I was able to sign up for a team of local people, 90% of us had never rowed a dragon boat before.
We had two practice sessions (Wed & Fri) before the races on Saturday.
It takes a lot of effort, muscles, and determination to race these boats. Would I do it again next time? You bet I would. What a wonderful experience. No, I wouldn't like to train and race these boats on a regular basis.
Below are pictures one of our neighbors took for me using my camera.
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| Here we are beginning to line up for our first race. Our team Captain, Linda Breckenridge is the third from the left. I'm first on the left. |
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| The boat is loaded. I'm the second one from the front on the left. I have my paddle in front of my face. |
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| We are checking the balance of the boat. |
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| We are backing away from the dock. |
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| We are in the green boat, we came in third. |
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| This race took us 1 minute and 6 seconds to complete. We are now headed back to the dock. |
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| We are preparing to unload the boat. |
We raced three heats. The bad news is we came in third in each heat, the good news is we raced well enough to be in the A division. The weather was perfect, as it started out sunny to warm the chilly morning air, then the clouds moved in so we didn't bake in the hot sun. The wind stayed pretty calm until we were almost done. There were two incidents... luckily it was not our team! One, after a boat crossed the finish line, they were so happy they were rocking the boat, and a wave came at the same time and swamped them. Everyone remained calm and staid seated. The boat floated just below the surface. Our follow up boat, hooked a line on and pulled them back to the dock. Then in the last race of the day, something happened to the steering person in one of the boats and the boat rammed into another boat. These were the three best teams, and they re-ran the race.
All in all, I thought for a bunch of people who had never done this before, most of us over 60 years old we did a great job, and had a fun day.
Three cheers to the organizers of this race. The profits went to Presbyterian Community Center in Roanoke, VA.
Sew see you later,
Bette
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