 And over the weekend, 48 teams competed in Bemidji's annual Dragon Boat Festival. In this week's Northwood's adventure, our Josh Peterson shows us, despite some challenging conditions, teams pulled together for a very competitive event. For 13 years, the first weekend in August has always been reserved for this. Make some noise on the waterfront. This is your gold division final. The Lake Bemidji Dragon Boat Festival. This year, 48 teams competed on race day, igniting a special spirit of competition. A lot of rivalries in the morning and then of course, you know, all the excitement builds for all the finals races this afternoon. So it's just an all day fun fest of some friendly competition. With the festival put on by the Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club, the purpose of the event is to bring a community together and draw teams and spectators from all over. We have so many cups that people really buy for. The companies really want to win their cup and so they bring their family and friends out and there's a sense of camaraderie and just, you know, togetherness and the community comes out and it's awesome to have everyone down here. In 12 years of having the festival, it has never been canceled and organizers were not going to let the 13th year of the event be unlucky. You know, the only thing you can't control is the weather. You take it as it comes and we've got plans in place for whether, you know, there's lightning, obviously it's safety first and no matter what and so we've got plans in place to get everybody safe as quickly as possible. At one point, the wind and waves became too much for the dragonboats that one even capsized, leaving the team to walk their dragonboat all the way to the shore. But this unfortunate incident wasn't enough to make the team give up. We were doing pretty good and then all of a sudden I was on the left side and we started tipping and by once you start tipping, it's over but then afterwards they said the boat next to us ran into us. With the conditions on the lake questionable, officials scaled teams down to 16 and removed the dragon's head and tails from all of the boats. This allowed each boat to handle the conditions and the festival to continue its full race schedule, which was another one for the history books. With this week's Northwood's adventure, in Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.