After five tries, the Charlotte Fury Dragon Boat team finally took the Charleston Championship Cup on May 14, 2011.
The 250 meter course, set at the estuary of the Ashley River, is one of the more challenging venues the team encountered, battling white caps and unpredictable current conditions.
In spite of it all, the team bested the field in achieving its first-ever sub one minute time for this distance, in 57.02 seconds.
On the heels of the Charlotte Dragon Boat festival the weekend prior, with over half the crew volunteered for various tasks,the team hardly had much of any rest heading out to Charleston. With several male crew members unavailable, the team has to settle for a less than optimal 12 to 8 male to female ratio of paddlers in its roster. Adding to this was yet another challenge, in that there were four female rookies among the total crew of twenty one. Through it all, working in our favor was the experience of the veterans and the overall conditioning of the crew, smart steering and coming up with an improvised start to overcome the wind gust in the final heat.
With this auspicious start of the 2011 season, the crew is poised to meet its most demanding schedule in the coming months, namely, to race against some very strong teams from the Northeast in Baltimore in June, defending its championship cup in Richmond in August, then to compete against the best teams from the Southeast in Atlanta in September, then the season finale in Orlando in October.