There was a Dragon Boat race yesterday on the Tyne (the river that goes through Newcastle... hence, "Newcastle upon Tyne" 🙂 Some 21 people, mostly from Computing Science, formed the University of Newcastle "Dragon & Drop" team 🙂 None of us were rowers. We did it just for the fun of it. There were around 10-12 crews altogether in the race (I lost count of the number of entries so I may be wrong on this one).

We started really badly because we couldn't get synchronised but we still won our first two heats. Before the third and final heat we were 4th overall (times and not heat positions counted) but we needed to be 3rd in order to get into the final. A fantastic effort put us into the final by not only winning the heat but also doing a great time.

In the final, we were some 15 secs behind on time aggregates from the other two crews, so we were very much the underdogs. The final race started with us being half a boat length behind but excellent team work allowed us to win it by 2 secs 🙂 Hurray!

It was an excellent day. Thanks to Chris Fowler for organising it and to Simon Woodman who played the role of the photographer after being replaced due to a bad injury he picked up while playing cricket!!! (Get well soon Si).

Here are 4 representative photos from the day. More over at Simon's.