PHOTOS: Dragon Boat Super Sprints

The record books will show the official wind speed Saturday rarely exceeded 30 km/h. But if you were anywhere near the north end of Skaha Lake, where the gusts always seem to pack an extra wallop, you know Saturday felt far more extreme than that.

And that was important because Saturday was Day #2 of the 2023 "Okanagan Super Sprints," a series of fast, short-distance dragon boat races that annually attract hundreds of competitors to Skaha Lake Beach.

The Super Sprints are a cool deal on their own, bringing dragon boaters from all over together long before summer even kicks off.

But they also allow teams to brush up on their head-to-head skills months before Penticton's really big dragon boat event of the year, the Penticton Dragon Boat Festival, this year unfolding Sept 9 and 10.

Saturday, the wind was deemed to be bad enough that the usual racing orientation was altered. Rather than paddling west to east, approximately paralleling the beach, boats and crews were forced to race north to south, into the winds and perpendicular to the beach.

They'd end their runs past the wharves of the Skaha Beach Marina, where the spectator view of the finish line was heavily obscured. But, as the say, safety first.

Still, dragon boaters and their crafts make for great pics whether on the water or on the land, in a windstorm or whent he weather's dead calm.

For results from Saturday action (and Friday's 55+ races), turn here and click the appropriate buttons. For more info on the local dragon boat festival scene, head here.