Battle In The Bay Dragon Boat Festival

May 17, 2011







Battle In The Bay Dragon Boat Festival



The third annual Battle In the Bay Dragon Boat Festival was held this past weekend in Marathon and for the third year in a row, Kathy has volunteered to paddle for one of the teams- whichever one needs additional people. Her first year she was a member of the Squally Heroncane team, last year she joined the Twitter Team and this year was perhaps her most interesting and rewarding effort as a member of the Conch Republic Navy/ Eye of the Hurricane Dragon Boat Team.







The Conch Republic Navy team is a local team that was put together in 2009 and this year joined forces with six paddlers from The Eye of The Dragon, a visually impaired from Vancouver. As a show of solidarity, all the sighted members of the team, including Kathy agreed to compete in all their races wearing blindfolds.

Kathy



Kathy had been heading up to Marathon each evening the week prior to the race to practice with whatever team members were available, but the visitors from Vancouver dis not arrive until the day before and thus the complete team had never practiced together as a unit before heading out for their first race.





There were 19 teams from across Florida and around the US who were in Marathon to compete, with preliminary races held that determined times which would be divided into three divisions with the fastest in the A division etc.







Their first race was the Gift of Life challenge- which pitted their team against the Warriors on the Water (WOW) from Orlando made up of Cancer survivors and the Save Our Sisters (SOS) team of breast cancer survivors from Miami. While it would seem that all these participants could be considered winners before they put their first paddle in the water. The Conch Republic Navy team bested their competition by a good margin and moved via their time into the coveted A Division with the 5th fastest time overall.





After the Gift of Life challenge- the annual Survivor Flower Ceremony was held with the boats and teams from the race as well as with the crowd gathered on the shore who all tossed flowers to honor those afflicted with cancer- both those survivors and those who lost their battle to the dread disease. It was a beautiful and moving ceremony as always and it brought the entire Dragon Boat community together in solidarity with the survivor teams.





The races lasted most of the day as boats battled it out in the three divisions. Kathy’s team had a great day, maintaining just about their same speed and position throughout the day finishing in 5th place in the A division and thus in 5th place of all of the 19 teams competing. This is truly a remarkable effort considering that all the teams that beat them were professional teams who race and practice together all the time. The Tampa Tarpons team won the overall first place trophy.



Mad Tea Party


By having one of the top 6 speeds in the A division, the team qualified for the 2000 meter race that was the climax of the days’ activities. Though they gave a valiant effort and finished the race, barely- they only managed a fifth place finish in that race as well.





More interestingly is that just after crossing the finish line- they became the first team in the history of the event to actually sink their boat. So much water had accumulated in the boat that once the paddling stopped, the boat sank leaving all of the paddlers floating and in need of rescue. Thankfully the organizers were able to easily pluck the team members from the water – leaving them all soggy- but very proud of their accomplishments.

Sunk

Rescue



Eye of the Dragon Team website