Go Paddle Demons Go!

This past weekend was the annual Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival held at Mooney's Bay. This is the largest Dragon Boat Festival in North America, with 190 teams participating... with 22 people per boat, this translates into over 5000 paddlers (not rowers!).

This year, I'm with a new team, and couldn't be happier. My team embodies sportsmanship, athleticism, balance and positive attitude. And while there was no celebrating in the beer tent between races or even after Saturday's races, once Sunday afternoon came around and tent-city was brought down, we headed over to the beer tent to celebrate a phenomenal weekend of paddling our best and of course to collect our hardware. One of our mixed crews won bronze in the B final with a time of 2 minutes, 8.6 seconds- making us approx. 11th overall fastest team of the festival (out of 190 teams). Our women's crew made the A final making us the 7th fastest women's crew of the festival and in the top 50 of the entire 190 teams with a time of 02:26.86- quite an accomplishment for a crew who only practiced together 4 times prior to the festival- and who had never raced a 500m race together before (let alone the four that the weekend called for).

I love this sport so much- the camaraderie, the exhilaration and rush of 20 paddles hitting the water at exactly the same rhythm for 2 solid minutes catapulting a 1000lb boat to glide over the water like a hovercraft- it's insane... I love it.