AMBCQ: Chinese New Year Dragon Boat Festival 11th February 2012, Southbank Parklands

Our team with Cr Angela Owen-Taylor and Lord Mayor Cr Graham Quirk
receiving our second place trophy during the 2011 Parkinson Ward Dragon
Boat Festival.

All those who have been following this blog for a while will know that the AMBCQ has its own dragon boat team. We first became involved in dragon boating when the AMBCQ was invited to be on the organising committee of the Parkinson Ward Dragon Boat Festival in 2010, which took place on Forest Lake in June 2010. During this first festival, only professional dragon boaters raced, although community dragon boat racing on the lake was the aspiration, which was fulfilled the following year. In 2011, we raced on the lake with 5 other community teams, coming second. If you haven't heard me mention that we came second yet, then you must be living under a rock because I mention it every opportunity I get.

Racing on Forest Lake in 2011. We're all over the shop but we still did well!

At the time, it had been a struggle to get 20 people to training and then to the lake on the day to paddle (not rowing - when you row you go backwards. I can't tell you how many times the trainers have pulled me up on that). Between Kiong and I, Grace Tan from SBCA and Calvyn Tan, who took a lead role in recruiting for the team, we managed to get a team together and in the end we fielded a team of 16, mixed men and women. Our team members included Malaysians, Singaporeans, Australians, Chinese, Dutch, and a Swede. It was an extremely rewarding experience - being involved in this team, and being able to try out dragon boat racing.

Training on the river at Colmslie - always nice.

This time the experience was quite different. From the outset, so many people have shown interest in joining as paddlers. Some weren't available in the end, or had illness or other commitments stop them, but it made a nice change. Rather than us begging people to join, everyone was putting up their hand. But, getting 20 people together is still a challenge, and although we had 25 people sign up, the team we fielded was 20 exactly - and that was thanks to the last minute inclusion of Jason.

Another difference was that this time we had a good number of us who had paddled before. This seemed to lead to far more productive and focused training sessions. Even though we still have a few members who had never paddled before, we weren't clashing the paddles anywhere near as many times as last year. A very nice change. Training sessions were very promising and it was reassuring to hear from the trainers that our timing was very good, and in fact, they hardly needed to train us. Don't mention the near capsize on the last day of training - we're just enthusiastic!

Before the Regatta, we had high hopes of doing very well. But on the day, we did not reach those expectations.

During the blessing ceremony - Dwight's the one
in red at the front. No, not the monk, Dwight's
hair is slightly longer.

The day began with a blessing ceremony for the dragon boats in which Dwight was volunteered by the team to represent us all. After this, the races began around 9am, with 16 heats, and two finals, a major final for those ranked 1-4, and a minor final for those ranked 5-8.

We were in the second heat of the day and this first race was great - we came second, our start was great and our time was fast. We all were really excited. Unfortunately, during the next race, we drew the lane in the middle of the river, and our boat was swamped by waves twice - first during the start, which threw us a bit, and then halfway through the race. It was pure bad luck and we finished last with a slow time. We had a long wait until our last race - the second last heat - so we threw ourselves into the Southbank pool. A very wonderful decision by the race organisers - we were perfectly positioned to watch the races, swim and lounge around in the pool, and then hop out anytime we wanted food or drinks, or needed to race.

During our final race, we were reduced to 18 people - after our last heat, the organisers had decided to pull out 2 people from each crew to make it safer. Justin had to leave slightly early, so that left one too many on the boat. Kiong volunteered to leave the team, although he was himself very keen to race. Unfortunately, although we gave it our all in the last race, we didn't do well, again finishing in last place. We still hoped that our time in the first race might help get us through, and despite the odds, we waited anxiously to find out if we got in. We did not and we were all very disappointed.

The team waiting to get on board for the next race.

In the final wash-up, we were ranked 9th overall in terms of placings (groan!!!) and 18th in terms of time. We still have a lot to learn about dragon boat. Some of us have raced before on the Brisbane River during the Te Waka Regatta last June. But few of us realised how much tides affect the race times. Our first race had a time of 46 seconds - the tide turned part way through the day and after that all the boats were really slow. Our other two race times were 55 and 57 seconds respectively. Looking at some of the photos during the day, our form looks very good - we are rowing in fantastic unison. So the technique is there. Now we need to work on enhancing our technique and getting more from our efforts, as well as our strategy for races.

Our first race of the day

It was the largest Regatta we have ever been involved in. There were 21 teams racing on the day and a number of them race in the event each year (last year it was not held due to the floods). It also featured a uniform competition (I'm not sure if the team wearing tu-tus or the team dressed as pirates won that part) and a chant competition, so there was lots of spirit of fun throughout the day. Although we left feeling a bit down in the dumps about our results, we did still have a marvellous day out. The weather was perfect for dragon boat, it was also perfect for enjoying the benefits of being positioned at Southbank, like swimming (and sunburn!), we had all come together to help with the set up during the day, and then the packing up, and we all had a lot of laughs and a lot of enjoyment throughout the day.