Swordfish Paddling

No, it’s not one of me spooning Steve. That one’s for private use only.

Ian posted a videos of the Fish’s in Victoria…enjoy!

2nd Race on Saturday:

Diamond A Final:

Thanks Ian!

What an awesome weekend! A couple of us took an early ferry over and had dinner at Pagliacci’s… no complaints there (sorry, Ben, the checkered-cake must’ve added seconds to our races)! After meeting everyone up at the dorms, we just hung around and played video games and watched some movie with the Rock (can you smelllllll what the fish is cooking…..!?!) to pump us up… ha!

Next morning was the first day of the races. We came in first in our first 2 heats. Calling was actually a breeze for the fish this time. Supersteerer Sue had some trouble with the finish line initially because the course was slightly different from last year with the two finger docks sticking out but it was sorted out quickly after… her steering was exceptional throughout the weekend. Great job, Suemew!

We didn’t stick around for the beer tent because we had a group dinner at Spinnakers. Food was decent and we all returned to the dorms for some early Zzzz or a Psp and DS party for some ppl… or even DT’s own monitor with his PS2 party…! Gotta get those fingers agile for Sunday.

Sunday was the big day. It was Swordfish’s last 2 races of the season (except for our slutty fishes that are going to Calgary/Kelowna/San Fran with other teams)… We’ve had a good record this year in Alcan and Harrison and would like to finish the season with a bang… or bling!

In our first heat on Sunday, we raced against Brew Crew, DragonMax, Scurvy Dawgs, and NAVY. Scurvy paddlers had the most team spirit… their cheers were loud and in your face! haha… but Navy probably won the cheer factor by getting everyone to sing the Canadian anthem with them. Can’t beat patriotism… It was a super tight race between all of us. Navy took first place, and we needed either 2nd or better 3rd to make the finals. I had to give the the fishies an early finish because i thought they fell asleep halfway… lol. We came in 2nd by less than a second from 3rd. We made it in the Diamond Finals.

The Platinum races had 3 Vancouver teams: Eye of the Dragon, Vo2Max and DWW. Great job… way to represent! It was very exciting to watch their races as well. Unfortunately, they all made in the consolation round as Kai, Dragonauts, Xtreme reach, GD, and Sudden Impact Black took the spots in the Platinum Final (another exciting race to watch).

So in our Diamond final was us, Brew Crew (they had the better 3rd place time), NAVY, PI, and Wasabi Mixed… it was so so close! The aggression level in my calls were just up a notch every 10 strokes until i had to shat my pants to get them to lean and have a finish! I don’t understand how some callers can sit there and go ‘la di da i like to bang bang on my drum drum’… so relaxed with their team… i seriously wanted to strangle the fish or rip a body part out and throw it them (that is why I don’t use a stick, it’ll end up being embedded in someone’s head) everytime during a race… but it’s just tough love behind my homicidal rage during a race, right! We came in second with .4 seconds behind Navy.

It was a really good race for us. We felt so good afterwards that the guys were making moaning and groaning sounds on the way back to the dock (why do they still have energy, hrmmmm?)…We knew we paddled hard and the other teams were just as good making it really good competition. We were glad to have gotten silver and was more happy for the NAVY team when one of their paddlers told us that it was their first gold medal.

After the race and Ben’s own “medal ceremony” back at our tent, some of us were ready to hit the beer garden before catching the ferry… but the tent had enforced a maximum capacity rule which resulted in a long line-up around the garden. That was really ghey. I sure didn’t want to wait in the sun and watch ppl drink when I can’t get trashed myself. Seeing that we only had an hour before having to bolt to catch the ferry, we left early for the ferry.

I ended the weekend with some cocktail buns in the VIP area, silver bling, new friends, and a ferry buffet!

Check out the SF gallery as Patch uploaded some pics from the weekend. Thanks to our cheering team: Ruth, Lucille, Sandy (our rotating photographers and VIP members!) and Pam, Natasha, Jessel, Ian and Cory for coming out with us. And Ian/Cory, you guys need to be more “piratey”!!! And thanks Ben, a self proclaimed ‘amazing coach’, for (blindly) guiding us all season long. .. guess we do register all the crap you’ve been spewing at us for the past few months!!!

I’m writing this from my personal experience… i won’t try to analyze what went wrong, blahblahblah… you can read Dragonboatwest for that drama and flaming!

I called for SOAR and SF for all their races and re-races. 11 races in total. My throat is paying for it this morning but not from calling, just being out in the rain… I’ve called for SOAR at Lotus and Kent, so I’m familiar with the team by Harrison. They are so nice! If Ben and co. doesn’t stop the physical and emotional abuse at practice, I’m going to SOAR! Wait, that won’t make a difference eh… j/k. Anyway, I really feel like I’m part of SOAR and I was really proud of them when we won the Rec B Silver.

We had to re-race with SF in our first 2 races. As a caller, i was already spent. I can’t imagine what it would be like for the paddlers. But we ended up racing and placing the same as the first race. Since it was based on times, it was taken from our times in the re-races so that kinda sucked a bit but oh well, that’s racing.

We were placed in the Rec C semi-finals. Turns out that they calculated THREE of our times! lol… after they realized the mistake, we were placed in our correct division, Rec A.

One thing that I’ve learned after I was placed in Rec C (before they fixed it) was that there are a lot of ppl that came up to me and was like WTF? I got a lot of supportive comments from random paddlers on other teams. hehe… except one guy came up to me to say that we deserve to be in Rec C and laughed (I found out later that his team made Rec A) at me twice.

In the semis, I had to deal with a broken drum after the 3rd stroke. I could’ve just chucked it aside into the water and cause a re-race or risk DQ (since the friendly fish has a fan club of dedicated admirers who watch us closely for DQs ;D) so I carried the drum like a crazy mofo throughout the race. I dropped it after the finish line though… these things are not light!

We all waited out to race our last race at around 7:30pm in the rain (my last races on both teams were back-to-back) and we all ready to get it over with and go home. They double-checked our bracelets (someone requested to make sure it’s all SF paddlers) and questioned one of our paddler that was wearing a plain white T-shirt over her jersey. Double-checking Swordfish jerseys and bracelets… maybe that was the cause of the delays… haha!

There were 5 teams on our heat. It was a very close race with Ready Jet Go and I called my little heart out (I swear everything else almost came out in the finish). We came in first and RJG came in second, and Vortex came in 3rd. But Vortex was paddling for fun with us so they couldn’t accept the Bronze medals so those were passed on to the 4th place i think (I think by then it wouldn’t have mattered who takes them if it wasn’t in placement anyway).  I was a bit disappointed that Dragonhearts Magnum was in a slow boat (yah yah, ppl will always argue that it’s not the boat blahblah) that we used in the previous heat so they came in 5th. They should’ve been right up there with us, RJG and Vortex fighting for placement. Medal or not, we knew they paddled well yesterday.

All in all, it was a happy ending and I had a good time overall… Sorry, no pictures this time.