Another wild weather ride in Bemidji!

Your Minnesota Dragon Boat Club brought two teams to the Lake Bemidji Dragon Boat Festival, Team Gold and Team Blue, and what a weekend!

The weekend started with the Dondelinger Sprint Cup, with two 200 meter races – the best time wins! 19 teams participated in the Sprint Cup this year; here’s how we placed:

• 25 MNDBC-Team Blue 1:05.60
• 26 MNDBC-Team Gold 1:05.62
• 27 MNDBC-Team Blue 1:05.84
• 29 MNDBC-Team Gold 1:06.39

That’s some sharp racing from our two teams! And, congratulations to the winning team, the PYROS (and friends) from the Philippines. Sponsored by the Cultural Society of Filipino-Americans MN, many MNDBC club members are leaders in that organization as well, and paddled with that crew. Well done!

Saturday brought unexpected weather (this seems like a theme this season). Just when we thought we had experienced just about all the weather shenanigans we could for a season at the Dragon Festival at Phalen in July, we had Saturday in Bemidji! Due to high winds, event officials required all teams to adjust rosters to have only 16 paddlers for the afternoon races, and eventually there was a 2+ hour weather delay as everyone waited for a storm system to pass through. Teams racing before the weather delay had slower times than teams racing after the weather delay, which Team Blue was able to capitalize on.

• Race 1 – Dragon Boat Challenge Round 2:34.83
• Race 2 – Dragon Boat Qualifying Round 2:12.48 (WOW!!!!)
• Overall Compiled Times 4:47.31 for 22nd place overall

Team Gold results: 

• Race 1 – Dragon Boat Challenge Round 2:21.78
• Race 2 – Dragon Boat Qualifying Round 2:27.27
• Overall Compiled Times 4:49.05 for 23rd place overall

Overall event results for all teams are online here.

While we didn’t come home with hardware, we all had a great time and continued to build team camaraderie and work ethic. Well done, everyone!