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Dragon Boat Canada


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Canoe Kayak Canada

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[Colossus]

if anywhere, they should be up on the alcan web site

[Colossus]

...not posted yet.

[alcanranker]

They will be posted in the next few days.

[rtsdhvy]

Dragon boat festival dates in general are known months in advance, leaving paddlers adequate time to make arrangements to attend these festivals.Some of the members of my crew have in the past scheduled vacation days for the Monday(or the whole week in
some cases) following race weekend. I know this option may not be available to everyone, but if you can manage to do so is will greatly reduce the stress of having to
catch the last plane or ferry out that night after the final race.

A great big thank you to all race organizers and volunteers for all your work over the past weekend.

 

[madcap]

After all is said and done, what with the tides, winds, pleasure boats, barges, and assorted collisions etc, it was a great Alcan. Even the medals looked like beer bottles. I think all dragonboaters owe a great deal to the organizers and the volunteers. They moved in extra docks, the electronics were adequate (did anyone not make their marshalling due to poor communications?), the boats were clean and fast and for the most part well handled, and the site was clean and organized. So, a great big round of applause to  Alcan, Waters Edge, the Armed Forces, and all their staff and associates ( Jackie, Kerry, Greg and Louise, Brad, Andrew, Darby, Kat, Jake,Andrew,Leah, Starter Kim, Wendy and a cast of thousands too long to mention here). FCRCC sent their dragonboats and coach boats down the creek to help out and kudos to those volunteers that moved the boats, drums, paddles and life jackets back and forth. The festival ain't easy guys. It is one heck of a lot of work, and most of the people mentioned above both paddle, manage, and coach dragonboaters. So when you sit down at your computer and write about what you percieve as delays and terrible injustices to you and your team, think just a moment about what goes into these festivals. Work, work and then some more work. Thanks to everyone involved.

[puppy]

(Guts and Glory Footage) 
       

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fguRybks_uY

(Women Comp B final)
       

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1UZ3GFwV6k

[Paddlebunny]

CTV was at the Alcan festival on Saturday.

go to: 

http://www.vancouvertelevision.com/streamnews.jsp?id=/news/streaming_news.htm

Choose:  “View Streaming Newscastâ€� then click Saturday.  You can move the cursor to the 12  minute mark where the spot begins.  They were talking to TCC.

[James Cole]

As always... Alcan was incredible.

Fun racing, great competition, good people, fantastic venue.

FWIW... some analysis (just one paddler's opinion):

Pros - fantastic competition (the races on Sunday were great as always), great organization, great venue, the big screen TV, the general sense of "community".

Cons - the Geminis (good god those boats need to be discarded/destroyed), the weather, no marketplace (why not?).

Things to Improve - the quality of the beer at the beer garden was pretty damn weak, would have been cool to have had real-time result displays like you see at the World's, the VIP tent area should be moved somewhere that interupts traffic flow a bit less.

At the end of the day (a statement I'm growing to hate), it's IMHO the one "must do" race in North America.

Nice work all.

[IronGiant]

Enough with the kudos to Water's Edge, officials and volunteers already ... ok, just a few more ... boring specifics from us newbies.

Dock crew excellent, helpful ... and took care of our pregnant drummer (yes, we had 23 people and two drums on board). Mucho appreciated.

Water crew and Starter Kim were supportive when my steering "skills" couldn't compete with the media boat's wake on the way out and we took on 10 inches of water in 10 seconds. They rallied extra bailers and personal support ... we cruised from below the surface to the start line in no time. Mucho appreciated.

Officials were great about sorting out our first "meeting" with SunDragons as they bounced betwen lane 5 and 7 in Heat 21 ... officials honoured our request to ensure no DQ's as we figured a Gemini and an away team combo means steering just happens. Mucho appreciated. (I hope they'll come back because they are good, sincere competitors. I believe those earlier photos of the team "heading north" across the course is them, too. Ouch.)

Volunteers ... I would trust your five-foot, amazon-hearted volunteer at the racer's village gate with my life ... if anyone badgeless did get past her, they were probably already marked for death. They stepped up when the crowds swelled. If there's a recognition event for them post-festival next year, couldn't a sample of us wait on them or help out with that for a few hours? Mucho appreciated.

Echoing meowzers sentiments a bit, whether a youth team, a brand new team, or an away team, they should be encouraged to participate ... we're all hosts of the sport (cue violins) ... so when we're 40 years older and The Eh Team VII is full, we'll have someone to watch and cheer. As a two-year-old, we've greatly appreciated the support and advice we get at the festivals.

See you in Richmond ... kooky event or not (see 'Richmond' thread), it's a nice new facility and right on our doorstep, literally ... while most of River Road closes it's doors to paddlers, y'all are welcome to park in our back yard.

Just wish more Novice, D and C teams dished the dirt here ...

[paddleBOT]

Some more Championship results added on 1st page.  Thanks to everyone who contributed with results.

[Colossus]

Cathay Pacific Competitive A Championship
1. FCRCC A
2. Gorging Dragons (?)
3. Portland Paddling Club (?)
4. FCRCC B
5. Masters of DZone
6. W3Media.com
7. Pemberton Bald Eagles (2 second time penalty)
8. DCH New York

an interesting "stat" that was pointed out to me earlier is that all of the local teams in the comp A final paddle out of/are members of FCRCC.  says a lot about the calibre of the coaching available to members, and the programs runnning there.  I think this is also a subtle challenge towards some of the more competitive teams paddling out of lotus, pogue, and DZ to step it up a notch and claim some of that Comp A "limelight" as well. 

[bolshevik]

Ahem Colossus
Don't you coach teams out of DZ?

Back to the complaints about this years Alcan. For those interested in getting involved you need only to contact Ann Phelps at ADBF and apply to work with them. Or you can Apply to work with Waters Edge. both via the websites.

As well it should be noted that the wonderful volunteers were a mix of junior paddlers, adult paddlers (and always the same faces) and a few previous years volunteers.

perhaps local teams could mandate themselves to provide volunteer support during festivals. I don't  think it is a big deal to contact organizers ahead of time and offer two to three bodies in between races...

[tjl]

apparantly the person who designed the race grid is also a paddler with the masters ............ doh !

I actually don't have any major problems with the race grid. Just that it's pretty different than previous years where you can screw up short of finishing last and still have a chance to do well. It's not so forgiving this year. It makes every race count so those teams that aren't ready in the mornings are pretty much out of luck. Then again, that's why they call this racing and why everyone has practices.

I didn't find the grid much of a problem, except that it seemed that they did not zigzag the ranked teams into it.  For example, the 16 first race first place finishers were put in the semifinals this way according to their rankings from the saturday races:

1,5,9,13
2,6,10,14
3,7,11,15
4,8,12,16

which theoretically made the overall heats different in strength.  The usual way to theoretically even out the heats would have been to do the following:

1,8,9,16
2,7,10,15
3,6,11,14
4,5,12,13

[Colossus]

Ahem Colossus
Don't you coach teams out of DZ?

yes i do, and given some of the struggles we/they had throughout the year (and even that withstanding), i think they did incredibly well.  they really pulled together as a team both on and off the water.  all-in-all, i'm really proud of them and what they've accomplished.

[PaddleFunk]

Quote from: chaos on June 17, 2007, 12:40:37 AM
Quote from: paddleboy on June 16, 2007, 10:46:49 PM
apparantly the person who designed the race grid is also a paddler with the masters ............ doh !


I actually don't have any major problems with the race grid. Just that it's pretty different than previous years where you can screw up short of finishing last and still have a chance to do well. It's not so forgiving this year. It makes every race count so those teams that aren't ready in the mornings are pretty much out of luck. Then again, that's why they call this racing and why everyone has practices.


I didn't find the grid much of a problem, except that it seemed that they did not zigzag the ranked teams into it.  For example, the 16 first race first place finishers were put in the semifinals this way according to their rankings from the saturday races:

1,5,9,13
2,6,10,14
3,7,11,15
4,8,12,16

which theoretically made the overall heats different in strength.  The usual way to theoretically even out the heats would have been to do the following:

1,8,9,16
2,7,10,15
3,6,11,14
4,5,12,13

If you look at the race numbers the evens numbered races are together and the odds are together... this is so that each team has one race in a Gem and one in a BuK... that held true for all Saturday races if you raced a Gemini in the AM you raced a BuK in the afternoon and vice versa.