Dragon Boat West

Hi All, 

Haven't been too active on the posting front for a few seasons but thought that I'd zip out a quick thanks for all of the support the DB community has given (and in particular the West Coast DB community) to the San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival.   

I was quite surprised during these rougher economic times to see strong than ever demand for teams coming to SF.  We sold out early even after expanding the slots for visiting crews.  We now have a record 36 visiting crews that will be joining 30 local crews in the Rec/Comp division for what looks to be a great weekend of racing!   Adding the Rec/Comp to our Novice/Corporate and High School divisions and we have a fun but portly race grid that is bulging at the seems along with the secondary race divisions (Gender, Masters, and visiting team).

We'll try to get some results up as soon as possible so you can track how your favorite crews are doing.   Despite the race in Shanghai, the Canadian contingent coming down looks solid and set to  try to extend the tradition of singing O'Canada at the awards ceremony.   Certainly the local and other visiting crews will try to cast their vote against that outcome !  But it should be fun regardless and thanks again for your support. 

Best,

Hans
www.SFDragonboat.com
www.CDBA.org


VISITING CREWS:
Arizona Gila Dragons   Arizona
Austin Coolers   Austin, TX
Dragnum   Calgary
Topmade Fusion   Calgary
EDBRC - Got Pho?   Edmonton
Edmonton River Rats   Edmonton
Raising Hull   Edmonton
Wahine Kei Waka   Edmonton
Houston Heat   Houston, TX
KDBC Spirit   Kelowna, BC
Electric Dragons   Los Angeles
Killer Guppies   Los Angeles
LARD Black   Los Angeles
LARD Red   Los Angeles
Rogue Thunder   Los Angeles
Space Dragons Blue   Los Angeles
Space Dragons Red   Los Angeles
Space Dragons White   Los Angeles
Team DPW I   Los Angeles
Team DPW II   Los Angeles
KLM Blue Dragons   Netherlands
Despirit Housewives   Penticton, BC
Anniemaniacs   Portland
Portland Fire Dragons   Portland
Portland Golden Dragons   Portland
Wasabi Mixed   Portland, OR
Wasabi Women   Portland, OR
CentraCoast SurviveOars   San Luis Obispo / Morro Bay
Morro Dragons   San Luis Obispo / Morro Bay
Hot Sake   Seattle
Jetstart   Toronto
TD Lightning   Vancouver
Team LifeScan   Vancouver
The Eh Team   Vancouver
Vancity Thunder Dragons   Vancouver
Dragon Hearts Magnum   Vancouver, BC

LOCAL SF BAY AREA CREWS:

Absolute Straight Up
Absolute On the Rocks
Alameda Dragon Flyers - Posey
Alameda Dragon Flyers - Webster
BAD Dragons 1
BAD Dragons 1
BAD Dragons 3
Cal Paddling Bears
Davis Racing Dragons (DRD)
DieselFish I
DieselFish II
Dragon Healers Gold
Dragon Healers Red
Dragon Healers
Dragon Warriors 1
Dragon Warriors 2
Dragon Warriors 3
DragonMax I
DragonMax II
KP Dragons - Blueberry
KP Dragons - Broccoli
Lightwave
Paddle Past Cancer
Renegades
Ripple Fast
Ripple Furious
San Francisco Rainbow Koi
Suen Feng Loong (SFL)
Suen Feng Loong College (SFL)
Team Evolution

Race grids are up  :D

http://www.sfdragonboat.com/documents/2009/2009_sfidbf_race_schedule.xls

15 different cities and 3 countries! The competitions looks to be exciting!

Thank you Hans and Dragon Warriors for the race organization and for hosting Magnum in SF!
We look forward to the upcoming weekend of fun.

Good luck to all the teams going to SF especially the canadian teams! :P   Kick some butt False Creek teams!   

Counting on you Magnum to keep the Canadian winning streak going!  Best of luck to you and the other Canadian teams competing in San Francisco. 

Thanks! We will paddle our hearts out!

(http://i33.tinypic.com/23ln4m.jpg)

And perhaps now that our jersey just got an upgrade, we can win it to make it 4 years in a row lol

Go Canada Go!

We at Dragnum will do our most to keep the streak alive.

Good luck to all Canandian Teams, except Edmonton of course! (Kidding!)

Hahaha... what did Edmonton ever do? Hehehe...

Good luck Dragnum!
(& all other Canadian teams)

I was lucky enough to be on the crew that broke the curse and what an amazing race and time it was, apparently the audience went silent 3/4's through the race when they realized we were winning. I recall the local teams checking out our times throughout the day and noticing that we were seconds behind in other heats. Never worry about that, it's the head to head racing that counts.

Hopefully Puppy will be there to cheer you on and put a lucky loonie under your drum.

Paddle your hearts out!

Kelli

PS: It was great racing against you in Kelowna, we enjoyed the push to excel (even at our age  :shock:) and to race like we were 20 again!

Refer to down there lol. Sorry, double post.

Haha I think you're getting Dragon Hearts Magnum confused with Dragnum. Haha, if you meant us Magnum paddlers, it was great racing Masters this past weekend in the semis and finals! You guys definitely pushed us to our limits! Hope both rosters stay strong, so we can continue to push each other next season!

See what age can do to a person  :o!

Thanks for clarifying, all those black uniforms gets me confused.

Have a great time regardless.

Any results from the Canadian teams?

A few tweets out there ... canucks must be busy soaking up Cali wine ...

teamlard: LARD Black 1st place in second seeding race. #dragonboat http://yfrog.com/0rmc2yj
about 7 hours ago from Tweetie

teamlard:  LARD Black 1st place in their 1st seeding race, LARD Red 2nd place in their first seeding race. http://bit.ly/2NW8OM ... about 9 hours ago from Tweetie

teamlard: LARD Black 1st place in second seeding race. #dragonboat http://yfrog.com/0rmc2yj

dfipps: we just won 3rd place at the SF Dragon Boat Novice Div at SF Dragon Boat Festival ...about 3 hours ago from mobile web

Catbare:Am at SF Dragon Boat racing for the PG&E Power Dragons! We won the 1st of 3 races. Next race in about 30 min... about 8 hours ago from txt
Catbare: Came in 4th...but have a good chance of taking home some bling in our final race! about 5 hours ago from txt
Dang! 5th place... It was a great day though! ... about 4 hours ago from txt

UCB's United Commercial Dragons won bronze - yay! - SF Dragon Boat Festival - http://www.sfdragonboat.com/ ...about 1 hour ago from Tweetie

Another tweet ... whermel: San Fran International dragon boat festival: 2:22, 2:17 and 2:14 (men only) ... about 2 hours ago from mobile web [Assuming has to do with KLM as Wendy is from NLD]

Update from one local team, Dragonhearts Magnum (borrowing a couple of Masters of D'Zone and some Sudden Impact Blacks):  

Nice venue with really really good vendors.

1) Magnum won both their mixed heats (one with a time of 2:03 and I don't recall the second time but it was a little slower), have the fastest time overall. (YEY!!)

2) Ladies (combined with Air Canada Jetstart women iirc) won their heat by 7 seconds and are second overall so far for the womens'.

3) Gents (also combined with jetstart) came second in their heat by one second and are third overall. Magnum have 4 more races. Womens' Finals at 0800 and Mens' Finals at 0812. Visitors' cup at 1030 and semi-final at 1230. The final should be at 1600.

I'll add more updates as I get them. Good luck Magnum (and of course masters and SIBers)!

Got an update from Treasure Island!!

Womens Race': Magnum, SIB & Jetstart got SILVER!
Mens' Race: Magnum, SIB, Masters and Jetstart: GOLD!!
Masters Race: GOLD!!

Magnum got silver in the visitor's cup with air canada jetstart taking the gold by 0.5 of a second.

Magnum got first in their semi-final. Jetstart are out of the final so it's down to Magnum to keep up the curse.

Magnum got second in Comp A, no other details sent.

Edbrc Got Pho? Got gold in comp B

Unofficial Comp A medal placings:
1st LA Racing Dragons
2nd Dragonhearts Magnum (+0.44)
3rd A Portland team (go easy on me, I wasn't told who! :) )

Congrats to LARD on their win.

Sigh......The Curse is back...Good Job Magnum (and EDBRC...) U represented well!
Next year.....Play the US national Anthem....They haven't heard it for a while
I hope u are happy Hans... :x

looks like they did

http://readyandreach.wordpress.com/

That Portland team that took bronze in Comp. A is the Portland Fire Dragons.

FYI - LARD's win wasn't 100%American.  Our caller is Canadian.  ;)

Here's a link to Phil's Video of the Comp A Mixed Finals (both vimeo & youtube)

http://readyandreach.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/in-boat-video-09-sf-treasure-island-dragonboat-tournament-comp-a-mixed-final-teamlard-1st-place/

Congrats to all teams that made it to the Comp A finals. Those video cameras are just awesome!

Needs a good background song like last year's

The music from last year was the melodramatic music that the tournament plays and not added in by Phil.

Great racing and video!

Hi All,

It was an outstanding weekend of racing with spectacular hot weather throughout (though the more traditional breeze returned on Sunday afternoon). The racing was fierce and the festival bigger than ever.  My thanks to all of the teams for their support of our event...many have come for many years in a row now.

A big congrats to LARD for taking top honors and my personal thanks to them for sparing me from having to hear the Canadian anthem again (though our northern friends snuck it in a few times earlier in the awards ceremony anyway... very tacky ha ha!).  It was certainly a pleasure to have puppy up on stage with me at the end to hear the Star-Spangled Banner ! 

We already have some thoughts on what we can improve on for next year and will follow up with the team captains for more, but if you have any additional thoughts on what you liked, impressions, things to be improved upon, I'd love to hear them. 

As always, it is the broader DB community that helps to make this sport so special. 

Cheers!


Hans

Facebook link to the LARD POV of Comp A finals :)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=872756232376

LOL!


On behalf of Magnum, I'd like to thank you Hans, other race organizers, and volunteers for an awesome event. I'd also like to thank the Dragon Warriors for being such a good sport for hosting us. (I think I'm hooked to the watermelons and Cytomax you guys had haha!)

For almost all of us, this is our first time attending the SF festival and we had a BLAST! Coming home with more than one bling in a single festival is surreal (I think I lost my hearing for a good half hour due to the clinking noise of my medals...think of a bus full of paddlers with clinking medals lol)

It was also good to see that almost half of our team traded jerseys with other teams (Dragon Warriors, LARD, etc.)
 
As for improvement ideas for the future, perhaps tents/shelters in the marshaling area it self or nearby?
There was one tent but it was away from the marshaling area (near the staircase), and I always see tons of paddlers crowding in them.
(At times, Magnum, Jetstart, and other teams would resort to hiding out from the sun by crouching beside the recycling dumpster lol)

Thanks to all the teams for a great weekend of racing, and a shout out to Jetstart, you guys are awesome. Also, Congratulations to LARD for being the better team in the final race and taking it all. You guys deserved it, we'll see you next year at Alcan! :wink:

Look forward to returning to SF next year!

Hi Mike!

What kind of camcorder was it you used for the POV on the boat! It was so clear and the angle is so wide as well! Let me know if you ever find out and maybe our team can invest in one of these! Hehehe... Thanks!

This is what Phil (the main man who does all the videos) wrote to me and I guess other people as he has been getting multiple inquiries about his equipment after the release of this video:

Cool! The videos LARD turned out are pretty neat! We'll take a look at the first one as it sounds better and we'll see if the team wants to splurge! Thanks again for the reply!

i was really impressed by the video as well. really loved the different angles.
does anyone know anything about this camera?

Oregon Scientific ATC2K Waterproof Action Helmet Camera
http://www2.oregonscientific.com/shop/product.asp?cid=0&pid=709&scid=77

thanks everyone for your hypotheses on why the San Fran festival is not included in the ladder rankings.  It answers my question..sort of but just to correct those who think there are only a 'handful' or '2-3' Canadian teams in attendance, there were actually 14 Canadian teams competing at SFO this year, a significant amount considering there were a total of 33 visiting teams.  Pretty good representation, EH?

sorry, meant to post this on the other thread about rankings..will repost to the correct thread but don't know how to delete this one so will leave this one here...pls excuse the newbie (picture me head down, red face and a single tear drop rolling down my cheek).

CNET reviews on action cams.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/gopro-hero-motorsports-wide/4505-6501_7-33427941.html?tag=api&subj=re

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/oregon-scientific-atc3k-waterproof/4505-6500_7-33577679.html?tag=mncol;lst

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/vholdr-contourhd-wearable-camcorder/4505-6500_7-33771011.html?tag=mncol;lst

Anyone have an idea when next years festival will happen?