Dragon Boat Basics

 

The Dragon Boats

 

A dragon boat looks like an oversized canoe with an ornately carved dragons head at the front and a tail at the rear. A drum is positioned at the front on which the drummer furiously bangs a rhythm to keep the rest of the crew in time. 

 

A helms person (provided by Dragons Alive) steers the boat from the rear and helps to co-ordinate the team’s efforts so that they are all paddling at the same speed. 

 

Boats typically race over 200 - 300 metres depending on the piece of water. 

 

Dragon Boat Size

 

There are two options when it comes to dragon boat size for your regatta and luckily for you we have both!

 

1.     The Junior 30ft Dragon Boats accommodate teams of 10 paddlers, 1 drummer and a helm (the minimum number in a junior boat is 6 paddlers, 1 drummer and 1 helm). We suggest you recruit crews of up to 15 for your event if you choose Junior boats, although a maximum of only 11 crew members will race in the boat at one time, there will be plenty of opportunity to rotate the crew members during the regatta.

 

2.    The larger 40ft Dragon Boats accommodate teams of 16 paddlers, 1 drummer and a helm (the minimum number in a big boat is 12 paddlers, 1 drummer and 1 helm).  Again, we suggest you recruit crews of up to 20 if you choose the bigger boats, although a maximum of 17 crew members will race in the boat at one time, there will be plenty of opportunity for crew members to rotate during the regatta.

 

The reason we suggest having larger teams than can be in a boat at one time is because it helps to maximise the amount of sponsorship money you can raise!

 

In simple terms:

 

 

Which size dragon boat should I choose?

 

The majority of our clients choose to host their event using our Junior boats. This is mainly because it is a lot easier to recruit the teams. For the number of participants required to fill a big boat, two teams can be created for the junior boats. This therefore gives you twice the entry fees and potentially more sponsorship money for your charity!

 

We can comfortably complete a day’s racing with up to 42 teams (that’s 630 participants!) using just the Junior dragon boats. If you want to involve more than 630 people in a day’s regatta or you particularly want larger team sizes then the big boats would be better suited.

 

How many boats will I need?

A common misconception of the dragon boating novice is that every team has their own boat. Although conceivable for a small regatta of only a couple of teams for the larger regattas with greater numbers the teams will boat hop. 

 

Typically, for a day’s racing (10 – 4pm) we recommend the following guidelines:

 

 

For the larger regattas involving 4 or more dragon boats it is likely that not all boats will race simultaneously, i.e. for the four boat regatta, whilst two boats are racing the remaining two boats will be loading teams for the next race. This means that there is constantly a race on the water and the action is non-stop!

 

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