BY Donna Cochran
For Spirit Point Dragons
Salt Spring’s dragon boat team came home with a bronze at Comox Marina Park on Sept. 13, a solid finish to their paddling season.
Hosted by VI Paddling for the third year, there were 36 teams, women’s and mixed, competing in standard (20-paddler) and small (10-paddler) boats. The 200m races were sprints and the challenge from the outset was the wind and choppy water.
Spirit Point’s mixed team has an age range of 12 to 80+ and we were up against some pretty tough competition. But in our first (and only) race we were proud to show off a full season of training, making our coach Michael Peirce very proud. From the starter’s “go” we rocketed off the start line and held the lead for the 200m course, finishing with a time of 58.0 seconds, more than a dragon’s head in front of second-place Mid-Island Masters (59.70) and third place Gorge-o-saurus (59.75).
We were prepared for at least one more race, but the wind only increased. So the organizers called it off in the early afternoon for safety reasons and took the times from the first race to allocate the medals. Spirit Point came sixth place overall in the festival and earned a bronze in B Division.
Paddlers included Cora Platz, Donna Cochran, Sam Goddard, Sheena Frisch, Wendy Andrews, Robyn Huntley, Coach Michael Peirce, John Ortlepp, François Frisch, Chloé Frisch, Chris Ortlepp, Louisa Taylor, Stewart Rimmer, Gwyneth Ortlepp, Leah Chang, Wendy Eggertson and Rob Huber. Special thanks to guest paddlers from No Drama Llamas Jacqui Ferguson, Anetka Drozd and Recene Spurr. Paddlers in waiting for the subsequent races included Melynda and Andrew Okulitch and Heather Denton.
Our very confident and skilful steersperson from VI Paddling was Teressa Poirier. Audrey Denton did a superb job as drummer, managing to hang on tight while being jostled by the waves. Wendy McEachern stood in as team manager for the day.
As always, a spirited “paddles up!” to our awesome coach Michael Peirce, our team manager Barry Green and assistant coach Lynda Green for their tireless support this past season.
And a big shout out of thanks to the Driftwood for giving us and so many other community teams bragging rights in their pages!
We can’t wait till next season. If you want to try it out, contact Michael Peirce at mpstripad@gmail.com.