The sun was blazing hot and the tide was high as the Sea Cucumbers Mixed Team hit the beach yesterday for the 2019 Sun Life Stanley International Dragon Boat Championships in celebration of the Tuen Ng Festival. Facing a competitive field of 192 mixed teams, we raced 18 person boats down the 270 m course against 11 other teams per heat. We finished 1st in our first heat (which won us a trophy!) and 3rd in our second heat, qualifying for the Mixed Gold Cup Final – the top final for mixed teams. BRING IT!

Huge shout out to Il Bel Paese Discovery Bay! Thanks, guys for accepting our reusable containers to make our lunches green tomorrow. We love that you have done this for us!!!

#IlBelPaese, #paddlewithoutplastic, #GreenDragonsHK, #plasticfreeSeas

We braved thunder, lightning and the infamous loud speaker at the Mui Wo Dragon Boat festival yesterday! Our mixed and ladies teams paddled with speed and power along the 300 m course to respectable finishes against tough competition. Patience was a virtue as we waited out the thunderstorm but the sun came out again and the day was a success.

Big thanks to Green Dragons HK and Plastic Free Seas for their hard work in keeping the Mui Wo beach free of single-use plastic on race day. You are the unsung heroes!

Mui Wo Dragon Boat race results

Mixed Team
Silver Cup Finals
Runners up (on aggregate coming just fractions of a second behind the formidable Mushu and Smugz teams. SUPER RESULT!! )

(7 out of 28 mixed teams overall)

Ladies Team
Gold Cup Finals
3rd runners up

We are proud of all of our paddlers!

Sunday 15^th of April 07:30 AM, this is the day.

The Cuke’s squad is waiting for our ferry to bring us to Lamma Island. This is it! The first race of the year for us and what a race: LAMMA 500!

Look like the weather will be a big player of the day, and from what we can see it will not be accommodating … Rain, Wind, and thunders will join us.

This year’s we did register 4 teams:

• Standard Boat Ladies in 500 m
• Standard Boat Mix in 500 m
• Standard Boat Mix in 1K
• Standard Boat Open in 500 m

The Mix team will be opening today followed by the ladies and we will send the big guys at last!

Around lunchtime the conditions went from bad to worse: heavy rain and thunders strike all over the place.

Wind and rain, we can deal with it but the organizers had to stop the races due to lightenings.

At some stage, the Captains were called to discuss the situation and simply calling it a day.

Race resume to normal around 5:00 PM, 1000 races were skipped.

We can’t make it to the Mix Bowl final some of our crew had to head back home. This year we will not bring any trophies from Lama but we did learn a lot from that event.

All our teams add a slow start, but after a few tips and discussion and changes in the boats, they all improve their performance on the second heat.

The Mix team as always did great and end up being the top 25 % of the performers. Please do remember that we are a Mix team, after all, recognize in the community, but never the less we can get into other categories and be proud of ourselves and learn from those races.

Cukes, let’s get ready for VRC, that will be our second 500 m of the season, we will put extra miles under our paddle and let’s start with a fresh new slate.

1-2-3 Cuke’s Nations!

Results:

Mix Team:

• Heat 1: 2^nd position (13/39 teams)
• Heat 2: 2^nd position (11/39 teams)

Open Team:

• Heat 1: 4^th position
• Heat 2: 5^th position

Ladies Team:

• Heat 1: 4^th position
• Heat 2: 4th ^position