The Bay Area Dragons presents the 2nd Annual Paddle For Life Charity Dragon Boat Race to be held June 7-8, 2008 in Oakland, California at Jack London Square.

The Paddle for Life race is a community event organized by Bay Area teams to raise money for charity , raise awareness of the dragon boat sport and create a fun time for spectators and paddlers alike. Food and commercial vendors will be on-site, as well as live entertainment. The race site is at Jack London Square in Oakland, CA. Teams consist of 20 paddlers, a steersperson and a drummer. All teams will be provided with a race-day steersperson and if needed, a drummer. There are mixed (co-ed) teams consisting of at least 8 women, open teams (i.e. Mens) consisting of all men or having less than 8 women, and women's teams consisting entirely of women paddlers. Several teams from all walks of life have signed up already to pit their novice paddlers against the other first-time paddlers. You can also sign up as an individual paddler and a team will be found for you. Race registration also includes full equipment usage, free  practices and one-on-one coaching from dragon boat experts.

For more information, please go to the Paddle For Life web site at paddleforlife.org . 

Semi-Final Races

 Uploaded and edited by Richard Sah

John

By John Herrera

The Bay Area Dragons sent a crew of twenty-one paddlers to Montreal to compete in one of the biggest dragon boat festivals on the continent.  After the dramatic world cup qualifying victory in Washington the week before, BAD was hoping to build on the big win and bring back some hardware from Quebec's jewel of a city.  Perhaps suffering from a world cup qualifier victory hangover, or from a bout of some serious jet lag, BAD failed to place in the top twenty and would go home without any medals.

John

PDBA Premier Open Gold

The Bay Area Dragons traveled to Vancouver Lake, Washington for a showdown against the defending PDBA champions San Diego.  At stake was a birth in the Dragon Boat Club Crew World Championships to be held in Penang, Malaysia in 2008.  The result was a thrilling come from behind victory by BAD that earned us the coveted premier open entry to represent the West Coast of the United States in the Club Crew World Championships.

Marco

Quarry Lakes, Fremont:  That's racing...

By Marco Gabbiani

Finally, I was involved in some real on water excitement at the Fremont 2007 races. Mind you, not quite the excitement I had in mind.  I was looking forward to an even better medal haul than Redwood Shores. The performances of BAD in the heats were very promising. We were leaving all our competitors in our wake, but the real contest would only emerge in the finals. As the wind picked up, so too did the number of odd events.  Here is a selection:

John

Lunch from our host DWW

By John Herrera

VANCOUVER:  The Bay Area Dragons made their much anticipated return to Vancouver's ultra competitive Alcan Dragon Boat Festival last Saturday.  In returning to this festival BAD had three goals:  The first was to get a taste of the extreme competition that Vancouver's 160 + teams offer in order to get a sense of what it will be like next year  in the World Championships at Penang, Malaysia.  The second was to get a taste of Vancouver's legendary Sushi.  The third goal was to make new friends in order to nurture the growth of our sensational sport.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Kiran

BAD 2 (lane 4) battles it out

After being on BAD since November 2006, all the months of practice and enduring painful reaches and rotations finally paid off at the local Redwood Shores race on May 12 2007. It was the first race for me and several other new members of BAD, but I think we all gave it our 100% since all the BAD teams did well against pretty stiff competition.

Kien

It was a sunny but bone-chilling windy day at Redwood Shores; a perfect day to catch a cold and a few championships BAD style.  The Masters and Men’s 1 set the cadence with no-questions-about-it 1^st place wins in their championships.   While some teams would have been happy to call it a day with that, we continued on with a strong pull and finish in practically every heat and division we paddled in.

John

TEMPE - The Bay Area Dragons season began with a bang at the end of March as the BAD I mixed crew took second place overall in an ultra competitive fourth annual Arizona Dragon Boat Festival.  The only blemish on an otherwise perfect two days of racing in the desert was BAD's loss in the final heat to last year's west coast World Dragon Boat championship representative San Diego.  Aside from that, BAD left everybody else in its wake en route to a hard earned silver medal.