Accessible, qualified steerspersons in sufficient numbers is the single most challenging issue in the sport today. In my view the national, provincial and regional sport bodies need to address this asap.

I cannot think of any boat swamping or tipping that was not caused by a steering error. Dragon boats and dragon boat racing is inherently safe and we will get a bad reputation (that it is unsafe or an extreme sport of some kind) soon if we don't get this steersperson issue resolved.

Novice crews also need to understand what feathering is and how to deal with an impending wake or collision.

at our table and others at the ODA safety conference on Saturday.

Having a standardized certification course/program offered by each festival prior allowing coxes to steer in their event.

Once certified, they would be issued a card that would be accepted by all festivals so they would only have to take the course once.

Nothing was decided definitively, but this was independently suggested by many groups, so it seemed popular.

Cheers

Hmmm,
I would disagree that accidents are always caused by the cox. There are a variety of uncontrollable factors that make it difficult to say someone is good enough to cox in all race events.

Ontario Place last year comes to mind. There were a lot of "experienced" coxes that were clueless in controlling their boats effectively during the starts in the chop and wind.

Also, would you be willing to sign-off someone is qualified?? Hmmm. If an accident occurs the event organizers can then just blame the group that provided the certification were incompentent. End result, the certifying group gets dragged into a lawsuit.

Training is an extremely good idea. But you really need to get insurance companies involved in the process so they sign off on the certification training. (Which can result in insurance savings to event organizers.)

For example, the Canadian Yachting Association (CYA) cetification process provides each instructor (in good standing... with all certifications up to date) with $2 million (I think, I stopped coaching sailing 5 years ago.) in liability insurance. This occured because the program is detailed and the insurance company was involved in the process.

This is NOT a critique of the idea of training. But saying you need to throw together training is an extremely complicated matter.

Cheers.

Still an issue today. What a great idea!