This weekend I checked out the
Dragon Boat Festival at Sloan’s Lake Park in Denver. It was super hot, but the teams were energetic and the beverages in coconuts helped They had a stage with dancing and karate and there was tons of food. It was a fun afternoon; I will definitely go again next year - hopefully it’s cooler!
The boats’ head and tail of a dragon bookend a large team of rowers (paddlers?). I couldn’t get close enough to see what the boats were made of... I looked it up and many sites say that the boats used to be made out of wood and weighed as much as 1,500 lbs. Many boats today are made of fiberglass, as it can be stronger and is lighter. The fiberglass is made of silica sand, limestone, kaolin clay, fluorspar, colemanite, dolomite, and other minerals. Some wood is still used for the decorative parts, but the use of fiberglass makes the boats 1/3 of the weight. If I was going to paddle a Dragon Boat, I’d much rather have it weigh 500 lbs! Just another example of minerals making our lives better.
Are there any paddlers out there from this weekend’s races who know if the Denver race had wooden boats or fiberglass ones? Or a combination of both?
