Dragonboat Blog | The Dragonboating Resource

dragonboat talk for dragonboaters.

Best paddling technique for Dragon Boat from Kirby Mark

Kirby Mark who has been paddling for a few years made some compilation of guidelines and pointers to the dragon boat strokes to improve your technique. Lots of paddlers give thanks to Kirby Mark for assembling this useful information for them.

This comprehensive information has been based on the many aspects of Dragon Boat and Outrigger training and racing with documentation readily available for sports like canoeing, kayaking and for general fitness. This post is a bit focused on Outrigger Canoeing or Dragon Boating. The overall objective is to define the general training principles for similar sports that you can relate to a precise scheme to efficiently improve and enhance paddling performance.

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Article written by Kel Watt and published as a tribute to Jon Taylor:

Jon Taylor

13th October 1952 – 17th December 2008

The problem with trying to recognise the remarkable and extraordinary contribution of Jon Taylor when he was in the room, was that he was a man who prided himself on his ordinariness and his achievements as being too humble to deserve much fanfare. His passing away from illness, and his final farewell in December, has given the Australian and international dragon boating community an opportunity to finally speak freely and without interruption about the tremendous debt we owe Jon, and about the tenacity and vision of a man
which has moulded our sport and community.

Jon Taylor spent most of the last two decades as a central figure in NSW and Australian dragon boating. When he stepped aside as President at the AusDBF April 2008 AGM, he left an organisation that had grown a sport from being obscure and novel, into one that oversaw a successful, vibrant sporting community all paddlers were proud to be part of. His final act as President was to announce the awarding of AusDBF’s first life memberships to three people who had been in the trenches with Jon for many difficult and testing years, as they rebuilt and rejuvenated the sport – AusDBF’s first President Trevor Huggard, Ray Leung from Sydney, and Les Williams from Canberra. A couple of days later as the 2008 Australian dragon boat championships came to a close, I recognised how hard it would be to fill his shoes, but that – thankfully – his work and efforts meant the Federation’s and sport’s future was one of endless positive possibilities. To acknowledge that, the new AusDBF board’s first official action was to be the awarding of life membership to Jon. The crowd cheered and applauded (lasting that little bit too long for Jon’s liking) and then anyone who had known Jon nodded their heads in agreement that it was a well-deserved honour.

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The Dragon Boat Quickstart Now Available

It’s been a while coming and now is your chance to get a copy of my free report, the Dragon Boat Quickstart.

The Quickstart is a report I put together to help any Dragon Boat paddler equip themselves with the right knowledge and gear.

In the report you will find:

• The terminology most commonly used in Dragon Boating
• How to find the right paddle that fits you
• The 5 essential items to get for Dragon Boating

To get your copy, click here -

http://www.dragonglobe.com/quickstart

Your Feedback Please

I hope this report will be beneficial to you and one of the best rewards for me is when I read your feedback comments about it.

If you have anything to say, good , bad or indifferent, after reading the Dragon Boat Quickstart, please add your comment to this post.

Tyrone Shum

I’ve seen a lot of Kayak and Canoe manufacturers who have designed the top of the line boats and helped a lot of top athletes win Gold medals jump across to manufacture Dragonboats. Plastex Composites is no different, as they make excellent watercraft in Kayaks, Canoes, Slalom and Rowing.

Here is a picture of their dragon boat below and they make them in both 12 man and 22 man boats. The 12 man boat weighs at 170kg and the 22 man boat weighs at 250kg which are all within the minimum standards of IDBF Specs.

Would love to have some paddlers or people who have used this boat to provide some comments below. For now I’ll leave it up to the community to decide what these boats are like!

Plastex Composite Dragon Boat

This manufacturer of boats in Netherlands has designed a Dragon Boat combining kevlar-carbon and fibreglass, making it supposedly an extremely light boat. They say that the casco can be lifted by two people. I can only assume that is the hull. Furthermore they don’t say how much the boat weighs and they offer two types of construction:

1. “One piece” dragonboat 100% kevlar/carbon
2. “One piece” dragonboat 50% kevlar/fiberglass

The “real” difference seems to be in the price of around 500 pounds – which in Australian dollars is around $1,100! That’s a huge difference for the extra 50% of kevlar and fibreglass. Woah!

All Pel Kajak Centrum Dragon Boats are handmade with decks carved from mahogany wood and completely lacquered 4 times over to provide the water proofing a boat needs. Normally the steers oars are constructed out of wood, but this company also offers carbon fibre saying that it is lighter and stronger. Sure that is true, which is the same as a carbon fibre paddle, though it’s starting to becoming the most expensive dragonboat I’ve ever heard – and simply may be too light for my liking.

I wonder if this boat is worth the “low-price” they say it is at 5,750 pounds. Definitely will cost more than a BuK boat, which I still have to say in comparison sounds like a much better boat to paddle in.

The last thing I don’t like about the “look” of this boat is it’s dragon head – it just looks way over the top and not something I would be happy to sit behind whilst paddling..

Oh one last thing – they offer different colours: red, blue, yellow, black and white.