Dragons Abreast Central Coast

🐉 A CRACKING RESULT FOR TEAM UNITY IN THE 1000M! 🇦🇺🇫🇷

Dragons Abreast Australia Team Unity put in a strong performance in the 1000m racing on Sunday at the IBCPC Festival in Aix-les-Bains, France. 🩷

Team Unity finished 2nd in their 1000m race in a time of 5:43.06.

5 minutes and 43 seconds of paddling, pedal to the metal. Those arms certainly earned their rest afterwards! 😅🐉

Second place — not too shabby! 👏🐉🩷

A fantastic way to finish an incredible week of paddling, racing and friendship with breast cancer paddlers from around the world. 🌏

A huge congratulations to all our DACC paddlers who were part of Team Unity. 🩷

🥉 DIDN’T WE DO WELL! TEAM UNITY TAKES THIRD IN THE 200M IN FRANCE! 🇫🇷🐉

A fantastic result for Dragons Abreast Australia Team Unity 🇦🇺 at the 2026 IBCPC Participatory Dragon Boat Festival, France 🇫🇷.

Team Unity kicked off the 200m racing by winning Heat 24 in 1:01.30, earning their place in the final.

Then in Final 12, they went even faster — 1:01.28 to finish third! 🥉👏

🇦🇺 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇫🇷
Team Unity draws members from Far North Queensland (Cairns and Townsville), to South Victoria (Patterson Lakes), west to South Australia, in between South East Queensland and Dragons Abreast Central Coast from Central Coast NSW... with a splash of USA and Canada.

United in our love of dragon boating and our quest for wellbeing and connection at IBCPC.

What a result. Congratulations, ladies! 🥉🐉💗

Friday night training on Budgewoi Lake 🐉🩷

What an evening for our weekly DACC training — cool, clear, barely a ripple on the lake, a beautiful sunset and then that full moon! 🌕✨

We were a smaller crew tonight, with quite a few of our usual shipmates over in France for the IBCPC Festival. 🇫🇷

And while we were incredibly lucky to have such calm conditions here on Budgewoi Lake, our thoughts were very much with our paddlers in France, where Friday's 500m racing had to be cancelled because of the weather conditions.

After travelling halfway around the world and putting in all that training, we know how disappointing that must be. Sending lots of DACC love to our French dragons and hoping the weather gods are much kinder for Saturday's racing. 🐉🩷🇫🇷

Back home, Coach Janice Kennedy ran a tight training session, with Annie Eloise Fahey and Jenice from Central Coast Dragon Boat Club setting the pace as strokes.

There was some sweep training too, with Alison Newell taking the rudder and Michelle guiding her through it. 👏

A beautiful Friday evening on our home waters — and tonight we were particularly grateful for just how kind Budgewoi Lake was to us.

DACC trains every Friday at 4.30 pm on Budgewoi Lake, Toukley.

🎬 CONQUERING BREAST CANCER — AVOCA BEACH

Six of our Dragons Abreast Central Coast ladies headed to Avoca Beach Theatre for a special screening of Conquering Breast Cancer — and what an excellent film.

Informative, educational, sensitive and diverse, it explored breast cancer with real depth — from diagnosis and treatment through to reconstruction, rehabilitation, research, mental health and the realities of living with and beyond breast cancer.

But naturally, there was one part we were particularly excited to see… dragon boating! 🐲💕

Our fellow dragon Sandra Sturgess from Dragons Abreast Newcastle Hunter, sharing her experience of living with metastatic breast cancer and the role dragon boating plays in her life.

Sandra spoke about the physical activity, social connection and having something positive to do — a lifeline throughout the breast cancer journey. And one line particularly resonated with us:

“We’re not a support group, but we support each other.”

That sums up Dragons Abreast rather beautifully.

We don't come together simply to talk about cancer. We paddle, train, race, travel, laugh and get on with living — alongside people who understand the journey without it needing to be explained.

The evening finished with a thoughtful Q&A led by Prof. John Boyages AM, joined by Dr Sharon Laura, breast surgeon; Caitlin Hobday, occupational therapist and lymphoedema therapist from Cancer Rehabilitation & Lymphatic Solutions; and breast cancer survivor Belinda O’Neill. Together they brought medical, surgical, rehabilitation and lived-experience perspectives to the conversation.

Our biggest takeaway? Breast cancer treatment is increasingly about keeping people alive; the bigger human challenge is helping people keep living.

And perhaps that's exactly where dragon boating comes in — connection, movement, friendship, laughter and plenty still to look forward to. 🐉💗

A terrific film, a thought-provoking evening, and we were more than a little proud to see our fellow Dragons up there on the big screen.

Here’s to living — and paddling — well. 💗🐲