Family Island Regatta Vietnamese Style

 Location: Hoi An, Vietnam

While living on Rachel, we really enjoyed attending a few Family Island Regattas in Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas. Today we had almost as much fun (albeit only for a couple of hours rather than five days) watching the Hoi An Tet celebration boat races.

Two races, about 8 boats from local neighborhoods and mostly local spectators cheering them on from the shore and in boats. One can't watch an event like this without getting caught up in all the excitement.

This is an annual event that takes place just after the Tet holiday. The boats are double ended rowing boats. Like most boats here in Vietnam, there is an eye painted on either side of the bow. We've read that they are supposed to be the eyes of ospreys, which strike fear into sea monsters, keeping the boat and it's crew safe on the water.

At any rate, there's a crew of 8 men, six constantly paddling, one on the bow paddling most of the time and helping pull the boat around the turns, and 1 man in the stern to steer, paddling like crazy when he can, too. In the fastest boats the forward paddler on the inside joins the bow man in pulling the bow around. With two of them pulling, the boat makes it's turn faster and can regain speed more quickly.

 The race is three laps around a course that we guess to be about 500 yards long with a turning buoy at each end. We watched the first race from about ½ way between the turning buoys. As the boats passed, the spectators used bailers, paddles, whatever was at hand to throw and splash water on their favorite crews to cool them down.

 The second race found us right near one of the turning buoys. Definitely now our preferred place to see the best action.

We saw one boat overturn after being pushed by another, and the following boats simply blasted right on through, just missing the crew in the water, with one actually riding right over the capsized boat. Very exciting – thank goodness no one was hurt.

One of the strategies if you are slightly behind another boat is to wait for them to start to make the turn around the mark, then take the inside and jam your boat between them and the buoy, forcing them further outside. Once the mark has been passed, you then paddle like crazy to turn your boat first and get into the lead.

Touching the mark is apparently not penalized in these races – in fact, most of the time the boat approaches slightly inside the mark, leaving the lead paddler to whack the mark with his paddle to force it to the inside of the boat at just the right time, thereby shortening the course temporarily by a foot or so.

In the video above, you can see the boat that won (yellow shirts with white shirts fore and aft) on the left actually stop paddling for a bit to allow their opponents to pass them on the inside during the first turn of the race. Once the other boat starts the turn, the yellow guys start paddling like crazy and two of them turn sideways and pull the bow around. By taking control of the inside they are able to come about more quickly and take the lead. Very dramatic.

The next video shows how NOT to make the turn. The inside boat is forced to the inside of the buoy by another boat. We think “They'll have to back up to go around it”. In true Family Island Regatta spirit, however, they say “The heck with that!”. The guys on the buoy side of the boat just pass the buoy forward, dragging it's anchor until the bow guy can shove it under the bow, allowing the boat to round it on the outside and take off again. Then they run into the side of the outside boat and use the other boat's momentum to help them turn faster! Only problem with this strategy is that it can be difficult to paddle and steer when two boats are tight against each other. After all this, one of the committee boats had to come out and re-anchor the mark. 

The last video shows the battle for second place.  The woman at the bottom of the screen is obviously rooting for the red shirt teem who came in second in both races.

The winning boat “Thanh Ha” (pronounced “tine-hahhh” - ish) won both races. And, happily enough for us, it turns out they're from the pottery village (Go team! Yay!!).

In reviewing all the videos we took, it's pretty easy to see why Thanh Ha won. From the start to the finish these guys gave 100%. Paddles flashing they took an early lead in both races and after the first lap rounded the buoys uncontested – seemingly the only sure way to make sure no-one else messes with you in the turns. Three laps at full tilt can't have been easy. And a second race less than an hour later, also three laps at full tilt, must have been really exhausting. These guys were so dominant they lapped the last place boat in the first race and won by an even larger margin in the second race. They really had their strategy and teamwork down, and seemed to stay totally focused throughout both races.

Congratulations, Thanh Ha!!