The Dragons will be returning for the second Dragon Boat Festival at the River Tees Water sports Centre on Sunday 2nd September 2018!
Companies, social groups, charities and friends and families are invited to enter their own dragon boat team to raise funds for charity.No previous experience of dragon boat racing is necessary as all training will be provided on the day and teams are able to nominate a registered charity of their own choice. So bring your team for a fantastic day out and let’s Race the Dragon…
The Tees Dragon Boat Festival (previously known as, The Stockton Dragon Boat Festival) is an ‘Open Festival” meaning teams are able to nominate and raise funds for their own team charity and charities are able to promote the event to their supporters and get teams entering to fund raise for them. No previous experience of dragon boating is required as all instruction is given on the day and anyone 16+ years old (12+ for a drummer) can take part. Each team will compete in a series of timed races over a 200 meters race course so it does not matter if you are not fit. The maximum number of team members in any one race will be 17 (up to 8 pairs of paddlers plus a drummer), but a dragon boat team may be up to 20 competitors in total with reserves.
Have you got what it takes to “Race the Dragon”?
All team members are required to be onsite and to have completed Team Registration for 09:45, ready for a 10:00 start. Before your team’s first race, your team will be called up for a safety briefing, which will go through paddle technique, the various commands used whilst you are in the boat and safety instructions to either prevent, or what to do if you capsize (fortunately a rare occurrence). After your briefing, each team member at the briefing will be issued with a Race The Dragon coloured wrist band and only members wearing one of these bands will be allowed into a dragon boat. Should you be short of a drummer or team members, it is permitted to borrow a briefed team member from another team, providing it does not impact on the flow of the event (ie: that team member will be racing for their team in the very next race, which may be loading whilst your team is still on the water).
Over the course of the day your team will compete in a minimum of three qualifying timed races and after each race, the scores will go up on the event scoreboard at Event Control for everyone to compare. Dragon boat racing is quick to pick up and very progressive, so you should expect improvements in each race. Over the qualifying heats, only your single fastest time of the day is used, so even if you have a couple of disaster races you will still be in with a chance.Your aim is to have a qualifying race time that then enables you to compete in the Grand Final, which will be a last race of the day and will use all the dragon boats racing together. This race will be a great photo opportunity and it will be the winner of this race that will then be recognised as: Dragon Boat Champions of Tees for the festival.The festival will end with their “Olympic” style award ceremony where trophies are awarded to the Captain’s of the top three teams and winner’s medals to each member of the winning team.
For more information visit – www.teesdragonboatfestival.co.uk