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he waters of the Neuse River off of Oriental turned in to a race course Saturday as the town staged its first ever Dragon Boat Race and Festival. Nine teams — each with 21 members — paddled a 200-meter line between the Lou Mac Park Pier and High Street.

Dragon Boat Race in Oriental. The three finalists in Oriental’s First Annual Dragon Boat Races. Deaton’s “Paddle Mania” team, in the boat closest to shore, would win with a time of 1 minute and 7.8 seconds.

The winning team was the crew from Deaton’s, who went by the team name “Paddle Mania”. It was a photo finish between the second and third place finishers in the final race. The team, “Blazing Paddles” edged out “Team Norman” by about 35/100ths of a second.

The course was 200 meters between the Lou Mac Pier and the end of High Street. The Deaton’s team crossed the finish line (see red ball in water) almost 5 seconds ahead of the next team, Blazing Paddles, in the green boat. Second and third place was determined by a photo finish, with just a third of a second separating Blazing Paddles and Team Norman.

The sport was a new one to just about everyone in the races, and to make their rookie run even more interesting — and wet — the Neuse River served up 10-15 mile an hour winds, almost right on the dragons noses on the bows of the boats. Boats and paddlers got very wet, with one boat even capsizing after finishing the course. On another team’s boat, a paddler collapsed. Yet over all, the takeaway message from Saturday’s race was that a new tradition may have been born in Oriental.

In one of the heats the “Pirates for PAWS (foreground) competed against the “Sea Ninjas.”

The sport of Dragon Racing has grown in the US in recent years thanks to doctors recommending that breast cancer survivors do it as a way to fend off further illnesses. For the town of Oriental, the dragon connection seemed a logical match. Dragon boat races have been happening for 2000 years in China, and Oriental has not been shy in the past about appropriating Asian themes, for example the New Year’s dragon and the dragon that keeps watch over the Duck Pond.

Moments after winning the Dragon Boat competition, the Deaton’s crew paddled back to the Town Beach and stopped for a moment for a photo.

Flora Moorman of Downeast Destinations had talked for a few years of bringing the activity to Oriental. This year she contracted with a Knoxville, TN company, Dynamic Dragon Boats, which supplied four boats and staffers who could coach the teams. Teams paid around $700 a boat to take part in the event.

Jeff Aydelette and Flora Moorman, who organized Oriental’s First Dragon Boat Races. At right is Penny Behling whose Knoxville, TN company staged the event. Among the announcments Jeff made was that there was a sign-up sheet to start an Oriental Dragon Boat Association. By the end of the day he said, it had garnered more than 50 names.

Aside from the action on the water, a table with a sign-up sheet was attracting a lot of activity on Saturday. More than fifty people signed up to form an Oriental Dragon Boat Association. Nothing has been formalized yet, but there was a lot of talk about acquiring a dragon boat so that people here could take part in the sport more than just once a year.

Second place went to the “Blazing Paddles” team led by Jerry Dasson,(center). The award was a silver painted oar.

That would mean a boat that could be used for practice and possible competition with teams in other cities. One idea being floated: having a group of woodworkers or boatbuilders make one of the 40+ foot long boats, just as, a few years ago, they built the Optimist dinghies for the youth sailing school.

Third place was Team Norman. (Team Norman was not, as many may have thought, the Village Restaurant crew led by Brantley Norman. Rather, it was that of Norman Sanderson, a Republican who is running for the NC House.)

Jerry Dasson, captain of the Blazing Paddles team was happy with the response to the Dragon Races. For a few years, he says, he had tried to get people interested in the sport. That job, he says, has been made easier now that the town experienced the race on Saturday.

Ahead: more photos, a capsize, a First Responder responds via boat, the teams’ tents.

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Water Sampling by Neuse RiverKeeper Team

During the second heat of races Saturday afternoon, there were a few moments of drama on the water. The first involved the team “Dragon Keepers” aka, members of the Neuse RiverKeepers organization which works to clean up the Neuse River. Water sampling is part of the environmental group’s work; on Saturday, they sampled quite a bit…

Neuse RiverKeepers, whose team was Dragon Keepers, in the morning race.

After completing the second heat in the afternoon, the RiverKeeper team’s boat was riding very low in the choppy water. Neuse RiverKeeper Larry Baldwin, second from right, in bandana, says the boat had taken on a lot of water by this point.

When the boat veered to port in order to return to the Town Beach, more of that wind caught its low free-board….

…and then it was over.

Jarred at first by the overturning, the RiverKeepers crew appeared to take it in stride, in part because they were in shallow enough water to walk the boat in. They later had to pump out the water to ready the boat for the next race.

Just testing the waters… something that the RiverKeeper Foundation does do on the Neuse River. Usually, that doesn’t involve capsizing a dragon boat.

Dragon Keepers keeping the boat afloat.

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Rescue on the River.

After the race, Regina Dubiel, who was part of the 2nd place “Blazing Paddles” team asked if TownDock could make a special mention of another team, “Puff the Dragon” which finished in fifth place.

The “Puff the Dragon” team more than half way down its course, with drummer Happy Lowry at the bow. 20 seconds later, one of the team members collapsed.

As Regina pointed out, “Puff the Dragon” was the only team in the afternoon heats to post a better time than they posted in the morning. Even more remarkable, said Dubiel, was that when the “Puff the Dragon” crossed the finish line in the afternoon race, they were down two paddlers.

The scoreboard going in to the final race.

Just seconds from the finish line, one of the paddlers, Diane Stewart, collapsed and fell sideways. Her paddle floated away. The paddler behind her, Tim Balfour stopped paddling so that he could lift Diane’s head out of the water. Most of the rest of the team, including Diane’s husband Russ, seated next to Tim, didn’t realize what had happened until the race was over about 8 seconds later. They were, after all, trained to focus on the person in front of them and paddle.

Within a minute of the paddler collapsing, Will Flannery of Zodiac Expeditions had arrived alongside the dragon boat and gotten her on to the boat that could get her to shore faster.

Within literally less than a minute, Will Flannery, of Offshore Rafting was on the scene. He was working in his Zodiac inflatable as the chase boat, and came up alongside the “Puff the Dragon” boat and then lifted Diane out.

Eric Kindle, a First Responder, was on the water and at the scene quickly. Here, he is about to get on to the Zodiac where the paddler had been lifted.

Half a minute after that, First Responder Eric Kindle – who also had been out on the water in the event something happened – zoomed over in his Sea Ray, then dropped anchor, grabbed a bag with medical gear, hopped onto the Will Flannery’s boat and treated Diane en route to shore. An ambulance was called and she spent a few hours in the hospital before being released.

The team, Puff the Dragon, minus two paddlers, Russ and Diane Stewart, returns from the race route to the Town Beach.

On Monday, Russ Stewart was praising the quick response all around. “We are so thankful for Tim, Will, Christy,(who was seated next to Diane) Eric, and how everyone on the boat stayed calm and did exactly what needed to be done. We are truly blessed to be part of an amazing community.”

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Grosvenor Barber, in the front row of the Team Norman boat. “It took me 80 years to get in to a dragon boat,” he said after the race. He said he’d do it again.

Jeff Aydelette with megaphone, announcing the heats in the Dragon Boat Races.

So many people wanted to be Pirates for Paws that a second team, “PAWS Pirates of Teach’s Cove” was formed.

Paddling wasn’t the only thing the crews did. Because of the choppy conditions,the boats took on more water than they usually would. At times the crews were bailing in to a wave that brought much more water again in to the boat. Here, the Deaton’s crew bails while bringing the boat back to the Town Beach after their second race.

On the road, cyclists might catch a break from some tailwind. Not in dragon boat racing. In their morning heat, the Oriental Express Bicycling Club’s “Dragon Riders” came in a second and a half behind “Blazing Paddles” (the tail in this photo).

On the “Blazing Paddles” team, Nol Engel was the designated drummer, providing a rhythm to which his 20 teammates could paddle. (Long before moving to Oriental, Nol was a drummer in Amsterdam, playing in Latin bands. Intriguing though the thought may be, a Latin beat was not employed Saturday. )

Aside from the drummer, the boat teams were divided in to roughly three sections. At the front were the “Strokers” who set the pace, in the mid-ships, the “Engine” where generally male teammates with heavier weight and longer arms powered the boat, and aft of them was the “Rocket” who paddled thru the wake. Regina Dubiel, was one of the rocket paddlers on the “Blazing Paddles” boat.

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The wind on the river made for a challenging course for the paddlers most of whom were dragon boat racing for the first time. The paddlers also had to man bailers after the races. Here, after one race, the Deaton’s team tried to bail water out, but it was leaving the boat at a seemingly slower pace than it was coming in.

Back on land, each of the teams had a tent that they’d been encouraged to decorate .The “Pirates for PAWS” team took honors for best costume and theme at its tent.

You might recognize those words, though not in that order. At the “Puff the Dragon” team’s tent, dangling snippets of the song that gave the team its name.

The “Blazing Paddles” corner.

Colors you don’t usually see in AwlGrip. The encampment of Deaton’s Yacht Service and Sales team, “Paddle Mania”.

Fran Deaton Bennett drumming at the bow of the Deaton’s boat, in one of its qualifying heats.

Pat Sumner and Barbara Moyer of Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Breast cancer survivors they have become devoted dragon boat racers, practicing three times a week in the Waccamaw River and traveling to competitions. They traveled to Oriental and took part in the race on two teams and offered encouragement for Oriental to set up its own team.

Posted Tuesday August 24, 2010 by Melinda Penkava