Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival happens in the waters of False Creek.

At the Vancouver (pronounced “Vancoover”) International Dragon Boat Festival you’ll find dragon boat crews from all over the world including China, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States coming to compete.

The festival happens in late spring and it lasts over a weekend.

But almost all year around you’ll see the dragon boat teams from Vancouver out practicing.

If you’re up and out early in the morning you can sometimes spot them cutting through the water at Granville Island.

What you’ll see is them paddling away and somebody screaming at them stroke, stroke then behind them you’ll see a little safety boat.

I’ve also seen what they do is they’ll take a small person like say 5’1” and 100 lbs and they’ll have them water ski behind the boat as they’re paddling.

I guess it a confidence thing in the team to show that they are together and they are going fast because they can have somebody up behind them water skiing.

Throngs of people line the shore to cheer the teams on and it makes the dragon boat festival is very exciting to watch. But...

Before the dragon boat can race the eye of the dragon must be dotted so just before the festival begins there is an elaborate eye dotting ceremony.

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