A Good Game Well-Played

The weekend before last, was the annual Singapore Dragon Boat Festival (SDBF) race at the usual race ground of Bedok Reservoir. What is unusual about this 500-meter race this year is the absence of pontoon at the starting line where paddlers and coxwains were left to deal with the wind - and the light rain - holding on to the float start. Not many people know that the reason behind the missing floating platform is the bigger pontoon the National Day Parade needs year.

The float start caused not only exasperation for Pak Mahmood the race starter - especially ahead of small boat races - but delays of race batches and ultimately resulted in cancelled repechages. Our team, too, was affected.

Team Kraken was in good form. Well, except for May maybe, who suffered from tennis-elbow and had to switch with Liz our appointed drummer. Our PA GRO Open crew was a good mix of youngsters, seniors and masters. Our first time coxswain Jun Han was calm and steady. We unfortunately missed out on semis due to the absence of repechages. Nevertheless, overall each boat we sent in every category did even better than during training.

Many thanks to Punggol Coast CSN, Coach Terence, Coach Zul, Team Manager Hamdan, Exco, Captain Muliadi and everyone involved to make this race a good experience for all. On that note Team Kraken will come back stronger for Pesta Sukan race on the last weekend of July!

Report card:

1. DB12 National Premier Women: Team A overall 3rd place; Team B overall 5th place.

2. DB22 National Premier Mix: Heats, 2m 18s.

3. DB12 PA GRO Open: Heats, 2m 22s.