Congratulations to Nothin’ Dragon’s Red Team who took home the gold in the C division at the 2023 FCRCC Knockout Regatta dragon boat races on May 13 at False Creek in Vancouver!
It was an exciting day of racing as teams Red and Black in 200m races.
Team Red was in the first race of the day at 9 a.m. and the new layout of the 200m race course (way down at the west end) proved to be a challenge, not only for the steers, but the race officials themselves. The race got underway, and from our boat it appeared the two boats in the lead were going too close to one another. One of them was being called to move away. Then our boat got called to move right. We almost ran into the boat in front of us, and our steer managed to move us over and somehow we all just kept paddling. The race result was much better than expected!
This first race altered the course for the remaining races and the officials changed how the steers were to pinpoint their direction. This helped. The sound system also improved as the day progressed, which meant we could hear the starts better each time.
Team Black kept improving on time leading up to the exciting Knockouts. Team Red improved or hovered around the same mark. And again, we again got to race against each other and both Red and Black were called back to the start line twice in the Knockouts!
In each of the three races, Team Red was able to put in a leading finish, and in the final race, Team Black gave it their all for a third-place finish!
Here are the day’s race times:
Race 1
RED 1:07.779
Race 5
BLACK 1:05.834
Race 11
RED 1:00.112
Race 12
BLACK 1:01.970
Race 18
BLACK 1:02.790
Race 20
RED 1:00.500
Knockout Race 1
RED 1:01.834
BLACK 1:04.737
Knockout Race 2
RED 1:01.289
BLACK 1:03.792
Knockout Race 3
RED 1:01.473
BLACK 1:04.376
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Next on our race schedule is the Vessi 500 Championship on June 3.
