One last race ... on the west coast!

In the middle of the summer, Catch22 was asked if they were interested in attending the 24th Annual Kaiser Permanente Northern California International Dragonboat Festival. Half of the team was an immediate yes, and a few more were maybes. As the summer progressed, we filled the remaining seats on our boat with our friends from Boston1. Earlier in the summer, we attended a mini camp with them and had mixed our crews already for gendered races. Now, another chance to mix our crews as we compete against other crews from California, even the Philippines!

We didn't expect much. We just wanted to have some fun racing in a new place. But we ended up having an amazing time over the weekend! Alameda Dragon Flyers hosted us which was a new experience and they really took care of us! They welcomed us into their tent and fed us breakfast and bahn mi sandwiches!

And the racing was fast too! Batch23 with each race found their groove and got stronger and stronger. Thank you to East Harbor for the best steerer, Erin, a strong paddler, Huy, and a great last minute drummer addition of Brandon. We had so much fun racing with you! And also thanks to Blazing Dragons for joining up for some strong gendered races! There was so much good, strong, fun racing and we can't wait to come back again next year!

Oh yeah, second places for a new team in a new race location aint bad either. :)