Sadly, the dragon boat race this past weekend was far from awesome, but it’s one well worth the recap. Warning: this blog post is loooong, as DB geeks requested the nitty bitty details.

Summary
This time in Tacoma nothing worked in our favor. We raced mainly against women’s and high school teams, had to rerun a race, and were forgotten in the final round. Yes, they left us out. But technically we’re still undefeated at Tacoma. How can all of that happen, you may ask? Well, we’re still wondering too.

Heat #1
It was the first race of the day and we were anxious. I do my best to calm the team down, but what do you expect? First race of the season, new tiller, 5am start, and we’re defending our Champion (minor typo in the bio). Lots could go wrong. Oh, little did we know.

Our first race wasn’t a disaster but didn’t feel great. There wasn’t much time–area–to warm up and we like to get a few drills in before getting to the line-ups; we barely hit the “ups” on a practice start. The boats were extremely tippy, so extra energy and focus was spent on keeping hips to the gunnel (side) of the boat. The race start crew didn’t follow the instructions given at the captains’ meeting, so E Ben had to make some (good) judgement calls which made the team nervous. So it was a rocky start, the water felt heavy, and we pulled off an expected first place but with a slow time (2:20).

Heat #2

Despite being marshalled 45 minutes early, where many burned in the sun, then told to sit down and have lunch, then 10 minutes later told to “hurry up, you’re racing now”, we had a good race.

There was less commenting at the line-up, our heads were in the race and bodies focused on paddling alone, and we felt strong throughout. We won by at least a boat length. Unfortunately, Kim’s watch stopped so there was no recorded time, which apparently might have been useful…

During our ritual post-race analysis, this time focusing on the positives, it was announced that our heat was going to be rerun later that afternoon. Argh! I went to inquire at the timing tent, who did not like how I tried to get their attention. It turns out they had a radio malfunction from the start and finish line and didn’t start the clock. I asked why they didn’t blow the horn twice to stop the race, as per the rules, rather than have us finish it out. Naturally, they responded that they didn’t know we were coming until we reached the finish line. Really? Still, nothing I could argue with since they needed times.

Heat #2, again

By now, the races were running late (surprise, surprise) and it was well into the afternoon. We noticed the times getting slower, which is a worry when things are only based on time (and not placement — don’t get me started).

When we got there, we watched (and again waited in the sun) another heat get rerun because the race clock didn’t start — third one of the day. This time they were able to call it off during, but not all boats noticed right away. One team went all the way to the finish while the chase boat was behind them, waving their arms. Ahem, where was the horn?

This time our race was OK compared to the earlier one. The high school team was much closer to us than before, and that distracted the team a little. Some felt tired from all the waiting in the sun. We still won, but with a 2:25. It’d be hard to get in the finals, however that may be.

Heat #3
Round 3 came and I don’t exaggerate when I say no one knew what was going on. There was no update as to how the finals were being calculated (except that they were “by hand”, which did not reassure me), no posting on when or who we were racing in the next round, nothing. I asked other teams. Volunteers. Official looking people — and by that, I mean they had stuff, most likely team names, scribbled and scratched off on a crumpled piece of paper. And even the man in charge himself, Carl. I either got the apologetic I-don’t-know look or the not-your-business-not-right-now tone. We were tired of waiting and just wanted to know how the last rounds went. As far as we saw, teams were announced with no warning: they went to race, packed up, and went home. It was all very unsatisfying to watch.

After several theories (such as: there are two mixed divisions, they’re pulling names out of a hat, they’re playing rock/paper/scissors), I was confident that it was only by time. In many opinions, this is a terrible way to run a dragon boat race since conditions CHANGE. But alas, I already tried to point this out to them last year.

We hand calculated our placement (since clearly they had no intention of posting anything): 5th fastest by 1/2 second and only top four go to the finals. This was even more frustrating since our original second race was much better than the rerun, but what can you do. My only real disappointment was not getting the chance to race good mixed teams! All day we were up against women’s and high school teams, which isn’t good bracketing. Without competition, we can’t evaluate how good we are.

We figured out who’d be in our final heat, and waited to be called… from 2 until 5pm. They finally announced the heat that had the 6,7, and 8th place teams we had come up with, and our name wasn’t in it! Then they said the remaining teams are in the final competitions (plural). Again, I went to go inquire and got “your name is coming up” or “I saw your team name in the next one”. So I sat back down and waited, very confused. There were five mixed teams left: what were they going to do?

That’s when, sadly, the ridiculous yet correct theories came forth.

They think we’re a wome’ns team. No joke. We had noticed in the morning race results that we were listed as women’s. But seriously? We were defending our Champion — how could you not remember who we were?

They’re combining high school and mixed, since there weren’t enough teams and together that’d make eight.

They forgot us. NO friggin’ way.

The women’s teams came through. Then the high school teams. We weren’t called.

At last, they announced the teams that made it to the final, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was the part about no more races being called that got us. Several paddlers and I stormed over to the tent, passing other teams like Portland Fire and Sun Dragons along the way who gave us a really confused look like “why aren’t you racing?” I opened up the tent (despite their efforts to keep this place “disturbance” free) and said “You forgot us.” Carl looked back at one of the officials and they quickly said ” No, you’re up next. Look.” I glanced at their scribbled piece of paper and saw our name, as well as Portland Fire, Hot Sake, and Sun Dragons, all finalists. I told him that they just called those teams for the finals, so why were we racing them? He said we’re not in the finals but this is a consolation round for every team to do three races. So the finalists are going to do four? He told me I’m up next and need to go marshall.

It made no sense to us, but we had a third race against competitive teams, so we wouldn’t complain. We went back, told those teams were racing them before their final which obviously left them more confused, and quickly got ready to race.

Shortly after my visit to the tent, they announced us four teams up next. When we got to the marshalling area, there were still the women’s and high school teams sitting around. Great, more waiting.

Then, at some point, one of the volunteers told our team that we’re in the finals. Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. But she’s 100% confident that we are, and that we don’t have to do this race if we don’t want to. I didn’t believe it at all, and asked about Sun Dragons standing next to us, who definitely had faster times. Are they going to sit this race out too? She said “No, they’re not in the finals”. What? They uproared, and so did we, because they should be. So which one of us isn’t since there are five teams left? And what is this race they’re currently holding before the finals?

Carl arrived to the marshalling area, the officials had an embarrassed look on their face as they compared their crumpled pieces of paper, and sure enough, they called me over. He started off with “So, we’re going to have you race in the junior finals”. That’s when I had enough. I put my foot down and said absolutely no. I didn’t drag my team up here at 5am to race women’s and high school teams all day. I had asked all afternoon about the status and was rudely brushed away. I demanded he tell me what happened, and that I wanted my third race to be against competitive teams.

His reason was that they thought the Wasabi team was a women’s team. Later, in retrospect, I bet it was our team and not Wasabi, because they were able to figure out that Wasabi was a mixed finalist before announcing our heat. The story just doesn’t match. But now they have one extra team and there is a spot in the junior’s final.  So our ridiculous theories were actually right?!

I refused, and said if he’s doing this third race, I wanted it to be against competitive teams. That is the whole point of racing. His plan for this race will have to include three finalist teams, and he should just ask them if they still want to race us. But this whole time, I had thought his original plan was to have them race back to back anyway (since that’s what they told me in the tent). I had not understood from him that we were in fact currently marshalling for the final.

That quickly became clear to me when he said the other teams would race us after the championship. They were going to hold an extra race just for us? At this point, the races were running two hours late, and we didn’t want to make these team hang around any longer. So I told him we were leaving, and that I wanted a refund. Unfortunately, this took some time to convince him, and I left my team feeling a little concerned that I was still pushing to race. Chun, a paddler on our team, came over to help.

In the middle of it all, the manager of Wasabi (the fourth finalist) involved herself. I did NOT appreciate that. When she heard that we wouldn’t race in the junior’s final, she said “come on, our high school team gave you a good running in that last race”. I was fuming. I bluntly asked her to not be part of this difficult conversation I was having with Carl, and not her.

Carl agreed and we went aside to continue our discussion about the process and getting our refund. I should mention that this whole time Carl was very approachable and listened to me; he even apologized for what happened and clearly was having one of the worst days. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t make the best decisions, and didn’t know what went wrong (or was not willing to explain it) — but I still have little sympathy because this has happened before. Carl said that he’d have to talk to the board and would get back to us in a week.

Then we were interrupted by the Wasabi manager, again. This time she offered us their spot in the finals. They said that “it was no big deal to them but it was to you”, and that “they were just there to have fun”. I can’t tell if they thought they were being kind and doing us favor, but I hope you can imagine how nosy and patronizing it felt. We were never asking to race in the finals (we hadn’t earned that spot), but we were upset that they ignored us all day when all this could have been prevented, and we we were discussing other things that did not involve them. I thankfully declined when I should have been rude.

We never got a clear explanation as to what happened but had definite hope for a refund. I told the team the status and they were just happy to be leaving. They were D-U-N with Tacoma and simply wanted to go home.

A few of us stayed to watch the final, because hey, we like those other three teams and appreciate a competitive race. Portland Fire, our projected favorite, won, Hot sake took a surprising second, and Wasabi, got third. Maybe they were just having fun. Yes, I’m grinning. It would have only been sweeter if Sun Dragons had been able to squeeze out Wasabi, but at least they gave them, well, a good running.

In the end, I did get my refund. I won’t go into details of that, but let’s just say there was someone (important) there who immediately offered it to me after finding out what happened — without my asking. She apologized and cut me a personal check on the spot.

This is not the first time we’ve left a dragon boat race thinking “how hard can it be to organize a race?”. After a Coke and smoothie refuel stop, the car ride home was an entertaining, enthusiastic, and intense plan on how we could pull off an awesome dragon boat race. Now there’s a thought…