I am on a boat that is moving more to the competitive side, and I'm wondering what the "good" boats do at the start of a race. I want every advantage I can get and I'm hoping the Dragon Boat gurus on this forum can help me!

If you're serious about becoming more competitive, you'll need more than just Forum advice. Hire a good coach...they'll tell you everything you need to know. What you do at the start of a race depends heavily on the composition of your crew - crew weight, fitness, height, etc.

Start:
1. Get the boat up out of the water
2. accelerate it
3. a bit more acceleration, to achieve max speed
4. transition to race stroke and lose as little speed as possible
5. race stroke
How you achieve the above depends on your crew, boat and the conditions.

Train for power explosiveness during the winter. The start is an explosive anearobic short term blast. Then you can find the right combination of strokes to allow you to achieve top speed in the shortest amount of time by trying different things.

Without the right kind of training though no sectret formula of stroke combinations will ever give you a chance against the more powerful crews.

All the other advice in this thread is valid.

Our start is as follows:

1. Paddle Buried, not quite full reach.
2. At go, 5 deep strokes, paying attention not to aerate the water
3. 15 quick strokes to get the boat moving, each stroke is further than the previous
4. At the 20th stroke you're at full race pace and reach

Good Luck!