Dragon Boat West

Hello everyone,

Had a blast at the Portland DBF last weekend. Curious to hear how Penticton went? Any results? Comments about the festival experience? Heard they had quite a number of teams.

Cheers!

Had a blast in Penticton this weekend. Weather was almost perfect! (Lots of sun, nice breeze followed by blowing gusts). 2nd round on Saturday was cancelled because of sudden winds, start grid was full of whitecaps so there was no way to line up the start. The last couple of races you could see an added 10-20, heck 30 seconds on teams times. Good call GO organizers. IMO the GO organizers did a good job improvising Sundays race grid to compensate for not having Round 2 results. I noticed they put up a revised race grid but my race was unchanged. Curious if anyone else felt like they should have shuffled around some more teams for round 3? The results have disappeared from the GO webpage, can't find them anywhere. All I can say is the mixed and womens diamond and platinum finals were all super competitive and VERY entertaining races to watch. My only complaint was that lane 1 (closest to the beach) felt cramped and it was really shallow. Anyone here have any theories on boat times in shallow vs. deeper water? Looking forward to hearing more about the Portland race as well, surprised this forum is not buzzing right now with news from either event, this topic has over 100 views already and portland has over 400 views.
Ryan

Hi Ryan
I think many use Portland to spend an extra couple days at Voodo donuts or the tax free malls
As far as Penticton I know of lots of us dashed home through smoke, ashes and the scary scenery of fire leaping from tree to tree and may be that's caused a damper.
We'll see

Btw try gorace.ca
I was able to see race times there just a sec ago
~Cait

I have the exact same experience as you did on Lane 1, I can easily see the bottom in Lane 1 plus I was one of the first boats to race on that lane early morning at 9AM, it was impossible to see anything at the finish line, the only thing I could see was boat 2 and the finish marker for lane 5, everything else to the left was a black mark. I even took a picture and showed to my team mates and everyone agreed to the same problem. I think the race course should be out further by another 100 feet! I just put myself 1" away from boat 2 and race right beside it because I was completely blind in the sunlight. I have already spoken to the officials about what happened as I am unable to see and only can see the shallow water below me and how close to boat 2. I was not the one who got penalty in this race, there was another similar incident later on during that day where 2 teams got penalty times for their races. I was given a warning not to do it again. However this is my first time ever to race in Penticton, also first time on a Millenium F2000 and first time on fresh water. Also there were no lane markers to lead me which was the correct lane way to be on.

The team that helped steer for supported my actions and was very pleased with the racing results during this regetta.

I am still looking for the official time results for Penticton to be released because someone ripped race 45 off the posting board in Penticton. I wanted to see what were the finishing times were. All other postings were there except that one. I do know that particular race was very very close race between the top 3 boats crossing the finish line. It was so close, it was a hard call to make watching from shore.

I agree all the womens teams were super competitive especially for positions #4 and #5 only 16/100th of a second to determine your final team position.

were we the only team who was having trouble hearing the start commands in penticton? even though we were paying close attention we missed the horn to start 2 of our races.  it hasn't been a problem in previous years but it sure was this year.

I thought the races were generally well run and timely and that race management coped well with the wind problems.  I do have a few observations, comments and suggestions for next year:

1. Lanes 1 and 2 are too shallow - Bernoulli's Principle!  Google Earth shows that the littoral (shallow) edge extends about 400 feet from shore at the start end of the course.  Would suggest moving the start end of the course further out and skewing the course a little - it doesn't have to be parallel to shore.
2. I doubt that the course length was 500m because of the fast times...it would help to let teams know the length so they can prepare and strategise accordingly....or make the course length 500m.
3. For the first half of both days it was very difficult to see the right side buoy of the finish line because we were looking into the reflection of the sun on the water - suggest much larger finish line buoys.
4. Times posted seemed erratic - I timed many of the races my teams were involved in and could never come up with the same times as posted - varied as much as 5 seconds faster/slower even though I was using the same shore marks consistently(the parallax lines I could see in the finish line tent and the horn at the start end) I'm normally within 1 sec....whats going on?...
5. Hard to hear starter ... I never even heard the starter ask the outside boats if they could hear - you should know better!  The wider you make the course (and this was a very wide course for 5 lanes) the more amplification you need.

Felt that this year the Race Managment at Penticton had a little harder time, they seemed to be short a few volunteers this year, and had some less experienced ones that helped  to the best they could. The wind created some no doubt anxiety for them the first day, and they pushed to get the races thru the second day,maybe a little to hard,well over a hour ahead before 10.00 on the first day. The experience was more about getting the races in, rather than have the teams enjoy Penticton, but that happens sometimes and you had to understand the reasoning behind it, a few results had the same teams finishing both 1st and third, and times mixed up between teams. The Finals had almost over 90 percent winners from lanes 5 or 4. Again this is racing, and sometimes a current runs thru the course, felt sorry for lanes 3, 2 ,1 . Check the official results. All in All the experience was still positive, as Penticton is a great place to be in September, and i am sure any issues they had they will look after as it is a great event.