Most dragon boat teams have long hung up their paddles, but the Gung Haggis team has their last evening practice prior to the Ft. Langley Cranberry Festival canoe Regatta this Thanksgiving weekend.

It's been a long dragon boat paddling season.  We started on Feb 17th Sunday afternoon, when a Global TV camera came out to film us for a “Best of BC” segment about cultural diversity.  Somehow paddling in dragon boats with kilts and celebrating our Chinese traditions in Canada qualifies.

First Practice: Gung Haggis dragon boat team team hits the water with a Global TV cameraman filming them to celebrate BC's cultural diversity

Global “Best of BC” review: Gung Haggis dragon boat team is part of World Class BC on Global News show Feb 26

Our last race of the season is the Ft. Langley Cranberry Festival Canoe Regatta.  There are no prizes, but lots of fun and lots of pride and bragging rights.  For tonight's practice we ran two boats: veterans and new/casual paddlers.  We ran the boats side by side and did some race pieces with turns.  It was lots of fun.  I think there were 10 on the veterans boat and 16 on the fun/casual boat, and the boats stayed pretty close together.

The weather is getting cold in the evenings.  Joe wears his thermal undies to keep layered for our last evening dragon boat practice of the year.- photo Dave Samis

The sun is setting earlier and silhouettes coach Todd Wong – photo Dave Samis

-photo Dave Samis

We raft the boats together for a rest, and coach Todd gives instructions on how to avoid a collision.  Next he tells us that we are going to race to ahead to the pier in front, 1st team goes into the mini-bay and does a loop under and around the bicycle bridge, then out.