Dragon Boat West

Kelowna Dragon Boat Festival - Feedback
« on: August 21, 2006, 07:32:30 AM »   

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That was a  beautiful weekend in Kelowna....couildn't beat the wonderful weather they got.....

To help out the Kelowna Dragon Boat Festival, could you provide some feedback about this weekend's races?

IE: Did you like the race grid?
    Was the racing fair and equitable?
    What would you change?
    How was the water officials?
    Did you like the marshalling?
    What would you do to improve this festival?
    How was the racer's village?
   
PS Please provide constructive feedback.....


Thanks

HEY I know it was your birthday today but try to watch what you're cutting and pasting...

Kelowna is the race you're at you went through a toll booth not on a ferry.


add:  Nice to see you caught the required changes there Pup... ;)

Now My first posts makes me look a tad foolish...

I say, awesome! So far, anyhow! Let's see what happens on Sunday... :lol:

My main complaint is the boats. Were there any of them at all the same in terms of quality and shape? It is disgusting to see teams pay big bucks to enter in a competition only to end up in a crappy boat that just won't glide. No matter how strong you are as a team if you ended up in one of the many sub-par quality boats you had to really (really!) work hard just to get a decent time let alone a decent result in terms of placing. I respect the comment from some teams that they ended up in divisions that they should not have been in. Especially considering their previous racing results. But truly this isn't a result of them just not having a good race! You can see the difference. All of a sudden a team ends up in a much higher division gets slaughtered. They had no business of being there because they got a newer or cleaner boat that gave them a much higher placing in the first 2 rounds. Yes it is possible that they may have had the race of their lives but come on! I am not suggesting that my crew didn't deserve where they ended up in. I feel that the division they ended up in was where they belonged but they too had what one would consider the race of their year in the semi only to end up in a boat that was just so freaking crappy and come in very close 4th place finish and not get into the medal round! Guess which boat they had? Yup the #6 one only I am not sure if it was the blue or black numbered one. Did a #6 ever come in first or second in any of the rounds? If so then I could and would stand corrected. Overall the racing ran smoothly and pretty well on time the whole weekend. Kudos to all the teams in respecting the race officials requests to hustle it back to the docks after their races so that the organizers can load the next crews into their boats. And kudos to the crews for hustling it out to the start lines as requested by the officials so that the races could start in a timely manner. Congrats to all teams who did well and hopefully met their goals and objectives.

Overall I thought the races were run great.  The crew from Water's Edge did a great job!

My only complaint would be with the boats as well.  The footing was different win 3 out of the 4 races.

You know, this was a really great regatta. Puppy, you always do an awesome job at the marshalling area, so kudos to you! Our team loves your energy (and you love our chant..lol)! I was impressed that we ran ahead of time consistently ALL weekend!!! You never see that! The volunteers did a great job! And about all this boat controversy...seriously, our team didn't even hear about it until the afternoon on Sunday and it ended up being our lucky boat, so...I have NO complaints! YAY! :woot:

The only comment I have are the boats, well some of the boats.  We should ship them to Afghanistan and use them as shields for our soldiers as a missle would not be able to break them apart, they feel like 1 ton of lead on top of the water.

Kelowna Weekend was awesome!
Raceface had LOADS of fun. Even though we weren't registered as a team - we enjoyed the "feel" of the festival and clean water.
Thank You Kerry Chow[puppy] and Theresa Chan[ & the crew of Elephant and Castle] for chaperoning us.

Water's Edge for putting time to  organize this event & allowing us to manifest the docks.
Despite the boat problem - every other problem that arose was quickly assesed.

thank You to the following teams - without these following teams this young adult/junior team would have never gotten a chance to experiance what they had this weekend:
BC BLT[Booze Cruise Burnaby Lake Tsunami]
ScotiaBank2
Starbucks waverunners

thank you for taking  my team in and showing them that with in this sport there is a community and resources & great forms of leadership.

thank you Linda & Dennis the crew of  BLU BY YOU we had a BLAST coming down from kelowna with you - even if the bus driver was speeding at 50 km/hr :lol:

Last but not least, Thank you RaceFace, for the fast  9 months you've made cry, you've made me jump for joy, you've made me so excited that i almost took a leak in my board shorts,, you've  made me feel all nine yard of emotions - and you've made me proud - from the day we started paddling till now the time spent with you has been "a vocab that can't define how overwhemled i feel"

+++++ AND to Kerry - for being a caoch, a mentor,a parent,a friend, and a equal to all of us. With out you this team would be incomplete =]

Cheers,
Anna Wu
 

My teams unfortunately got saddled with the dodgy boats at one point or another as well.  In fact for one race where I thought something was wrong, I just asked my paddlers to do a quick check and yup, they were pretty dirty.

However unfortunate, I did impress to not worry about the dirty boats for two reasons:
- You'd have to have run a perfect race technique-wise before you're entitled to complain about something like that
- We didn't know if all boats were equally 'dirty' (unlikely as it was)

Having said that, cleaning boats is one element you can do to ensure fair and healthy racing.  I truly believe Water's Edge dropped the ball here in failing to ensure all the boats were cleaned appropriately.  I seriously hope they take these comments and feedback seriously.

Is it confirmed that they arbitrarily added time to team's races?  I hope it isn't.  That'd be entirely ridiculous, stupid and unprofessional.  There is no formula they can possibly apply to ensure a fair result.  That's got to be a rumour.

Just to clarify a couple of points:

a.  Watersedge was not responsible for equipment at this event.  The equipment was sourced, delivered, and setup by others, Watersedge was strictly race management.
b.  It is tough getting 12 "like" 6/16s nowadays so there are differences we all would like to minimize them I am sure.
c.  Time was and is NEVER added to "even" out the boats.  What was done is exactly the same as has been done for the last 3 years at Alcan and Kelowna.  No difference in the calculation.  Remember, the only time time is used is when the points are the same.  There may be one or two teams that are affected by this since they end up in a lower or higher division than they may expect but the rest would end up exactly where they should be and that is evidence by looking at the semi and finals on Sunday.  For one of the posters on this thread (not you Rossi), I know that some on that same team believed they were placed in the correct division since the competition was not as "easy" as they originally thought.
d.  I do know they will look at the calculations (they do every year) to see if the calculation is fair.  Do you want them to ignore tides (Alcan), very unequal boats, etc when doing a tiebreak?  If everyone does then that can be done but you may regret that (or another team may).
e.  I do know some want the exact calculation to be specified in the rules.  I think there can be a manager's meeting (maybe after the first round?) to let those interested know what will be done in an event of a tiebreak.  I do not know the perfect answer, just like there is no perfect system (unless we have each team race the same boat in a building where there is no wind, constant depth, constant tempature, etc.)

In the end someone will not like the result, I think everyone can agree on that.  For Kelowna, the results speak for themselves.  I think the championship races were close and that speaks a bundle on how they try and keep everything fair.

For all the teams out there, you did an awesome job out there and it is always great watching how competitive the races are.

See you all at Alcan next year!!

I know the Water's Edge Crew will take all the feedback and comments seriously. Any comments/feedback that is connected to the Festival side, will be passed to the Kelowna Festival Committee. 

Thank you everyone for any and all comments/feedback. This communication only helps us build the "BEST" Dragon Boat Racing community in the world.

Great marshalling

Good race grid

Pre-seeding was good, got almost all the strong teams in the middle

The slow boats were an issue that should have been corrected right away. Too many seeding races were impacted.

Great on-water referees

Great timing system

Good results boards, with the exception of a printer crapping out on you, it ran well.

Overall a good job by Water's Edge. People's standards are continually getting higher and the bar is being raised. The most important thing for me and probably for most people is getting all the right teams in the right heats so the the semis and final are extremely close between all boats. Unfortunately I felt it missed the mark just a little bit this time. It was no Alcan with 9 boats crossing the line within 2 seconds.

Thanks for the opportunity to give feedback and continually improve.

" How was the racer's village?"

I overheard a few comments from people/teams that they had wished there was a no smoking in the village policy like they had in Victoria.  Any chance that might happen?

The points system needs to be modified.

Teams that finish 2nd in each of the Saturday races (for 14 points) due to Platinum contenders in their races often find themselves in a division lower than they should be, while teams finishing 1st (due to a weaker field in one of their 2 Saturday races) & 3rd find themselves uncomfortably near the top when they may not be at that level.

Comparing times between Jade & Diamond divisions for teams that were 2nd & 2nd versus 1st & 3rd illustrates this point nicely.

What a great weekend in Kelowna! Hats off to Waters Edge for another great festival! I have always enjoyed the spirit and the camaraderie in the dragonboat community!  I met a lot of great people and had a ton of fun!

One concern to feedback, though....the lack of security at the Paddler's Village! Please pass on to the festival organizers. Thanks!

And a special thanks to Puppy! Thanks for always making things fun!  :D   Have a great time in San Fran!

Oh yes! How could I have forgotton! The security! Out of the entire weekend of running in and out of the village, I was only checked for a wrist band one time..so much for security! So, however great it is to be able to have friends and family at our tent, it's alot easier on the mind to leave your things at the tent knowing strangers aren't running in and out of the village. Yes, please pass on to the organizers that we'd like them to pay more attention at the entrance, thanks! :)

I thought the festival was great overall but I was quite disappointed to hear about the controversy with the different boats and boat 4 in particular. I'm convinced that in our case (Dragnum) that it cost us a trip to the Platinum semi. C'est la vive, it was nice to pick up some hardware in Diamond. I really think that a festival that bills itself as the second largest in North America should get the boat issue worked out. We didn't have these issues in Calgary. Also, I agree with the comment I saw someone make about the wake from passing boats. I know in at least one of our races that this was a real issue and the way the course is set up it affects some boats more than others which is not fair. Surely, something can be done to ensure that power boats are not speeding by the course during races.  Finally, I would love to see more lane markers if possible, even one more set would be useful.

Hats off to the Watersedge Crew on another great job running the event. Puppy as usual you were awesome.

Save for the issues around the boats, the festival was great.. the Waters Edge group definitely set the standard by which all other local festivals are judged, and continually prove that a dragon boat regatta can run on or ahead of schedule (though the 30 minutes ahead at the spring regatta was a bit much), while still maintaining a fun atmosphere.

On the boats, the structure of the race grid seemed to compound the problem with the dodgy boats.  If it had been structured the same way Alcan, where all teams race in both sets of boats on qualifying day, then the chance that a team be put in the wrong division using time as a tiebreaker may have been lessened.

Hi all,

I am a member of the River City Dragons team from Winnipeg.  I have to thank Puppy and crew for running an extremely fun and efficient festival.  Truely, from a Manitoba point of view, if our festivals were run like Kelowna, they would be truely fantastic.

Race grid works excellent.  I didn't notice the issues surrounding the boats (we did well in our races in lane 4 on Sat, lane 6 on Sunday and lane 2 on Sunday).

The water officials were great and very fair.
Marshalling was great (although last year, the "change" of steerers and drummers was quite funny and helped us loosen up.  Puppy, you always do a great job in the marshalling!)

This was our first year in the paddlers villiage.  Needless to say we will be back next year!!

Sean