Captains Meeting and Dragon Meets

Captains Meeting August 30th

NE Pensacola Sertoma hosted the Pensacola Dragon Boast Festival Captains Meeting the week before the race. Chris Mull could not make it so I went alone, which was fine. I just had to collect our information packet and sit through a briefing session. The meeting was all the way downtown Pensacola. Roy Ridgeway had to go as well so I rode with him and luckily there was free food and free beer for all the captains. Woohoo!

For next year's Captains Meeting, I think more of our team should go. We should bring our captain, co-captains and our drummer. You get a chance to meet many of the people from the other teams and ask questions that you might not get to ask otherwise. The organizers are all there at the meeting and I found them all really nice and encouraging. NE Pensacola Sertoma is a great group and they do a nice job hosting this event.


Dragon Meets

August 29, 2018 - We had two meetings out on Perdido Key to organize our team for the Pensacola Dragon Boat Festival. The first one was at the Purple Parrot Tiki Bar. Turnout was sparse but that was expected. I think only about seven people turned up (Special thanks to Amanda Mercado, Tina Morrison, Ken Krempin, Roy Ridgeway, Susan Ridgeway, Dee Horton, Joe DeMartino, Chris Mull). That was okay though as those seven helped recruit more people - we had to start somewhere. With such short notice on organizing our team (we should have started earlier and will definitely start earlier next year), we were far behind a lot of the other teams. Some teams plan for this event the entire year. We will work on this.

September 4, 2018 - Our second dragon meet was at Judy Davis' Perdido Key Sport Bar. Chris, Judy and I had all three split the original registration price so it was great that both Chris and Judy have bars where we could get our teams together (bars are great meeting places for dragoneers/dragons/rowers/paddlers). Being our second team meet, I had more people on my list of paddlers (at that time, I was still calling them rowers); but the weather was not in our favor. Hurricane Gordon rolled across Perdido Key. It was a small hurricane - it may have only been a strong tropical storm, but it was enough to keep everyone huddled down at home and not out and about for a dragon boat meet. Not me though! I still went to the meeting in case some people showed up. Chris showed up, but he was the only one. I don't blame anybody. The wind was gusting just shy of 40 miles per hour and the rain was coming down in sheets. We had a tornado warning for a bit and the power went out at the Sports Bar a couple of times (but only for a short bit before it came back on). No worries though. Chris and I spent our time hobnobbing with the other hurricane bar hoppers which included the Parker's, who donated generously to our team (Thanks Tim! Thanks Cindy!), and some NAS Navy guys who agreed to row/paddle with us (Thanks Nick. Thanks Patrick). The donations and the new paddlers made venturing out into the hurricane a worthwhile adventure.


Since I did not have many team mates show up for our last dragon meet/hurricane party (other than Chris Mull and the two Navy guys, Patrick and Nick), I posted a video to YouTube of everything I got from the Captains Meeting on the 30th.

 

After the Captains Meeting and our two Dragon Meets, we had practice races!

Dragon Boat Practice Races and Camp Setup

Pensacola Dragon Boat Races 2019

Page 1 - Pensacola Dragon Boat Festival 2019
Page 2 - Captains Meeting and Dragon Meets
Page 3 - Dragon Boat Practice Races and Camp Setup
Page 4 - Dragon Boat Race Day
Page 5 - Pensacola Dragon Boat Pictures
Page 6 - Thank You to Everyone Who Donated
Page 7 - Thank You to Our Dragons

Dragon Boat Team Supplies and Party Ideas

Are You Ready to Vacation?