The Piranhas DBC capped off an up-and-down, roller coaster season with a strong 9th place finish in their first appearance at the Great White North Challenge in Toronto. While a quiet decision by officials to change the time of another crew which placed the Piranhas in the less-than-favourable fourth lane for the A-division consolation final, the Piranhas put forth a strong fourth place finish, and ended the day not having lost to any teams they should not have lost to. SCC Sudbury Team Chiropractic ended off a fairy-tale season by winning the A division final over strong competition from Verdun DBC, Mayfair and Hanalei.

The Ontario Place race course is notoriously unfair, and qualifying rounds provided teams a chance to qualify from a good and bad lane. The Piranhas drew lane one, a good lane, for their first race. The first race proved to be a confidence boost as the Piranhas qualified in 2:06.68, 0.01 seconds ahead Tempest, which had run over the Piranhas in the B division Summer Sensation Final a month ago. The Piranhas race in lane four, the second worst lane on the race course, slowed the Piranhas down but after the qualifying rounds, the Piranhas were still in the top twelve and took their well-earned place in the A division bracket. However, with every major race, there is always some sort of controversy. Tempest was awarded a five-second time bonus in their second qualifying race after a rope from one of the starter's platforms got tangled up in their steering oar and signficantly slowed down their time. No one really noticed, however, since Tempest still won by open water, but it will forever remain a mystery whether or not the Piranhas' fortunes would have changed if Tempest was actually allowed to run a clean second race. Tempest bumped the Piranhas down a seed and into lane five for the A-division semi-final.

Mayfair and Verdun qualified for the A division final out of the first semi-final, with the Hammerheads, Big Fish and Piranhas being relegated to the A-division consolation final. Sudbury Chiropractic, Hanalei and Scotia Beach also qualified for the A final, while Tempest and the Blades rounded out the field of an A-division consolation which pitted many familiar rivals in the same race for the firs ttime ever.

It was going to be a good one.

The Piranhas capitalized on a strong start to stick with the pack for roughly 300 metres until they hit the notorious sandbar that ravages the far lanes of the course. Despite racing with a newly-found edge and level of intensity, the Piranhas slowly faded behind the pack and watched the same happen to the Blades in lane five. The Hammerheads took the division out of lane two. Big Fish was unable to capitalize on their draw in lane one and finished in second, while TIDBRF Champions Tempest, the Piranhas and the Blades rounded out the field. A season of rebuilding which provided a wealth of lessons in humility had finally come to an end as the team wheezed, coughed, and collapsed out of exhaustion.

Webmaster's note: The team had finally come together after a series of excellent practices at the GWN Outer Harbour. The team's last practice was the most memorable of all. The dock from which boats depart is sheltered from the conditions of the harbour and the darkness of a late summer evening hid the extremely windy conditions and white-capped waves which awaited the Piranhas. By all means, practices should have been cancelled by the staff, but by the time we got out to the water, we tried to make the best of the situation.

I think we were all genuinely afraid for our lives, because there were times when it was completely dark and we were taking in waves of water so large that we were physically unable to keep paddling. Faces and laps full of water, especially for the strokes who were completely exposed to the waves crashing into the front of the boat. We would drift slowly up a makeshift 500m strip of water into a fierce headwind and paddled through bad patches of roller-coaster-like waves as if our lives counted on it - because frankly they probably did. In one particular foray back into the dark harbour, the waves actually rammed our boat into a floating dock and the boat was actually beached on the dock. At this point, the head of the boat was stuck on the dock, while the back of the boat swayed from side to side in the water. I had to get out of the boat to take weight off the nose of the boat and combining a big push from the front plus a lot of back paddling, we finally unlodged the boat and we paddled like mad back into the dock.

We had weathered the storm and came out alive, quite symbolic of the season indeed.