SINGAPORE – She is no stranger to participating in races in the sea, but national sailor Yukie Yokoyama – a South-east Asian (SEA) Games gold medallist – still felt like a fish out of water when she tried her hand at dragon boating at last weekend’s DBS Marina Regatta.

But the 19-year-old, who along with 15 sailing team-mates was competing in the inaugural Singapore’s Finest Paddle-off event – a 200m dragon boat race for current and former national athletes from other sports – still managed to lead her team to a first-place finish in the race with a time of 57.985secs.

The Singapore Ultimate Frisbee team clocked in at 1mins 4.302secs to take home the silver, while the National Handball Team was just 0.059secs behind in third. The other two teams who took part in the race were from the Singapore Silat Federation (1mins 8.049secs) and Singapore Gymnastics (1mins 8.760secs).

(The national sailors, in Dragon Boat No 3, winning the Singapore’s Finest Paddle-Off 200m final at last week’s DBS Marina Regatta. Photo: DBS Marina Regatta)

Did the sailors’ familiarity with the water contribute to their victory? Not according to Yokoyama, who says that the vast differences between the sport of dragon boating and sailing meant they were on equal footing with the rest of the teams.

“The dragon boat race we did lasted about a minute long while in sailing, races last about 40-50 minutes, so it’s a burst of power in a dragon boat race and more about endurance in sailing,” explained Yokoyama.

“Tactics are also important in sailing and we have to also deal with external factors that are always changing such as the wind direction and strength. In dragon boat racing, however, we found that the more important factors are teamwork and communication.”

Watching some of the top dragon boating sides from Singapore and around the region in action also provided some valuable lessons for Yokoyama and her team-mates. In particular, she hopes to adopt some of the team bonding practices she witnessed for her own training sessions.

“We watched many teams doing their warm ups together in synchrony and had their own pre-start routines on the water,” said Yokoyama. “During the race, words of encouragement were also shouted out to keep the motivation level high. This will definitely strengthen how we bond as a team and lead to improvements (in our performances) so we’ll try to implement this as well.”

The DBS Marina Regatta continues this weekend at The Promontory@Marina Bay.