The Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Festival kicked off on Saturday with about 20 teams and hundreds of participants racing up and down the Gorge.
The festival draws in teams, spectators, and volunteers from across B.C., as well as places such as Portland, Oregon and Calgary.
Mike Lachocki with the Vancouver-based Orca Dragon Boat team, said that dragon boat racing is thrilling, all-inclusive sport.
“When you watch from the shore, you think we’re not going that fast,” he said. “But when you’re on the boat, it’s actually flying through the water.”
It’s an intense racing experience, similar to a two-minute flat sprint, Lachocki said.
“You’re waiting for that horn, and when that horn goes, it’s complete sensory overload,” he said. “Water splashing, people screaming.”
Andrea Hulecki, a former Victoria resident who now runs with Crew Yahoo, one of Calgary’s preeminent competitive dragon boat teams, said that it was nice to see seals and other marine life in the Gorge. “We paddle in a reservoir in Calgary,” she said.
Her teammate Jenn Kwan said that racing on the Gorge means they have to deal with saltwater buoyancy and be mindful of the tides. “We usually just have to deal with the wind,” she said. “It’s the last festival of [our] season, so it’s nice to do something different.”
This year, the Vancouver Island Dragon Boat Festival introduced a pentathlon format, where racers have to compete in a medley of different races to determine the weekend’s overall champions.
Erik Ages, the festival’s race director and longtime general manager at the paddling club, said most people train and race for 500 metre races.
But with race lengths ranging from 100 to 1,500 metres, the format introduces a level of competitive uncertainty that’s unusual for dragon boat racing.
“You can usually look at a list of teams and pretty much know [who’s] first, second, third, fourth,” he said.
But that’s not to say that the dragon boat racing is always cutthroat. “The biggest growth of this sport is the 50-plus,” Ages said.
Terry Curtis was in the water Saturday paddling for local Fairway Gorge Paddling Club dragon boat team Jabba No Hutt, which was named after an inside joke about outrigger canoe paddling and a Star Wars pun.
“It keeps me out of the pool hall,” he said with a smile, adding that he’s participated in 70-plus race categories in places as far as Samoa.
Paul Bucci, communications coordinator for the Fairway Gorge Paddling Club, said that Curtis was downplaying his talents.
“He’s twice as fast as me,” he said. “I keep waiting for him to get old, but it’s never going to happen.”
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