OOCL Making Waves at the San Francisco Dragon Boat Festival
On September 23, the OOCL Dragons paddled their way to the silver medal in the Novice B Championship league at the San Francisco Dragon Boat Festival.
The San Francisco Bay customarily sees a variety of seaworthy vessels on its waters: ocean carriers, tankers, haulers, trawlers and destroyers, but Chinese dragon boats joined their much larger brethren on the waters for this special event. Dragon boating, a sport more than 2,000 years old originating in China, has gained popularity in the United States, with a strong hub of paddlers based in the Bay Area.
The Dragon Boat Festival celebrates a reenactment of the Chinese legend and celebrates one of three major holidays with the Moon Festival and Chinese New Year.
Dragon boats are of Chinese historical influence, reaching back 2,300 years to when poet and scholar Qu Yuan leaped into Mei Lo River in southern China to protest the political corruption of the Chu Kingdom.
Local fishermen raced in their boats to save him — which they failed to do — while beating their paddles against the water and throwing silk-wrapped rice dumplings into the water to scare the fish from eating Yuan’s body.
Dragon boats are 45 feet long with a dragonhead on the bow and a tail on the stern. Twenty paddlers follow the pace of the drummer and are steered by a steersman.
This community event is in it's 11th year, with over 100 dragon boat teams and 2,500 dragon boat
paddlers from across North America racing 500-meter and 300m courses. Dragon boat teams range from novice to competitive. Novice teams represent local Bay Area corporations, public agencies, and non-profit community organizations. Recreational and competitive teams practice year round and are coming from all over the United States and Canada to battle it out in the championships.
The team consisted of Roger Davies, Rachel Bata, Andres Nieto, Carol Spencer, Chris Ho, Dave Lobo(Land Captain),Diana Demeo, Dharini Ramakrishnan, Douglas Rollwitz, Hai Chu, Henon Ho, Jason Ho, Jef Beason, Kevin Li, Monica Chang, Namitha Anandaram, Nicole Fox, Richard Hsu, Richard Ng, Richard Yuen, Rick Vera, Roger Farias, Sandy Vera, Steve Chong, Stephen Ng.
The results:
Novice Seeding Corporate Challenge: OOCL ranked 3 at a finish time of 1:28:21
Novice Semi: OOCL ranked 5 with a finish time of 1:35:80
Novice B Championships: OOCL won the Silver Medal with a finish time of 1:39:04 just 7 seconds from the gold.
Click below to watch the OOCL Team in Action!!
Video coverage of the OOCL Dragons winning the Silver Medal - September 23, 2006, Treasure Island
sfdragonboatRaceSept20062ndrace.wmv
