San Francisco (Lake Merced) | Sept 25-26

This was the third year that the CDBA races in San Francisco were held at Lake Merced. The previous year, LARD had propelled itself into the competitive division.

LARD was able to bring up two squads; Black and Red. Last year, Black was in Comp B, and Red in Rec A. This year, was a first for the team. BOTH squads found themselves in the same Competitive B Division. While Red performed admirably, the team was unable to make it into the Finals. Although, it would have been a beautiful moment to have Black and Red both taking places in the finals.

Hover in 3. . 2. . 1. .

It is clear that LARD will continue to grow more competitive but will do so without losing our heart and our quirky sense of fun.

Kenny (2010)

the death of Huay

Hey All,

First off, I'd like to extend my congrats to all the teams that participated in the California Dragon Boat Associations (CDBA) 8th Annual Northern California International Dragon Boat Championships at Lake Merced, San Francisco this past weekend. As predicted, the very deep and tough field of teams came out and delivered some mighty fine racing ! The results are attached and have been uploaded to the files section of this group. They will also be posted at www.cdba.org soon. Here is the summary version:

I. Mixed Division - We started out with 48 crews which were split into 24 rec teams and 24 comp teams after the first seeding round. The second round (quarter finals) sub divided those two divisions into rec a&b and comp a&b. The third round (semi-finals) then sorted the four divisions into championship and consolation final races. Here are the results of that final round.

Mixed (Co-ed) Competitive A - Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Grand Championship
Wasabi Mixed 1 2:08.16
San Diego Dragon Boat Team Blue 2 2:09.03
TDBA - Draco Koa Akua 3 2:09.79
Tempest 4 2:10.06
Dragon Warriors 5 2:10.10
San Diego Dragon Boat Team Red 6 2:11.30

This was an super exciting final! Though my crew, Dragon Warriors, ran out of gas in the final 30-40 meters and gave up the lead to a train load of strong finishes from the first through fourth place finishers, it was one of the best races I had ever raced in. Congrats to Wasabi and also big Kudos to San Diego for having both of their crews reach the top six slots of the entire festival !

Mixed Competitive A - Consolation
Merrill Lynch Bay Area Dragons 1 2:12.90
www.Roli.com 2 2:13.14
Zamboanga 3 2:14.04
BMO B2B Aggressive Dragons 4 2:18.61
Absolute Dragons 1 5 2:18.78
Ripple Effect 6 2:19.45

Mixed Competitive B - Chase Manhattan Mortgage Championship
Acme Dragons 1 2.16.18
Air Canada Jet Start 2 2:16.88
Los Angeles Racing Dragons Black 3 2.17.08
Killer Guppies Blue 4 2:19.80
Hot Wasabi 5 2:20.88
DieselFish 1 6 2:21.89

Mixed Competitive B - Consolation
XS Energy Bay Area Dragons 1 2:20.82
Dragon Warriors 2 2 2:22.82
Killer Guppies Gold 3 2:25.60
Los Angeles Racing Dragons Red 4 2:26.40
Team Fusion 5 2:34.74
Wasabi Team Huge DNS

Mixed Recreational A - KPMG Championship
Team Evolution 1 2:22.99
Castaways 2 2:23.98
Burnwater Bay Area Dragons 3 2:24.28
Absolute Dragons 2 4 2:25.49
Canadian Beavers 5 2:28.46
Wasabi Power Surge 6 2:28.82

Where else would Sam be?

Mixed Recreational A - Consolation
DragonMax Premier 1 2:27.84
TDBA - Destiny Dragons 2 2:29.74
False Creek Grandragons 3 2:34.74
Imua Space Dragons 4 2:37.20
Suen Feng Loong 5 2:39.67
New Jersey Team Dragons 6 2:43.89

Mixed Recreational B - Championship
Multnomah Channel Canoe Racing 1 2:30.15
DieselFish 2 2 2:30.82
Mighty Women 3 2:30.85
Concord Pacific Flying Dragons 4 2:33.59
Blind Ambition PDX 5 2:34.86
Dragon Warriors 3 6 2:34.89

Mixed Recreational B - Consolation
Blazing Paddles 1 2:38.53
Team Propulsion 2 2:39.04
Alameda Dragon Flyers 3 2:41.61
Celera Diagnostics SNP Dragons 4 2:53.19
DragonMax Masters 5 2:53.32
West Coast Pink Dragons 6 2:56.62

LARD Women

II) Mens/Womens/Masters Divisions- this year's format was a bit unusual in that teams either raced in the CDBA or Pacific Dragon Boat Association's (PDBA) Mens/Womens/Masters Divisions. We then took the top three finishers from both the CDBA and PDBA rounds to determine the winners in the Best of the West (PDBA) take on all the Rest (CDBA) rounds.

Best of the West versus All the Rest - Women
San Diego 1 2:24.54
Racme (www.Roli.com/Acme Dragons) 2 2:27.78
Air Canada Jet Start/Zamboanga 3 2:32.75
Bay Area Dragons * 4 2:34.68
BMO Aggressive/Tempest 5 2:35.67
Mighty Women 6 2:43.32
* Lane 3 - Bay Area Dragons were substituted for DNS Wasabi Team Huge
Best of the West versus All the Rest - Open (Men)
San Diego 1 2:07.02
BMO Aggressive/Tempest 2 2:07.39
Los Angeles Racing Dragons 3 2:11.67
Air Canada Jet Start/Zamboanga 4 2:13.44
Dragon Warriors 5 2:13.79
Wasabi/Hot Wasabi DNS

LARD Men

Best of the West vs. All the Rest - Masters (age 40+) Mixed
San Diego 1 2:14.53
TDBA - Draco Koa Akua 2 2:15.19
www.Roli.com 3 2:21.51
Air Canada Jet Start/Zamboanga/BMO Aggressive 4 2:22.23
Wasabi DNS
False Creek Grandragons DNS

The weather was a bit overcast and much cooler than usual (honest, this is the least amount of sun we have had in the 8 years of running it !) with the sun breaking through the cloud cover late in the afternoon. Sunday was a bit breezier than Saturday but water was pretty calm and still for some good clean races. Races ended ahead of schedule both days and there were no re-starts or protests filed. Overall, I believe that we had one of the deepest field of competitive crews ever at a US race and the racing was fair and beat our scheduled 10 minute heat turn around times. I was pleased with how the weekend went and hope you were too (I will be sending out a survey to gather your feed back soon).

Thanks again to all of the visiting teams who made the effort to come on out to San Francisco. I hope you had a fun weekend and found some tough competition and good times. Certainly, I hope you spread your thoughts on the races with your fellow teams as I'd love to have an equally impressive field of fun and strong crews in the years to come.

Check www.cdba.org for race write ups/updates (to come soon). Also plan ahead for the final weekend of Sept '04 as I have a feeling we will be filling up pretty early next year.

Until next time my friends, paddles up !

Hans Wu

CDBA President

Equipment Upgrades

Soap

And we have SOAP! To rub a dub and scrub scrub scrub your troubles away. When you're feeling grimy and down, grab a bar of LARD Soap. Rendered from the finest non-porcine vats. When you want that squishy clean.

Hot LARD

Jonathan Bedford was the mastermind behind the Hot LARD T-shirts. He eventually left for China to work for Mattel for a couple of months and had not heard from him after. Though curiously, he has been spotted on Monster Garage (w/ Jesse James as host). He was on the design team to transform one vehicle into a Rock'em Sock'em Robot (another designer worked w/ the competitor)...

Leon

Paddler's Corner: Rich Maher

I found out about this sport when I read a story in the newspaper about the Newport Aquatic Center (NAC) promoting dragon boating. It sounded interesting to me and I contacted them. I was recovering from shoulder surgery and was looking for an activity to help me strengthen my upper body. I organized a team of Postal Service employees, family and friends. I was captain and Nick was co-captain. Named the Eagles, we placed first in the "Mixed Division 8" of the 2003 Long Beach festival. The other Orange County team from the NAC, the Orange Roughies, placed second in the division.

The following year, the Eagles and Orange Roughies combined forces into one team, which became the NAC dragon boat team.

So it was the 2003 San Francisco race that I first guest paddled with LARD. We were familiar with LARD because Vi (Scott's wife) had been a guest caller for the team I was on at the time. When my team did not have enough paddlers to travel to SF, Vi invited any of us who were interested to paddle with LARD. So Nick and I and a couple others tagged along.

I found LARD to be a great team -- very competitive, but very good sportsmen also. Everyone was warm and welcoming, and I immediately felt part of the family.

In 2004, I joined LARD, and also paddled with NAC too. After that it was all LARD.

Rich (2010)

San Francisco Chronicle 2003-11-28