The Dragon Boat Race

Another part of our busy weekend was participating in the Dragon Boat festival. This is the third year it has been held here and I have thought it sounded like a lot of fun to be in. To have a team you have to have 21 people and pay quite a lot of money, so that wasn't an option for me. Ken told me to just wait, somebody would be looking for a female to join their team (I guess last year different teams were advertising to find other women as they have to have 8 women in each team). So when one of my friends (Emily) mentioned that they had a team from her work and that they were still needing another female, I jumped at the chance. So I got to be part of the Crazy Paddling Accountants.
It was fun because my sister Keren, Emily, Mathew, Mary (she was an alternate) and I all got to be on the same team. Emily was the drummer and it was her job to keep us all in order and that is no small feat when you have 20 rowers who all need to be going in rhythm together.
Our first race went quite smoothly, the water was nice and we almost came in first in our heat (4 boats) but I guess the other team was just barely in front of us. When we had practiced I had not had felt fine afterwards but after the race my muscles in my right arm were like hard and pulsing, it was kind of weird.
There were around 65 teams, but they were very organized at keeping us all in order.
The second race in the afternoon was kind of interesting. The wind had really picked up and just before we went out to race we got to watch a boat tip over, then the boat that we got to use they had to empty of pails of water before we could get in it. Needless to say that made us feel a bit uneasy. Going through the wind was rather interesting! We had thought we could go over at any time. Thankfully we stayed upright but we didn't do all that well on time though we were trying. I was totally shaking by the time we were done.

We didn't get in any of the final heats. For these races they do it very differently. They divide all the teams in thirds and the top 4 (I think) of the top third teams get to race for the Gold, Then the top 4 from the middle third get the race for the Silver and the top 4 of the bottom third get the race for the bronze. I think we ended up in the middle third but not one of the top 4.

We had a lot of fun. I think it would be fun to try again sometime.