London Festival Event

An exciting first for the BDA, combining the buzz of a great festival event with the serious racing of a National League race event.

To be held on the Royal Albert Dock at the Royal Docks Adventure.

With the London Festival National League event this year on 30^th June we are doing something a bit different compared to a normal race event.

We are combining a National League event with a Dragon Boat Festival, on the same day on the same water. We are working with the London Chinatown Lions Club to help them improve and grow their annual London Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival http://www.lhkdbf.co.uk/. The BDA are running the on water Dragon Boat Racing element of the festival for all crews.

For those crews that have competed at this event in previous years as a ‘professional’ BDA crew, you will know it is a great day of racing with much more going on compared to a usual race day.

The event will be providing pool boats for everyone, so there is no need to bring any boats unless you are providing us with boats – I’ll be in touch with you individually about these if you are.

There will be around 30 corporate & charity crews along with our BDA crews taking part in the event.

For BDA crews, the event will start with a 1000m single turn pursuit race, split into two heats, it will then continue with all crews taking part in the 200m round robin race format comprising 3 rounds, with the best 2 rounds combined times counting to decide progression to Cup & Plate Open & Mixed semi finals & finals. Racing will take place with up to 6 boats per race.

The round robin races will be split between BDA crews and Charity & Corporate crews. For BDA crews only there will be no requirement to wear Buoyancy Aids, though you can should you wish to.

Working with the overall event organisers, we have been asked to limit the total number of paddlers in a boat to 18. For this race only a mixed crew will therefore contain up to a maximum of 9 paddlers of either gender (exc. Drummer & Helm).

With the increased overall paddler numbers, we will be operating a wristband system, BDA crews will have one colour wristband and Corporate & Charity crews will have a different colour wristband. These wristbands will be handed out at crew registration and must be shown by all crew members in order to gain access to the water. Access will not be allowed to boats should there be no wristband present.

BDA crews will be able to being one team Gazebo/Race Shelter for themselves to use during the day. These are to be erected only in the specified areas, details will follow as to exactly where these are.

In order to assist the overall event organisers with their team handbook, and to facilitate earlier planning of the race program, we need entries a little earlier than usual for this event. Can I therefore ask for entries to be completed by the end of 11^th June, which gives you nearly 2 weeks to sort these out.

The usual BDA race fees will apply for BDA crews. At this time it is expected that there will be no separate Ladies or Junior racing at this event though if you had sufficient paddlers to enter a Main crew and a separate Junior crew that would be allowed as would entering two crews (subject to a maximum number of BDA crews). BDA crews will be expected to provide their own helms & drummers as is usual at a National League race event.

Further details will be shared with crews once their entry has been confirmed and exact timings for crew registration & racing have been determined.