News

It was a cold and rainy start to the day, with our team prepped for the first heat at around 1030am. Adrenaline must have been pumping - we posted an 80+ second time to gain second place against a very fast Wairarapa Club boat, who proved to be our main rival later in the day. In our second and third heats, the southerly wind picked up, but we cruised comfortably to win our third heat by a significant margin. 

However, it wasn't the heat placings that mattered, but the times, and we did well with the average between our top two heats of 80.72 and 83.35 seconds enough to propel us over the B and C finals and into the Mixed Grand Final. 

Historically we've participated in the Corporate Division and won comfortably, and it had been often discussed that moving into Open/Mixed Division would be more of a challenge - which it certainly proved to be. Our Grand final was the fastest race of the day against Dragonboat Clubs who had travelled to be at the event - from the Wairarapa, Auckland, and Bay of Plenty.

We did CentrePort proud and crossed the line at 80.36 - our best time of the day, the fourth fastest boat in any 2023 Final, and only 3.5 seconds behind Wairarapa Dragonboat Club who were the fastest boat of the entire competition. 

We left it all out there on the water, and proud that we gave it everything.