Racing the Dragon

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Usually, heats are held with four or five teams competing at a time, paddling down lanes marked on the water. "I make sure there's all the proper equipment, that the equipment is equal and that the course is fair," says Campbell. "You can't have one lane catching a current. After that, it's a matter of how technical the organizers want to get. I can bring computers and digital cameras and give a high-tech flavor to the event, or you can have four people with stopwatches at the finish line."

But no one gets to the finish line without a boat. A dragon boat weighs as much as 2,000 lbs. and can cost $6,000 to $14,000, depending on the design, craftsmanship and materials used. That doesn't include the recurring cost of trailering the boats to different competitions. Given such expenses, many teams don't even own their boats; they share them. The California Dragon Boat Association, for example, has a complicated practice schedule to allow more than 20 crews, including the City College of San Francisco and the Rainbow Koi, a team of gay and lesbian paddlers, to train on San Francisco's Lake Merced, sharing just eight boats.

"The only reason the sport is not more widespread now is the lack of equipment," Campbell says. No dragon boats are currently manufactured in the U.S., so most teams have to import them from Germany, although more affordable models from other European and Asian manufacturers are catching up in quality. In the meantime, a Canadian marketing company, Great White North Communications, is filling the void. The Toronto-based firm owns a fleet of 40 boats and charges some $30,000 to provide consulting, technical support and boat hire for dragon-boat festivals.

Great White North's principals, Mike Kerkmann and Barbara Goldberg, started the company in 1993 by organizing a single event in Toronto. But Canada's weather limited the company's growth, so in 2001 they launched into the U.S. Now, they're involved in almost 50 festivals in Canada and the U.S.--by far the biggest commercial organizer in North America. "In Canada, it's a four- or five-month season at the most, but in Florida, we can operate year-round," says Kerkmann. For a start-up festival, his company arranges everything from the paddles to the practice sessions, but as local organizers take on some of those tasks, Great White North moves into leasing or selling the boats. "In the first year, they might break even after paying our fees," Kerkmann says. "But then they've got the communication plans, the models of sponsorship packages, entry brochures. The next year they might need half our services. In future years they invest in equipment, so they don't have to lease."

One of the fastest-growing markets for dragon-boat racing is the corporate retreat in need of a little excitement. "You can have a big sales meeting, boring meetings for three days, and then one afternoon, we can work with the event planner and produce a four-hour mini-dragon-boat regatta for 500 people," Kerkmann says. It's one of the few sports that can accommodate people of any size and any level of fitness, as long as they can keep their paddle dipping in and out of the water in time with their teammates. "There are no heroes, no one to drop the pop fly or strike out," says Kerkmann.