Dragon Boat West

1. Race Grid was wrong and required a brain surgeon to figure it out
2. What lanes? - Free for all
3. All lanes were fast because the start line was not used
4. Required Ouija Board to figure out team standings
5. Start starts when boats aren't lined up sometimes half a boat length ahead or behind - At least in Edmonton, you had a start line......
6. As a local, we were truly embarrassed. If we could, we would have refunded the entrance fee to all the teams.
7. Seattle was a GONG SHOW, by far the worst event our team has raced at.
8. Don't even add this to your calendar next year, race somewhere else and save yourself the aggravation, humiliation, and stress.

Positive comments:

1. Boats are raced on water
2. No one died
3. Teams were rescued by the police, after a few multiple capsizes.
4. All teams were laughing - not because of a great event but just due to how hysterical the racing was
5. Spare paddles supplied by the festival were UNBREAKABLE - the old plastic black blades with the silver aluminum shaft
6. No race officials could get yelled at because they were moving to fast too find.
7. Free toliet paper in the "honey buckets"
8. we got to meet the entire Portland Wasabi family, friends, coaches, dogs, cats, parents, fans....holly cow, the whole gang was in Seattle.




Please don't add anymore comments because I don't think anyone is listening.

Holy cow again! Did I miss something here? I better go to bed... way too late to be up on here anyway...  :?

Sounds like they really dropped the balls here. Like BernMan, I'd like to hear what happened.

drop the ball would be an understatement. the question we have for our organizers is "did you even have the ball, to begin with"?

What about the PDBA qualifiers for US raceoff teams?  Did those races go well?

i'm not sure. the races (seattle festival races, corporate races & PDBA) were all mixed together. Couldn't tell which races were on?

We felt bad for some of the out of town teams on Saturday. They raced their first race in the morning and they waited until the second race in the afternoon. When I say they waited...they WAITED (at minimum 4 to 5 hours)

As some of them raced in the afternoon, some of them found out through "RUMOURS" that the afternoon races did not "matter" - they were just "FUN" races. They waited all day, to find out only one race counted (the morning one).

To our guest, we are truly sorry. We will have some meetings here to fix this festival.

It was a small group for the PDBA qualifier so there were very few races. Four to be exact. The PDBA qualifiers were in the mornings before the weather picked up and caused the race conditions to get ugly.

For the open race, there was one race. For the mixed, there were three races.

Senna

Are there results for the PDBA qualifiers?  Which team came out on top?

How many boats capsized, and why (weather conditions or team error)?

First Heat      
   PDBA Pr. Mixed        
Lane         Place   Time
1   Wasabi Burn   4   2:36.33
2   BAD Mixed   2   2:27.13
3   Hot Sake   3   2:29.42
4   SSPO      1   2:18.49

Second Heat
   PDBA Pr. Mixed      
Lane         Place   Time
1   Wasabi Burn   1   2:16.96
2   BAD Mixed   3   2:20.09
3   SSPO      2   2:17.43
4   Hot Sake   4   2:31.24

Third Heat
   Premiere Mixed      
Lane         Place   Time
1   SSPO      1   2:20.49
2   BAD Mixed   3   2:23.53
3   Wasabi Burn   2   2:22.45

Heat 1 - Wasabi and BAD collided somewhere in the middle of the race.
Heat 2 - Wasabi put together an awesome finish piece to make up a boat length.
Heat 3 - SSPO put together a great run.

Before you continue trashing the races this weekend remember a couple of things:

1. Waters Edge was suppose to run the entire event and dropped out last minute.  Organizers and PDBA said "show must go on" and in a couple of months put it together.  Kudos to the organizers

2. Organizers didn't control the weather or the winds

3. We got plenty of sun

4. Been racing for years, S%*@T happens, and then you race...

Not sure the background to what happend with Water's Edge and you are right "the show must go on". Kudos to those volunteers and staff how did their best. The water conditions were not good, but the issues that were brought forward in my rant, is a result of numerous teams (Captains/coaches and paddlers) warning, telling and recommending fixes throughout Sat and Sun. S%*@T does happen but it was all AVOIDABLE. if they would have only listen - stopped/analyzed - fix the "IMPORTANT" issues and moved on, things would have been better. By continuing to move forward (with the known issues), just for the sake of moving forward was a HUGE mistake. Please read the comments, take it as feedback and we can discuss this at our wrap up. I hope no one just takes this event as just "S%*@T" happens.....it was completely avoidable.

We raced in Seattle on the weekend. We weren’t expecting too much in the way of race organization and figured it would be more for fun.

There were 3 categories of races there – the PDBA race-offs, novice teams 1-day only (Saturday), and Rec teams 2-day regatta (all regular db teams were in Rec, including some that raced in the PDBA race-offs)

Saturday

-   Was scheduled for 2 Seeding races using time to determine Divisions on Sunday
-   Seeding was random and did not matter because it was based on time
-   It’s a big body of water, a little bit of wind and the waves start
-   BuKs are not great in rough water IMHO
-   We had very little freeboard due to being a heavy team in a BuK in fresh water (less buoyancy than saltwater)
-   We took on water whenever it was rough which was most of the time
-   Races got way behind schedule because of some wind and two submerged boats in the afternoon
-   In the afternoon they decided to change the schedule and complete the Novice races first
-   They shortened the course to about 250 m because the start area had bigger waves
-   The Rec teams waited a long time for their 2nd heat
-   Wasabi had about 7 teams there and left before the 2nd Rec heats were finished (their bus was booked for 5:00 and couldn’t be changed)
-   They decided to let the remaining rec teams race for fun


Sunday

-   They used the 1st heat times from Saturday to determine the divisions for Sunday (good idea)
-   Sunday it was only the Rec teams (about 30) and it went better
-   They shortened the course again when it got windy


Other notes

The water is nice, fresh and clean.
There’s a nice big park to spread out in.
The sound system had some serious problems.
Volunteers were nice, although many were not very experienced (one guy on the dock was about 80 and we were worried about him)
Starts were not always lined up.
One boat didn’t have a head.
The grid was very confusing. Add to that several mistakes and it was nearly impossible to follow.
Seattle is close, probably about the same or less travel-time as Nanaimo, Victoria, Kelowna, Vernon etc
The water conditions are bad if there's any wind

For us we had great races against BAD Mixed and Waverunners. Overall it was kind of frustrating although also fun to go to a new city. I don’t think we’ll repeat any time soon.

Hello fellow racers~!

I'm Koichi Kitazumi the race director of this festival.  Without a doubt we made mistakes over the weekend and I personally can recognize and agree with the reasons stated here on this thread.  I myself experienced some of those frustrations and disappointments first hand in our performance as the organizers.

Altho our primary function for the last 6 years as a DB festival has been to to raise funds for Team Survivor Northwest (http://www.teamsurvivornw.org/?content=Seattle_Dragon_Boat_Festival_2009 (http://www.teamsurvivornw.org/?content=Seattle_Dragon_Boat_Festival_2009)), the true goal is provide a premier festival for YOU. And we can’t do that without YOU telling us what you want.  That being said, I want to thank those on this thread, especially DBWEST and EOTD, for the explicit feedback and welcome any other feedback that will help us build a better event going forward.  My personal email address is [email protected].

Despite the errors and trials, there were many highlights, one of them being that there was a festival within Seattle City limits for a 2nd year in a row, which many on the west coast and in B.C. have been asking for for over a decade.  This is something I have dedicated the last 13 years of my life on trying to build and maintain.  There were many learnings for myself this year, many of which I will apply to next year's event.  Oh YES, there will be another event next year, and I promise that it will be better.  So please tell me what you would like to see and what will it take to get you there.  We're committed to doing whatever it takes!

Paddles up!
koichi kitazumi
Seattle Celebrating Life! Dragon Boat Festival
race director
[email protected]

A few years ago, Harrison was a mess.  There was high level support and today it flourishes.  Would be good to see the same for Seattle.

That being said, anyone know why Kai did not race in PDBA?

As a paddler who went through the drama in Seattle this past weekend, here are my comments (for what they're worth).

Totally appreciated the efforts of the volunteers who pushed through to make sure that this event happened, and am completely in support of the spirit of the festival...however:

- were told by another team that the last race on Sat was for "fun" after waiting 5 hours with no contact from anyone associated with the event that things had changed and were, apparently, the only heat of the delayed heats to go for the full 500 m after several heats were run at 350m
 - coaches and managers meeting on both Sat and Sun happened while we were on the water and no efforts were made to noftify us of changes in the grid nor was there an effort to communicate to us afterward
- raced against the mens team from Wasabi and were told that our second place finish would count as a first place finish only to find out later that we would need to race again "for fun" and would move on regardless.... needless to say that we were a little relaxed in that heat
- had difficulty in hearing the starts called and was a little concerned that we did not indeed have alignment at the starts
- concerned over other team encroaching upon our lane without support of race officials to call the other team out, seemed of little interest to the officials on the water


All and all I appreciate the efforts of the volunteers of this event and certainly understand the complexity of managing such a gong show, however would truly have appreciated better communication from those directly affiliated with the event and (perhaps) willingness to accept input from those of us that were offering with the intent to rectify the situation.  Harrison 2 yrs ago all over again,  I hope that we can learn from this experience and turn it around.

As a Canadian visitor,

I can honestly say that our 3 plus hour trek was worth it,  but not from a racing standpoint...bit of a gong show for certain.
Practice yes. There were waves, uncertain starts, lane crossovers, you name it ...it happened. It was hard to take seriously. adding to that a 5 hour wait  only to learn that someone had a bus to catch...please,that was just silly.

On a positive note, as weird as the festival was, there was still a pretty good vibe.
The volunteers were great, especially on the docks.
The Thai food was delish.
the water was rather nice. Didn't smell like poo..like some place I know.
It was nice and sunny.
With a nice breeze
The beer was good plus there was "happy hour", good luck having that in Canada.

So thanks to our Seattle hosts, I know they will learn from this, and as our Canadian paddlers will attest to,  we've had our fair share of embarrassments...can you say "Harrison"

One more thing, everyone had to show ID to get into the beer garden.

That caught a lot of people off-guard, a lot of paddlers don't bring ID down to the site, so they couldn't get in, even if they were 60. The gatekeepers at the entrance said it was a requirement for the festival to get a license, that everyone had to have ID on them. So unfortunately a lot of people couldn't even get in. They learned and brought ID on Sunday.

Organizers, it would have been good to put that in your FAQs or in the race package so people are aware to bring ID.

Alright my club will think twice before heading to Seattle. However, we've had some good times at the Port of Commencement in Tacoma. Kent is also another good race; too bad Seattle can't uphold the tradition of good old Washington dragon boat racing.

Glad you got to meet the Wasabi team, those guys give us hell back in Portland and practically all the races we go to.

See you in Portland the 12th/13th.