you noticed, we didnt win the gold by much, due to a lost boat but managed to recover. Thus is the peculiarities of racing. I think if you look at many of the times and look at what happened in those races or those leading up to them, you could probably talk to the teams and find out the reasons for the differences, but the organizers cannot base seeding on contributing factors or they would give the appearance of favourtism.

On that note, I do look forward to moving up a couple of seeds for Victoria, and through practice, I know our team will do it. Good luck and see you on the water.

There is something screwy with the posted times for the Diamond B final.  There is no way we (TD Lightning) had a 2:33 race.  Maybe 2:23.  I was running a stop watch for the purpose of calling the race piece and while not accurate, it was around 2:26 when I stopped the watch after crossing the finish line.

The posted results are even more unbelievable when the race immediately after (Diamond A final) posted a 2:18 and 2:19 for the top two times.

Otherwise, it was a great event.  Look forward to going back next year.

StraightLine.

As someone who was unable to paddle this past weekend, but took in about 90% of all the races, I want to commend the stern's on each and every team.  That water was wicked and if you look at the times for teams in each race you'll see where the differences were, especially from Sunday.  Times increased by up to 20 seconds for a team in each race.  The sterns in the afternoon had one heck of a time holding on.  Some of them lost their boats and recovered them as quickly as they possibly could and got out of the way of other boats.  Other were holding on for dear life and didn't even get the opportunity to signal their drummers as it took both hands to control the steering oar.    
Way to go sterns.. without you, our boats do NOT go straight.  Keep up the great work.  Your paddlers love you.

Thanks for the kudos Soggy Bottom, we had a lot of fun this weekend!  :)

For the most part the race grid was fine with a couple of wobbles here and there.   Our crew has certainly been on the unfortunate end of it in the past (Absolut Adrenaline and S&S first race last year, GDs second race last year) but had a much fairer draw this year despite going up against Mentor Mariners in lane 3 who did take first at Paddlefest a couple weekends ago.

Race 2 had E&C and Extreme Currents in it (both strong crews), not to mention Team Phoenix although as this is their first year as that crew, it's hard for the organizers to sort out how they would rank.

Race 7 had Dog Paddlers and Blu by U, Blu by U has really developed in the past couple years and the Dog Paddlers are displaying a stunning growth since last year.

Race 11 was the most surprising with Eye of the Dragon in lane one, they certainly scare me when it's time to race.  Dragon Slayers have really come on strong in the last couple seasons too.

I'm afraid I don't know much about Fluid Motion but having them in Lane 1 against S&S caused the ripple that bumped Sssteam Heat down.  Sssteam Heat still did phenomenally well despite missing a seat!

The wide swings in time are due to the water and wind conditions.  Placings were done on points with time breaking ties so the only time some of those flukey times would come in is if you have multiple teams with the same point values, which there always are.

Regardless, I always have a lot of fun at Nanaimo, it's a great festival.  Nice work Go for running another fun event.

Ahh but you see, We narrowly squ e e e zed by ssSteam heat in race 34 on saturday by just over half a second. It was a phenominal race to be in let me say.. a time of 2:05.74 vs. 2:06.12. What surprised me was E&C's performance in the semi and the final, a few people on our boat won't be living that down anytime soon. Way to go lethal for jumping back in the boat again and toughing out a few races ;) Now where's my photo DVD??

umm.. that race 2 being Race 34 i think

Once again, a wonderful time in Nanaimo.   

I admit, how they organized the seeding could have been better; however, the timing, the race officials and race organizers seemed to work very efficiently.  The only obvious problems I saw were a) no start horn for the first few races, b) a really cool current by mid afternoon Saturday, c) really screwy angles at the starts due to water conditions and d) medical emergency on the docks.  Note that only one problem could be handled by the organizers, the rest, well, it's beyond our control.

I felt safe leaving our stuff at the paddlers' village with their security.  (Was there even security for the paddlers' village in Alcan?)  Although heavy handed, I prefer Nanaimo's volunteers for front line security and the four to six bicycle RCMP constables.  I did not see the commissionaires until after the paddlers' village was more or less cleared out.

The beer garden was a blast on both days.  I only caught the tail end of the paddlers' dance, but it seemed liked everyone was having a good time.  I have to admit, I missed last year's volunteers who would forget to collect the beer tickets.  In any case this year's staff was very friendly and efficient.

I spoke to some locals (taxi cab driver, restaurantier, store clerk), and they were very supportive of the db festival.  Events like this brings back the vibrant summer time feel downtown Nanaimo used to have.  I was surprised to learn that the organizers were hoping to make it a larger event in the years to come, which may draw out more LML and perhaps other off-islander teams :)

As far as the hotels are concerned, I did not really enjoy the Howard Johnson we stayed at on Terminal Avenue.  Although just past the underpass from the festival, the in-house restaurant only opened for breakfast and lunch, the pool closed too early (9pm), the night club reminded me of my younger days living in dreaded Surrey (if anyone remembers the Newton Inn, you know what I am talking about), and the security there. . .  IMHO they need serious training in hospitality.  Of course, if that UNNAMED women's dragon boat team from out of town had not been drunk, rowdy and playing bum-darts, security would not have been called to their room.   :P

Lethal Weapon, I am still trying to give you money for the Alcan photos!

Hopefully, we will see you in Victoria!

I'm going to have to disagree about the Howard Johnson. We had a great stay there. The Staff was great, I had no issues with them and they were So much more friendly than the staff at the Days Inn a few km's down the road. That's what I wasn't impressed with. First of all, we booked 4 rooms at the Days including 2 cots. When we check in, the absent minded women at the front desk took 20 minutes to figure out who we were and said we could NOT have a cot in our rooms because it's on the upper level??? So we resorted to putting a couple people on the floor, resulting in a couple unhappy and sore individuals the next morning. Another thing, we were walking back to our rooms friday night not a word being said amongst us and we were scorned and threatened, he threatened to kick us out if only a single complaint was heard etc. etc.. Not sure what warranted that kind of behaviour. Very unfriendly staff, could have been due to previous years though putting up with us paddling adicts.. but still.. We checked out in the morning and moved to the Howard Johnson.

I must admit, DuckMan, that the front desk, cleaning, waiters and maintenance staff the the Howard Johnson were helpful, courteous, efficient... in a word, GREAT.  Unfortunately, everything else stands in my post about the facilities and their internal security staff (who doubles as their bar security).  I don't think it is necessary for young security staff at a hotel to be condescending and confrontational when dealing with people that are twice their age.  Leave the "fight gloves"  for the bar scene, be hospitable with the hotel guests. 'nuf said.

Perhaps you had a similar experience to us at the Days.. I just didn't have the opportunity to come face to face with the security staff at this one. But anyways.. Back to dragonboating.. I'm waiting to see more photo's posted..

Thanks, I still hurt.....On it sway Bro!



Ok Ok
here are some more Pics....enjoy

(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3658Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3725Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3635Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3598Large-1.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3999Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3591Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3668Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3560Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4062Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3671Large.jpg)

and a few more of some faces in the crowd....

(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3614Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4027Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3716Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3627Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3498Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3547Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3628Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB3490Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4060Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4066Large.jpg)
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b79/Lethal_Weapon/Nanaimo2006/86BB4024Large.jpg)

You missed the usual CCW assault... Here's the pre-game show at the foundry friday night..
(http://www.teamfluidmotion.com/images/IMG_0407.jpeg)
(http://www.teamfluidmotion.com/images/IMG_0412.jpg)

Here are my shots,

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/6462a414.jpg)
A more civilized way of steering a dragon boat.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/3a3755a0.jpg)
Tillicum Laylum and seaplane launches.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/23775e74.jpg)
In dire need of waterproofing.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/bd457401.jpg)
The rowdy crew.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/cfd9b628.jpg)
In the Navy.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/cd786a08.jpg)
The lonely walk to moment of reckoning.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/727218a7.jpg)
M' crew.

Last shot... at the Navy.

(http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/5fbea4fc.jpg)

Great shots! I wish I could share mine, but the last time(s) I tried to upload, it didn't work too well. Sorry! :P

Wow...what a great weekend!  We had a marvelous time in Nanaimo and it was one of the smoothest run festivals I have been to in 4 years...conditions are always interesting in Nanaimo - and that makes racing fun.  Nanaimo is one of the friendliest and funnest (word?) festivals around and it just gets better and better.  Congrats to all the winners (my team won gold in Bronze...go figure)...and congrats to everyone else as well.

A truly great weekend!

Did anyone else see Jack Layton hanging around?
He might lead the NDP but I didn't see a wrist band whilst he was in the paddler village.. ;)

That wasn't Jack...it was his look a like...he was staying at the Coast...I nearly nailed him with a wet toliet paper ball.....I was throwing them off the 6 floor and trying to hit one my paddlers car....one got away from me and nearly nailed "Jack"....I think his wife was not impressed with me (BTW..unless Jack has a Caucasian wife now, I do stand corrected.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say what an great weekend, all the teams did so well. I know our team had a blast; hope we didn't bug anyone too much with our sneak water gun attacks  :lol:
As for the naysayers implying that our ranking (we took home the Silver in Jade) was mostly as a result of the water conditions; let me remind you that we did in fact place either 2nd or 1st place in all of our 4 races and we did so being short 2 paddlers, so I think it's safe to say we didn't just "get lucky". We got that ranking because we have a strong, dedicated team. We did have a few crazy close races, we got placed with some really great teams. Fluid Motion - you really gave us an awesome race (twice) - hope to see you at the Richmond fest!

all i gotta say is, Steam Heat, you better watch you backs at the upcoming races... MMWWWAAAAHHHHAAAAHHHAAAA!!  :lol:

big cheers for Nanaimo!  it was my second year participating and my team and I had a GREAT time!  thanks to all the organizers, marshalls, volunteers and the other teams!!

hands up to all the steers!  i wasn't sure how we were supposed to make it to the finish line with having to start on a 45 degree angle but we made it!!  Gold in the Silver Division... and yes, it seems there's a consensus that we should've been placed in a higher division, but we did what we did to the best of our ability and that's where we ended up... they were all still super races none the less!

This was my first away festival and I had a blast. The venue was well laid out and the beer garden was fantastic especially since the d.j. played almost all our requests.
 The races were a lot of fun and the winds, the current, our team high fiving the bouy in our final race only added to the sweet rewards at the end new jewellery and cold glasses of wine. 
It was tons of fun hope to do it again next year.
 

Security was the best I've ever seen at a festival. After the racing was over, people LEAVING the paddlers' village were being asked to show their wrist bands - that's excellent.

All around fabulous festival - congratulations and thanks to all organizers and the army of volunteers. Special thanks to crew marshall Greg who is absolutely born for the job.

To the organizers of Nanaimo, it was an awesome festival everything ran perfectly.  Paddlers village was great!!!! the organizers of Alcan should be taking notes.

Not sure, but I think i got race 49 silver semi a video'd.  It has Blazing Paddles in lane 1, Paddle Pushers in lane 2, Fire and Isis in lane 3 and Tillicum Lelum in lane 4.
Race 49 Video (http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m92/gingersnaps1969/Nanaimo%20Dragon%20Boat%20Festival%202006/?action=view&current=ae4310dc.flv)

Does anyone have a shot of a dragonboat hitting the sandbar at the Nanaimo DB Fest this year?  I am looking for a copy of this picture.  PM me if you have it.

Thx.

Wow..I was there and didn't even hear that! (Was it your team?? lol) What happened??? I'd love the scoop! And there was a sandbar? I suppose our steersperson musta known..lol

Ya, I must have missed that also! Any info on that?