Our day on Saturday started bright and early with a 6:30 AM meet-up time. The organizers provided a shuttle to bring each team to the race site. Unfortunately, characteristic, it seems, of the way things are organized in Hong Kong, there was chaos. The Chinese team coach was livid that we had boarded his team's bus. With us inside, and the Chinese team outside, we all watched the Chinese team coach screaming and yelling at poor Shen (our team manager) in Mandarin. Eventually, Kerry came up into the bus and told all of us to get off quickly so we could let the Chinese team take our bus. I asked Shen later what the Chinese team coach was saying, and he told me that it wasn't as bad as it looked. The Chinese team coach was upset over the fact that they got in trouble yesterday from the organizers for being late for the bus and that today, their bus wasn't ready and on-time. The coach wanted his team on our bus purely on principle so we got the boot. It wasn't a big deal though, our team shuttle buses (one for FCHP and one for Jambalaya) arrived a few minutes later.
I forgot to describe how the race site was set-up here in Hong Kong. The racing was done in Victoria Harbour along the East Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. In the water, the organizers brought in a large number of barges to enclose our racing area and dampen the waves generated by the water traffic further out in the harbour. The starts were held starts. On shore, the loading area was on a barge and we hopped onto a floating dock made of these plastic interlocking blocks. There was a grand-stand by the finish line and an area by the docks that we headed off to after a race to rinse ourselves. The grand stands were packed every day as well as the entire shore line down the length of the course. Photographers with telephoto lenses and huge video cameras are everywhere filming and capturing the action. Our marshalling area was across the highway - we walked along an overpass and crossed the "street of death" to get to the dock. We were required to be at marshalling approximately 30 minutes before our race time otherwise we would get disqualified. Even further was our racer's village, which was at least a good 15-20 minute walk to the marshalling area. It was located at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which was nice because the area was cooler (all of the racers were under sheltered areas of the university foyer) and the bathrooms are indoors and flushable!! Our "tents" at racer's village consisted of a set of chairs placed in a U-shape. Fortunately, we could occupy as many Us as possible because not all the teams chose to base themselves in racer's village.
Once we arrived at the race site, we got down to the business of setting up and settling down. Some of the women took care of checking the team in at the registration desk and helping to grab the boxes of free water and other goodies that the organizers provided for each of the teams. One of the requirements for this regatta was that we either needed to have our paddles clearly marked as IDBF 202a certified or we needed to have a race official check and certify our paddle. Paddle certification was located next to marshalling, so some of the men needed to scramble down to marshalling to have their paddle certified before returning for the team warm-up. Erica, Catherine and I grabbed most of the women's paddles and went down to get our paddles certified.
Today was a qualifier day. Each of our teams only had to race once in our respective divisions. Our results from the day's race (time) determined which championship (bowl, plate or cup) we would be racing in on Sunday. There were fewer teams in the mixed and women's divisions (6 and 4 respectively) but a whooping 70 teams in the men's division.
The men had the first heat of the day. Originally, they were going to race 18 paddlers but decided at the last minute to try and race 20 paddlers in the boat because the water was calmer and because many other teams were racing with 20 paddlers. Kam scrambled to find the spare men for the race because they had scattered soon after marshalling - fortunately, she was able to do so before the men had to load up to race. Leah, Rebecca, Erica, Catherine, Kam, a few other girls and I went to watch the men race. The men had an awesome start and they looked super fast coming out of the gates. About one-third of the way down the course, the men's boat started rocking side-to-side after a series of waves hit the side of their boat. Then, the boat looked like it lost control because it cut across several lanes on the right before teetering some more and finally flipping over. The rescue crew came over to our men's boat and got it upright fairly fast with Jimmy Jay getting into the flipped over boat first. Then, we watched the rescue boats pull out all our men and drive them safely to shore while organizers stayed behind with the dragon boat bailing out the water. Meanwhile, the commentator for the regatta was pointing out how, in the Western countries like Canada, we prefer to have big, strong, huge guys on our dragon boat team, unlike the Asian teams, and as a result, our boat is more unstable and likely to take on more water. When the guys got back to shore, they were OK albeit a bit sheepish. Alan, Norman and Jimmy lost their glasses but everyone got their paddles and flip-flops. Poor Jimmy was the only one who didn't bring a back-up pair of glasses and spent the rest of his stay here in Hong Kong wearing his prescription sunglasses!
Seeing what had happened to the men in their race was a great learning lesson for the mixed and women's team. We changed our crew slightly to race with a lighter crew, we decided to have designated bailers in the boat who were responsible for determining when and if we needed bailing during the race, and everyone was more conscious about leaning out and getting over top of the blade. When the mixed crew raced 2 hours after the men, we raced with a conservative pace and managed to win by a few boat lengths.
In the women's heat, we raced against the Chinese women's team from Jiujian, the same crew of women who dominated Worlds at Prague last year. We were annihilated by the Chinese women who easily beat us by 10 seconds. Our race was conservative in pacing and the boat didn't feel like we had the urgency to show we really wanted to win the race. We vowed that we needed to do better the next day.
Following our races we had to stick around because we were invited to a special "Team Canada Only" beer garden so that the dragon boat festival sponsors could meet us and present us with gifts. We stuck around the race area for dinner and attended the beer garden party at 7 PM following a few team photos. At the beer garden, the sponsor, San Miguel, thanked us for coming to race and presented each paddler with a complimentary glass of beer. Don't worry, we were conservative in our drinking because we knew we had a big day ahead of us on Sunday. After the party, we boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel to get ready for racing the next day and to sleep.
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