WENDY: WE WON!

OK, we won the D division consolation final, but let me tell you -- to us, it's a huge victory. Our dragon boat team -- in its first year ever -- raced three times and improved in technique and time each time, ending with a hard-won victory in our last race. It was intense, tough work that required good coordination, timing and teamwork, and our victory meant the world to us!

Particular congrats to the girlfriends on board: Jill Porter, Yvonne Dennis, me and our awesome drummer, Yvonne Weston!

Here's a note from our team captain, PNI electrician Frank Messenger, with more detail:

I am so proud to have been associated with all of you on this years Dragon Boat team. Due to all of our busy schedules and an ongoing juggling of team members, and finally a rescheduling of the actual event, we never really had a lot of time as a team to hone our skills.

In our first race.....we learned some difficult lessons and finished 6th of 8 boats in 2:47.25. I think we were all a little punchy after that but we were unbowed. In our 2nd race we were smarter, and even though we literally had to kidnap crewmembers from passersby to flesh out our crew we improved our time to 2:40.92.....but still finished 6th. Reviewing that time in the subsequent 4 races, we would have won 2 and come in 2nd in the other 2....there was hope!

In our final appearance, we again had new crewmembers due to committments of some of our crew. With the race halfway gone the steersman started telling us "You can win this".....he repeated himself several more times asking us to give him a "little more". We did, all of us, and we won the race in 2:39.44, a time that would have been respectable in most of the other finals. We won it with 3 broken practices, a rescheduling of the event, and put together 3 different crews on race day. We did what needed to be done. In the final I looked up with 100 meters to go and was sure 1 other boat was ahead of us, we all dug in and got the job done. I am amazed in spite of all the roadblocks thrown down before us that we ultimately prevailed, this was no easy win, it was special.

Okay....who's ready to do it again!?

Frank

UPDATE: CLICK FOR MANY MORE PHOTOS FROM THE RACE!