Dragon Boats

This evening I went dragon boating!! This is my first time in a dragon boat and it was soooo cool. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing pretty hard so the lake was all waves. Therefor, we weren't able to go out into it this time. There were a couple people that had done this before, but most of us were like me... rookies. There is a small inlet where the dock is and we had to stay in there. There were 2 guys on the dock holding ropes to the dragon boat so we only went so far... forward and back, forward and back, while we were taught how to paddle a dragon boat. We were told the meaning of specific phrases used, like:

EYES IN THE BOAT: All eyes should be in the boat focussed on the Drummer’s commands….. listen up, this is our command for getting everyone to think only about our boat.

PADDLES UP: All paddlers should be in the ready position, heads up, eyes on the strokers and ready to go when the Drummer or the Starter give the command to do so.

And on and on. We also practiced paddling in rhythm... very important with 22 paddlers in the boat. I am soooo looking forward to nest Tuesday night when we will do it again... only we will do it out in the lake, weather permitting.

Here is a video of Dragon Boats so you can see what it's all about!