Dragonboat Blog | The Dragonboating Resource

dragonboat talk for dragonboaters.

San Francisco’s Rainbow Koi Team- a wide ranging team consisting of many colors, encompasses of homosexuals, transgender and the straight alike. As it appears, the team is as unique as its name, harbouring still the same strong bond of a dragon boating team. The team was put together with Gay Asian Pacific Alliance along with the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community last 2004. Michael Ellis was its first coach, along with Jean Danao as its first captain.

Rainbow Koi became San Francisco’s Rainbow Koi dragon boat team last 2004 when they were discovered by a 10 year veteran coach Jeniffer Eng at their novice race at Lake Merced, San Francisco. On its second season, the team became a part of the Recreational Division. With it’s motto: “Fierce and Fabulous!” the team was able to bring home a silver medal in 2006 at the first out games in Montreal, Canada. They later snatched a gold medal at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival in the Rec C Division.

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What happens at the 2008 Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta?
The Montreal International Dragon Boat Regatta is a 2 days event with approximately 150 teams participating. Each team should have at least 21 paddlers plus a cox and a couple of spare paddlers.
This is really a big event together with all the participants, spectators, vendors, staff and volunteers surrounding the area. The rankings on this sports event are from A to G Division depending on the numbers of teams participating. Each division was then divided into three categories namely the Premiere, Intermediate and Rookie.

This year competition was a bit watered down because most of the top teams were not in attendance as they were in Penang, Malaysia for the 2008 6th World Club Crew Championships and as a result some of the teams that were not usually belong in the A Division category was subsequently ranked as such in this regatta.

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I thought this would be an interesting post for our readers who may be interested in Walt Disney and Dragon Boating. The “first-ever” Orlando International Dragon Boat Festival event was held on the 18th October 2008 at the Walt Disney World Resort.

Forty-six teams came from as far as Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, and as near as Orlando and Tampa in the US. There were over 5000 global participants and tens of thousands of spectators with 8 boats.

During the festival, more than 100 breast cancer survivors performed a traditional flower ceremony (pink carnations were released into the water), demonstrating courage as they participated in the event and raised awareness for their cause.

Here are some photos below of the event, courtesy of Kathy Werling.
You can click on the picture to enlarge.

October is internationally known as Breast Cancer Month and you must be wondering why I am talking about this topic? Well, today is the 1st of October and I thought it is a timely manner to talk about Dragons Abreast, the dragonboat association that helps, supports and raises awareness for Breast Cancer Survivors across the world.

There are lots of activities designed to promote awareness of breast cancer and to help raise funds to support research. The main event for Dragons Abreast Australia this year is the Darling Harbour event held on the 19th October 2008. Furthermore 2008 is a very special time as Dragons Abreast as they are celebrating 10 years since breast cancer survivors took to paddling dragon boats in Australia.

This is what Dragons Abreast offers for cancer survivors:
“Dragons Abreast Australia is a phenomenon that has grown enormously simply because we are filling a gap in the market place by helping post-treatment breast cancer patients regain full and active lives. Happily a large percentage of women survive breast cancer these days but the transition from patients back into a full and active life is often difficult. We are a highly effective element in the ongoing post-treatment management of breast cancer patients, delivering significant physical and psycho-social benefits.”

So – this October support Dragons Abreast by either raising some money via the Dragons Abreast National Event held at Darling Harbour, click here for more information. Or purchase a “Keyring of Hope” here to support Dragons Abreast.

More information about the “Key Ring of Hope” can be found here.

Post event

After any Dragon Boat event there are certain tasks that need to be completed. It’s not something that one should do, it’s a must in order to finish off an event properly.

Some guidelines to consider:

• Make sure that all boats are dismantled and loaded back for transportation to the docks.
• All equipment that has been used on the day have been packed and transported back to base.
• All tents, tables, chairs have been all put away and dismantled
• All teams have vacated the site
• Invite cleaners to come out and collect all rubbish
• Final results have been tallied and safely transported back to base for data-entry and uploaded to the Internet for paddlers
• Lastly, you have thanked all staff and volunteer’s for their help on the day

This ends the series on how to run a Dragon Boat event in brief and gives you a run down on what one needs to consider when holding an event large or small.



Dragon boat event

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The day of the your event

Now that we have done all the ground work, it’s now for the real challenge. Running the event on the day!

Most event organisers start very early in the morning around 5am to just make sure everything runs smoothly and usually don’t finish up until around 7pm or 8pm when everyone has literately gone. So for starters be prepared for a very long day, and if you intend to do this on a regular basis, you will need to make sure that your systems are fine tuned to make each event run on time.

Most likely the Dragon boats would be delivered from another location and that is what most people attend to first. Usually a crew of 20-30 people will be enough to help unload the boats and have them setup on the water and ready to go to start the day.

The most important aspect first thing in the morning is making sure that the registration desk is open and can allow for team captains and newbies to register their details for the day if they haven’t already pre-registered. Furthermore the registration desk is a good way to provide more information as well if people are looking to get more information about the event on the day.

Once the boats are on the water, the next stage is to start testing the equipment. This is crucial as most times you may think it’s alright and nothing has been touched since setting them up the day before. Not the case! Make sure all the communications between the starter crew, the marshalling crew and scoring crew all are about to communicate. Furthermore the water crew need to be listening in also to provide any back up assistance on the water.

The rest of the day will consist of back to back events which would have been already laid out in a timetable of events and the key to keeping everything on time is to make sure there is strong communication between the teams and the marshalling crew. That way teams can be ready to go as soon the previous race is finished.

Tomorrow I will go into more details about closing an event.