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Was their coach that was wearing the hat some asian guy? If so, it's probably Kerry and he's one of those guys that's really involved in the db community and coaches Waverunners I believe. But don't underestimate waverunners though, they seem to be a hungry team that want to improve upon last year's results where they were in Comp C with RGL and only lost by only .2 seconds to you guys. But this year seems to be much different than last. Like magnum, eye of the dragon only has around 60% of their boat from last year, and the rest are paddlers from different teams.

And don't worry about beat/magnum, they both have a full boat now with a few spares and a spot reserved for an indonesian import :haha: Oh, illuminate, do u know of a guy named Derek on your team? If so, tell him I'll see him this weekend!

Oh, and BUKs do have a significant speed advantage over Geminis because they are lighter. Teams will, 99% of the time, get better times in BUKS than in Geminis by a matter of seconds (the range dependent on the team and tide conditions when testing their times on the two boats with the same crew, but relatively speaking, BUKS are faster). And as we all know, one second already can mean a lot in dragon boat racing.

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Hmm... if they look young, you might be talking about RaceFace? He also coaches that team =p and RaceFace is around the same age as Magnum (with a lot of paddlers in their early 20s) but i'm getting confused now haha, we could be talking about a totally different asian guy lmao

If this is your first year paddling, you're definately going to love Alcan Festival. The environment, the beer garden, the food stands, the crowds, the play-by-play announcer, the entertainment, etc... make it a really memorable experience. Hope your coming out to Kelowna and the other festivals this season (Whistler, harrison, seattle, victoria, etc.)

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Yeah, regardless of the weight difference, Gems are just bad boats. I'd rather paddle in a 6/16 because at least there's room.

I don't think any team brings their 'A' game to practice. You guys are in a different division though, so it's no surprise that you were able to pull ahead. Our starts give us an advantage against other Rec teams and can keep us up for about 200-250m against Comp teams before you guys pull away with the muscle.

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Not only are the metal railings horrible, but the boats don't seem any lighter than the 6/16s they replaced. But, I guess the 6/16s had to be replaced with something because they've been around since the early 90s. There simply aren't enough BUKs in the Lower Mainland for all of the races at a large festival like Alcan, which means some races are stuck with the Geminis. At least the qualifying for races is done by placement.

I guess I meant to say that when teams line up against other teams in 'practice races', most don't give their 'A' game.

yeah i freaken hate those geminis! Before the switch over from Geminis + 6-16s --> Geminis + Buks, those geminis didn't have the metal railing, but apparently they were falling apart... so to add stablility to the seats and boat structure, they added those metal railings on the side :mad: now i get a side burn from rotating against those bars. The only thing I dont like about 6-16s is that on the bottom of the boats, towards the sides... the boat curves in so its hard to angle ur outside foot in comparison to gemini/buk, and same thing with the ol' taiwanese boats

consolation finals (Rec A-E Consolation Finals) + comp d and comp b will be gemini boats, whereas final rounds (Rec A-E Final) + comp c and comp a will be in BUKS

RGL is doing Victoria and Kelowna this season, we were going to do Harrison but they increased their fees too much or something. I wanted to do Seattle but I guess it's not feasible since it's one week after the Victoria race. I know Dragon Hearts are going everywhere.

The foot placement thing is really far forward too on the Gem, I'm usually sitting on the edge of my seat to reach it and I'm 6'0. One of the guys on my team brings in a soccer shin guard for Gems lol

Geminis are horrible and Kerry loves it when you smack his ass with a paddle.
Get Kerry into the beer garden at Alcan this year.
http://www.youtube.com/v/hsS4D5RekqE&hl

I can't believe they are still using the Geminis after all these years. When they first had us test the first prototype/retrofit, I suggested that they add a $20 surcharge per paddler registered for alcan for a year or two and buy new BUKs with that money. Back when we had 100+ teams in Alcan (not sure the #s now), it would have been easy and I guarantee that if people knew thats what the money was going towards, they would have forked it over gladly. Probably still would.

I just heard last night Dragonzone got 3 brand new Buks

That 1% exception will be FCRCC on a really good day with gems against most teams on a bad day on BUK hahaha

You can always single Kerry out if you just shout "Hey Puppy!" and see who responds hahaha

Im hoping that eye of the dragon will still improve much this year, coz they are an awesome bunch, they combined with our team last year at taiwanese and it was a good time! lots of great characters there and there's a good guy named nestor in the team.

LOL, keep the spot warm for me until i get back hahaha

Easy way to find out if they are masters or not: look to their boat and you'll see that they are old...errr hahaha, age range is like 30-50ish (last year anyways)

IMHO I think thats wrong, coz u have to bring ur A game to practice races, otherwise you dont really know how u fare against other teams, diff divisions or not. Plus, when u race other teams all out, it prepares u mentally, to know what it feels like to have teams behind you and inching to take the lead and vice versa. Prepares you so that mental breakdown does not happen, or giving up or not giving it ur all. The more practice races, the better ur teams will fare, especially if your teams has lots of new paddlers.

Bottom line is if u dont practice hard, then u wont race hard. Coz like the coaches always say you cant think that you can just turn it on come race time. It's all in the muscle memory baby!


Thats coz we like to get as much racing as we can from the season! milk it! gives ya more chances to win medals, and all the out of town races makes me feel like i have a mini vacation with my buddies + racing hardcore with my buddies...its that good!

We did 8 events last season and our Captain was crazier (11 events), he went to all of ours plus seattle and whistler (with WW) and montreal! he was quite burned out after the season lol (though our coaches say in order to really be the top team, your number of festivals has to be at 2-3 instead)

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Yeah, some of us did this OC6 race in march and I met Nestor after the race. Nestor was also the first one who came up to us after the Finals at Dash and congratulated us, saying he couldn't tell who was in front. And yea, I remember Eye of the Dragon Hearts Magnum from last year haha. But apparently Eye of the Dragon is a combination of last year's team and some paddlers from Riptide?

Last year Magnum had sponsorship, but due to the economic situation they pulled out. But we've been doing random fundraisers in between to help us pay for all the fees. One of which was working at BC Elections.. One days work=$280 per person for team fees. All you do is just sit there, but it does get boring even with a computer. There's only rushes in the first 2 hours and the last 2 hours, the rest of the day you have around 5-10 votes per hour or so.

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Oh i know theyre two separate teams, what i meant was that the 2009 Eye of the Dragon is a composition of 60% of their 2008 team, and around 30% of Riptide's 2008 team + 10% misc. The 2009 Riptide team took some paddlers from my sister/brother team (Synergy Legacy, I was apart of Synergy Rice Rockets before) and I believe there are some people from Synergy Legacy on RGL this year as well.

**Riptide member chiming in here**

Riptide is still 100% independent actually. You probably saw us on one particular day when us and eye didn't have enough paddlers for practice, and we joined up to practice together in one full boat... forming "RipEye"... heh

But that was just a one off thing for one day...

We even had a joined practice with Vortex one time... and became "Riptex... or Vortide"

We do have a couple (2-3) Synergy Legacy people because they disbanded... but otherwise we're still riptide

Yeah we have a couple from Legacy. Weren't Legacy doing well just last year?

Legacy took 1st in Comp C last year in Alcan. Can't remember how they placed in Kelowna. I know everyone was on Legacy.

Yeah, Legacy was doing really well but a lot of them had been paddling for a long time, so I guess some needed a break and pursue other endeavours. But i'm happy they ended on the note they did (if i remember correctly, they got well deserved Golds in both their divisions in Alcan & Kelowna) Also, our manager needed a break after her 10th season of managing a gajillion teams :( (in one Alcan, there were 8 Synergy boats that she managed!) and some members of Legacy have been paddling with our manager since she started. Legacy is really tight knit group and they still are, as is Rice Rockets, and for Rice Rockets, a lot of the paddlers wanted to either paddle with the same group of friends or take a break from the sport for a bit. Thats what I love about synergy.. the friendships built within the team and between the two teams. Even though I dont paddle with a lot of them anymore, i'm still really close friends with a lot of them because of our time doing dragon boat together.

Mmmmm, BuKs.....

It's nice to finally have a few BuKs at D'Zone now.

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lol, yea most teams though..SIB, Masters, etc would prolly beat them with the few seconds difference.

Will keep that in mind :thumbsup:

A lot of team's sponsors backed out this year, which totally sucks. I believe, Without Warning is not sponsored by Edgewater Casino anymore, only companies with deep pockets can still retain sponsorships.

Yeah we got a new sponsor. The Chung Family LOL. He's one of our paddler who loves our team so much that his parents donated $1500 to Magnum, talk about for the LOVE of the sport haha

Man, u guys combine with anybody, its still gonna be a cool name...well, maybe not "RipFart" lol

Don't worry, in a few years, you guys wont have the feeling like you guys are paddling out of a shack anymore :haha: