It’s mid summer, which means it’s dragon-boat season for many on Vancouver Island.
Teams of enthusiastic paddlers will converge on Victoria’s Inner Harbour this weekend for two days of racing and camaraderie at the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival, and teams from the Cowichan Valley are expected to participate.
I used to dragon boat for several years after Nanaimo began its own festival more than 20 years ago, and it was the first team sport that I ever got involved with in any organized way.
I was an intrepid kayaker at the time, and some friends of mine collected a bunch of other intrepid kayakers and outriggers they knew in the community and put us all together on a team that was called the Bastion Dragons.
We were quite the eclectic group who were used to doing our own thing and going our own way in our boats, and few of us had any experience working together to power any kind of vessel.
But we were young(er) and strong paddlers with a lot of experience on the water, so we didn’t take the constant training that took place before the festivals as seriously as other teams, many of whom consisted of office workers who only saw the ocean from their windows.
While most teams would gather two or three times a week in the harbour and train for several hours before festivals and competitions, when we first began dragon boating our team usually would spend less than an hour on the water each time and mostly just check out the sites before eagerly heading to shore and finding our way to the nearest pub.
But we quickly discovered that, as strong as each of us was in our individual kayaks and outriggers, teamwork means everything in dragon-boat racing.
You could have a team of Arnold Schwarzeneggers (when he was in his prime of course) in a dragon boat that looks scary and formidable, but if they had not properly trained, then a bunch of well-trained and practiced grandmothers would give them a run for their money.
Once we realized that, we began taking the practices much more seriously.
If you’ve never seen a dragon boat, it is a long, narrow canoe that seats 20 paddlers in 10 rows.
It has a drummer at the front of the boat by the dragon's head to keep time, and a steers-person who navigates the back of the boat and keeps it (in most cases anyway) straight during races.
During a race, each boat lines up side by side, and when the starting pistol fires, the paddlers are meant to pull in perfect precision with each other and propel the boat forward.
It’s imperative that they have the synchronicity with each other down to a science, and that’s the purpose of all the training.
If a team gets it right at the start of the race and can hold it together, you can feel the boat surge forward with every dip of the paddles and it’s quite an exhilarating experience as you pick up speed and roar down the course.
You’re supposed to keep your eyes in the boat so you won’t be distracted and focus on paddling, but I could never resist the urge to look from side to side to see what position we were in as the finish line loomed closer.
Those boats that weren’t in perfect rhythm with their paddling would always lose momentum and fall behind, while those that did were in front pulling on their paddles for all they were worth and in competition for the medals.
The Bastion Dragons held our own when we finally decided to work together and get our teamwork down to a science, and we did win some medals.
But the festivals we attended saw professional teams come from all over, including Oregon and California, to compete, and these teams were typically bigger than us, and apparently spent much of their lives practicing.
These were always the teams that took the biggest prizes of the festival.
As for the Bastion Dragons, we were quite happy to be presented with our more modest medals and ribbons and retire to the beer tent.
It was a lot of fun.
