Ottawa Dragon Masters Senior C Women

We made it. 🇹🇼🐲❤️

Half a world away, a little jet-lagged, already well-fed, and very happily exploring Hualien.

The adventure begins. First practice today, as we “find new water.” 🌊🐲

Ottawa Dragon Masters Senior C Women — here for the 2026 Club Crew World Championships.

Follow along! We’ll share race times and livestream information as soon as it’s confirmed. 🐲🇨🇦

(-> scroll thru to pic 6 😱😂🤩)

SNR C WOMEN REPORTING FROM HUALIEN. 🐉🌊🇹🇼

Ottawa gave us a beautiful sunset on the way out.

Then came the airport selfies, the long flight, the first shock of Pacific blue, and finally Hualien — where teammates and luggage have taken over the hotel.

There has already been plenty of adventure!

A few of the ladies wandered the lantern-lined lanes of Jiufen, where every turn looked like a postcard and every staircase seemed determined to test their legs before race week🏮

Suzanne has met a prawn that appeared to be looking back at her. 😂🦐

Four women have travelled halfway around the world and still somehow ended up under a giant STARBUCKS sign. 📸

And we’ve quickly learned that scooters are everywhere, so crossing the street requires a certain amount of faith. 🤭

After all those months of training, dark 6 a.m. practices, and Natacha reminding us to “find new water” Taiwan never quite felt like a real place.

It was something we were working toward. Something on a schedule. A destination on a flight plan.

And now we’re here.

Tomorrow, we’ll stand beside the water we’ve been imagining for months.

We’ll feel the heat. Hear the boat. Put our paddles in.

And trust that our bodies will recognize what they already know.

Then on Tuesday, the thing we have been aiming toward for so long becomes a start line.

For now, we’re settling in, laughing a lot, looking around, and taking in the wonderfully absurd fact that this is really happening.

Different water. Same boat. 🐲✍️🏮

Follow Our Trek to Taiwan 🇹🇼🐲

After two years of training, racing, early mornings and a whole lot of paddling, the Ottawa Dragon Masters Senior C Women are heading to Hualien, Taiwan for the 2026 IDBF Club Crew World Championships.

We’ll be sharing the journey here — from Ottawa ✈️ to Taiwan, behind-the-scenes moments, race-day updates, results and, once they’re released, the official links to live racing and replays.

Taiwan is 12 hours ahead of Ottawa, so you can stay awake with us.

Kidding. 🤭

We’ll make sure you know where — and when — to watch. ❤️🇨🇦🇹🇼🐲

📱 Follow us on Instagram for the journey:
https://www.instagram.com/odm_senior_c_women

🎥 Official livestream & replay links:
Coming soon — we’ll post them here as soon as IDBF releases them.

Water like glass.

No reading clouds or chasing signs. (maybe Lindy wants to know what that seagull means.. ☁️🙄)

Just twenty women in a boat, listening, learning, repeating.

And a coach at the front with a plan.

There is something comforting about calm water. It’s the calm before the effort.

Water like this doesn’t ask for anything from us. It simply reflects what is already there.

Just both feet in the boat and eyes forward.

Two weeks to Taiwan. 🐲🇹🇼

(Captured by KBobyn, our steer, who literally keeps us moving in the right direction. 📸)

Give It to the Sharks 🦈🧜‍♀️ ✍️

“Stay out, Lindy.”

I know.

I lean out. I really do.

And then, between the setup and the catch, some little part of my brain apparently remembers that I am sitting in a very narrow boat on a very large body of water. I drift back in..

Just a little.

So this morning Natacha decided we needed a visual.

“Imagine, you are leaning so far out of the boat that you want to give your breast to the sharks.”

The boat erupted!

Twenty women. Twenty breasts being mentally offered to imaginary sharks.

We who are generously endowed, assured there was plenty there for the shark. 😂

We, who are tiny and petite, announced that if the sharks were waiting for hers, they were going to swim away hungry. 😂

And just like that, none of us will ever forget how far Natacha wants us to lean.

But then we did the drill. We set up. We leaned out over the water. We put our weight onto the blade.

All of it.

“Trust it,” Natacha told us.

The blade will hold you.

And somewhere between the laughter and the repetition, that ridiculous image began to feel like something more.

Because here we are: twenty women about to spend the weekend eating together, training together, paddling together and learning more about one another before we leave for Taiwan.

We are not the same.

Different bodies. Different histories. Different personalities. Different opinions. Different scars. Different strengths.

But there is something that unites us.

We trust our coach.

And we trust the process.

So perhaps that is where becoming one boat begins.

You lean farther than feels comfortable.

You stop trying to protect yourself by drifting those few inches back toward safety.

You put your weight on the blade.

And you trust.

Maybe “give your breast to the sharks” was simply Natacha being Natacha.

Maybe she just wanted Lindy to finally stay out over the damn water. 🤭

Or maybe she knew that twenty very different women were about to begin a weekend devoted to becoming one team, and she handed us exactly the image we needed.

She always seems to know.

So, mermaids—

lean out.

Trust the blade.

Give it to the sharks.

We’ve got one boat to become. 🐲🧜‍♀️🦈❤️

Stay in the boat. 🌊✍️❤️

Coach Natacha has been reminding us of that a lot lately.

At first, we thought she was talking about paddling.

Keep your eyes where they belong. Don’t get distracted by the boats beside you. Trust the plan. Trust each other. Narrow your focus.

Lately, we’ve realized something. Our camera roll has started doing the same thing.

At the beginning of the season, they were full of coffee after practice, teammates making each other laugh, group selfies, and plenty of moments that had nothing to do with paddling.

Now, when we scroll through them, something has changed. Our camera has stopped looking sideways… and started looking forward.

The lane. The horizon. The water. The light. Exactly where Coach keeps asking us to look.

So if we’ve been posting photos of our backs, or just the water rushing beneath the boat, we’re not being unfriendly. 🤭 It’s because we have somewhere we’re trying to go.

Months ago we would have stopped to say,

“Look at this beautiful sunrise!”

Now the sunrise is just enough beauty to notice.. and then back to work.

Coach keeps reminding us to stay in the boat.

I think she was also talking about seeing.

Because somewhere along the way, we’ve all started looking in the same direction. ❤️🐲🌊

Team photos. 📸

Everyone in these photos has carried a boat, stood in the rain, raced exhausted, and hugged a teammate.

A few women who helped get us here aren’t standing in this one, and others have climbed in beside us.

Every photograph catches one beautiful moment when these were the women sharing the work.

The crew changes, but the boat keeps moving forward.

In four weeks we’ll take another team photo from the dock in Taiwan.

And someday, we’ll look back at that one too.

🇨🇦🐲🌊