Contents:
The Chinese Youth League annual Dragon Boat Festival was held on 25th Arpil 1999 at Pyrmont Point Park in Sydney Australia near razzle dazzle of the Sydney Star City Casino.
The event was organised by CYL, the Chinese Sports Foundation with support from Sydney City Council, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Sydney Harbour Police and Waterways Authority raising money for the Starlight Foundation.
This year Honeywell had a team entered in the corporate catagory, with aims to beat the 1998 Darling Harbour Dragon Boat result. Second place this year was no option for the fire breathing Honeywellers.
We'd been training since early Feburary once and sometimes twice a week. Geoff Taken, our coach from last year, helped with training and gave us much needed discipline and technique. Like Obi-Wan to a gaggle of Skywalkers we learnt the power of the Dragon Boat. A harsh, but fair, training regime buffed us all into fit agile dragon boaters (well as fit and agile as a bunch of computer nerds can be!) .
We arrived early in the morning on the big day to set up our tent and get organised, usually an oxymoron for these sorts of events. When things had settled down we found that not only were we in the Corporate category, we were in the University/Corporate Mixed categories. This meant that we had more competition than we thought, no longer competing against bankers and accountants we were against fit university teams.
In the uni/corp mixed events we were challanged by the Malaysian Sports Organisation, missing 1st place in the final by only 0.5s. We suspect loosing our dragon boat nose brought us bad luck. Here we see a picture of the the team (minus dragon nose), hard at work trying to defeat the very good MSO boat.
Dragon Boating is a hard task, for the uninitated we race 500m in around 2 minutes at full power, evidenced by our times going from 2'03''58, to 2'08''16 then 2'36 something. Fortunately most of the other teams were also getting tired. We like to say that the increased chop and wind in the afternoon was also a factor. The picture below shows the strain of team, racing for a win with MSO in the foreground.
Dragon Boating is a spectacular sport, and Sydney Harbour on the day provided nearly perfect weather conditions, cool in the morning, dry and sparklingly sunny all day. The only drama was the afternoon wind and swell coming into the harbour. Apparently on that day, people were surfing at a Vaucluse harbour beach!
The pictures below show a classic harbour day.
Getting into and out of the boats can be tricky at times. One of our team went for a swim whilst getting in. He will remain nameless, but can be seen in the photos as the drummer.
The finals were of course our main focus on the day. We were after the corporate trophy, particularly after missing out last year. Putting all the energy we had left, all the training and teachings by our Dragon Boat master we pulled ahead of the pack.......to win!!
(That was not the end of the day however, after discharging all we had and returning to shore after much splashing and skylarking about we found we qualified for the Open category. This was against the Mens teams and full time sports teams from the other categories. We were slightly outclassed in this race, but gave what we had left. Unfortunately not much, but it was quite refreshing to see what the other boats look like ahead of us for once ;)
Finally we got back to shore, and celebrated with a couple of glasses of bubbly, in preparation for the awards presentation at a function organised by CYL at the Shark Hotel in Liverpool street.
The team would like to thank all our sponsors and helpers for their support and encouragement on the day. Special thanks to our coach Geoff Taken, our drummers and sweeps (who we had to steal from other teams on the day) and the organisers of the event.
Till next year!
Honeywell Dragon Boat Team.
STOP PRESS:
Here are the results just at hand:
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Dragon Festival 1999 |
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Pyrmont Point Park, Sydney |
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Sunday April 25, 1999 |
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
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500m Corp/Uni Final |
State Street |
1 |
02:30.0
|
4
|
|
sponsored by |
Schering Plough |
2 |
02:30.4
|
5
|
|
Waterways Authority |
MSO |
3 |
02:17.1
|
1
|
|
Honeywell |
4 |
02:18.2
|
2
|
|
|
(Mixed Class) |
BDO |
5 |
02:32.2
|
6
|
|
AC Neilson |
6 |
02:27.8
|
3
|
|
|
Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
|
500m Womens Final |
1 |
|||
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sponsored by |
Northern Beaches DBC |
2 |
02:58.6
|
3
|
|
Peak Performance |
CYL |
3 |
02:41.0
|
2
|
|
Computers |
Tsunami |
4 |
02:37.1
|
1
|
|
5 |
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|
6 |
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
|
500m University Final |
1 |
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|
sponsored by |
Sydney Dragon Blades |
2 |
Forfeit |
|
|
Windfair |
CYL (Uni) |
3 |
02:51.5
|
2
|
|
MSO |
4 |
02:38.3
|
1
|
|
|
Balmain High School |
5 |
Forfeit |
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|
6 |
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
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500m Open Final |
1 |
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sponsored by |
CYL |
2 |
02:07.6
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3
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Chinese Cultural Club |
Northern Beaches DBC |
3 |
02:01.5
|
1
|
|
Royal Aus Navy |
4 |
02:04.7
|
2
|
|
|
Tsunami Mavericks |
5 |
02:13.8
|
4
|
|
|
Sydney Dragon Blade |
6 |
02:20.5
|
5
|
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
|
500m Corporate Final |
Schering Plough |
1 |
02:39.6
|
3
|
|
sponsored by |
State Street |
2 |
02:40.9
|
4
|
|
D.D. Demazin |
BDO |
3 |
02:49.4
|
5
|
|
Honeywell |
4 |
02:33.5
|
1
|
|
|
AC Neilson |
5 |
02:37.0
|
2
|
|
|
6 |
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
|
500m Mixed Final |
MSO |
1 |
02:19.3
|
5
|
|
sponsored by |
Dragon Sports Assoc |
2 |
02:11.1
|
3
|
|
GF Food Services |
Royal Aus Navy |
3 |
02:10.0
|
2
|
|
Pacific Dragon |
4 |
02:05.4
|
1
|
|
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(Mixed Elite Class) |
BT Mavericks |
5 |
02:18.9
|
4
|
|
Honeywell |
6 |
02:44.6
|
8
|
|
|
Tsunami |
7 |
02:27.2
|
7
|
|
|
Northern Beaches DBC |
8 |
02:22.0
|
6
|
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Race Name |
Team |
Lane |
Time |
Place |
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1000m Sydney Lord |
0/1 |
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Mayors Challenge |
Chinese Youth League |
2/3 |
1st |
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SDB/ Northern Beaches |
4/5 |
3rd |
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|
(Lord Mayors Trophy) |
Pacific Dragons/BT Mavericks/MSO |
6/7 |
1st |
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