New Races, Close Calls and a Perfect Season Finale for Sync or Swim
August 23–24, 2025 marked the return of the Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Festival in the Victoria Gorge and what a weekend it was. With its unbeatable race venue, good organization by the FGPC crew and a lineup of races designed to test both stamina and sanity, this festival was truly one of the gems of Vancouver Island dragon boating.
This two-day pentathlon of paddling served up everything from sprints to endurance ovals:
500m seeded heats
200m positioning heats
100m positioning heats
100m knockouts
1500m guts & glory
250m flag relay championships
500m grand finals
If it involved paddling hard and yelling louder, it was on the schedule.
The Races
With 16 women’s teams from as far as Edmonton, Oregon, and Fort Langley, not to mention plenty of strong crews from across the Island, there was no shortage of fresh faces and great competition.
Our results stacked up like this:
500m: 2:45:39 (4th of 16)
200m: 1:05:030 (1st of 16! 🥇)
100m: 0:39:746 (8th of 16 — our first-ever attempt at this one)
Knockouts: Made it to Round 2 (and finished 3rd in that heat) before elimination. First time trying knockouts too… consider us hooked.
1500m Guts & Glory: 8:35:061 (6th of 16, and yes, we’re still catching our breath).
One of the weekend’s highlights? The 500m flag relay. We were paired with the WBDBC Jade Dragons from Salem, Oregon, and came away with 2nd place out of 6 teams in our heat, with a time of 2:40:617. Special mention goes to Lesley, who, despite some nerves about the flag hand-off, absolutely nailed it.
The Results
The top three women’s teams of the weekend earned a spot in the grand final 500m, and while we narrowly missed out, we were right there in the mix:
3rd place: 15:45:042
4th place: 15:45:372
5th place (Sync or Swim): 15:45:803
That’s right. A mere seven-tenths of a second separated us from the the top 3 and we took home Silver in the Women’s A. Talk about a nail-biter. Congrats to FGPC Dralions, DSUSA Tilikum Dragons, and OCC Velocity for securing the top three spots!
Huge thanks to FGPC for hosting another stellar event, and for lending us Steer Nolan for the weekend. He fit right in like he’d been paddling with us for years. 10/10, would borrow again!
For Sync or Swim, the weekend was a mix of first-time races, close finishes and a reminder of why we love this sport: the challenge, the adrenaline and the community that makes it all so good.
And as our last race of the 2025 season, we couldn’t have asked for a better finish—gold in the 200m, a second-place flag relay, new formats conquered and plenty of laughs to carry us through the off-season.
