Sheer grunt: The RAN Dragon Boat Team under the drum call of WO Stephens begins its winning sprint in the Men’s Open Event Final.Photos by Bill Cunneen

By Cpl Andrew Hetherington
Volume 11, No. 38, March 8, 2006


TWO Army officers joined the Navy to paddle as members of dragon boat teams during the recent Sydney 2006 Chinese New Year celebrations.

Capt Kheng Yuen, of LHQ, was a member of the men’s open Navy team and Capt Val Kim, of the Amphibious Afloat Support Group at Garden Island, was a member of the mixed open team.

Capt Kim said his team rowed in three heats, which were a distance of 200m for each race.

“The mixed open team came fifth overall, but I am looking forward to future competitions later in the year,” he said.

“I am new to this sport. It is an interesting environment, being an Army person in a Navy team.”

Capt Kim said the sport really discovered him due to it being very popular where he works at Garden Island.
“Pretty much everyone does it where I work,” he said.

“It is hard to get away from it.

“As someone in a new posting as I was, as it is a Navy environment, I thought it would be a good way to become a part of the team and meet some folks from Garden Island.

“It is a fairly social thing but it does keep you fit by giving your upper body and abs a fairly good workout.”

Capt Yuen said as a member of the men’s open team he raced over a distance of 250m in three heats to get to the final.

“We came first in the B-grade finals. Instead of qualifying in the A finals we could only qualify for the B final,” he said.
“Last year we had a very strong team and came third in the A-grade final.

“This year we had only 30 per cent of last year’s team rowing and we were trying to train the team up.

“Every year the team has to be built up and re-trained because someone gets posted to a ship or somewhere else.”

Capt Yuen got into dragon boat racing when he was posted to Garden Island a few years ago and he said he joined the Sydney Navy team when it was first started.

“It is a really great sport, a very low injury rate, which is good thing. It is a team sport so everyone gets involved,” he said.
“You get out there and people see the Navy uniform and it is good for PR and team building.

“The team does a variety of training, with a lot of training in the water; we are in the harbour at six o’clock in the morning three times a week and train for an hour.

“We also do land-based training with weights and do body core strength training.”

Capt Yuen said he intended to compete again with the Navy team in the coming state titles in Canberra on March 26, and then planned to move on to paddle nationally and internationally later in the year.

The national titles will be held from April 14-16 at Nagambie in Victoria.

“After the Australian titles we are going overseas,” he said.

“At this stage we are not sure which competitions we will enter, we will see how we go.”

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