Dragon boat seat positions explained: all 22 seats, bow to stern
What each seat does in a 20-paddler boat, from the stroke pair to the back six, and how coaches decide who sits where. Includes a seating chart you can point a new paddler at.
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Notes from the team building DragonSignUp.
How to balance a dragon boat lineup
Weight, side preference and timing decide a lineup, and someone drops out an hour before the race anyway. How coaches build a boat that survives the swap, plus a printable lineup card.
How to stop running practice out of a group chat
Coaching a dragon boat crew comes with a second job nobody signed up for. You count seats on a whiteboard, scroll back through three days of group chat to work out who’s coming Tuesday, and send the same “can you confirm?” message every week. By the time you reach the dock you have already worked a shift.
We built DragonSignUp to take that shift back off you.
- Invite links: Share one link in the crew chat. Paddlers create their own accounts and land on the right roster, so nobody retypes an email address.
- Claim a seat: Paddlers sign themselves up for the practices they can make. Once the boat is full, later sign-ups go on the waitlist.
- Waitlists: When a paddler cancels at 9pm the night before, the next person on the list takes the seat and gets an email. You find out in the morning that the boat is still full.
That leaves you the part of the job you signed up for: stroke rate, timing, and the last 200 meters.
Running three boats without three spreadsheets
One boat is manageable. Add a B crew, then a third, and you’re running three rosters and three schedules out of the same inbox.
Most clubs hit a ceiling where the work of coordinating another twenty paddlers costs more than those paddlers bring.
- One account, many crews: Set up every crew under one club and switch between them from the same screen. Give each crew a manager who can run its roster without touching the others.
- Reminders that go out on time: Each paddler gets the same email before a practice, with the time and the meeting point. Nobody turns up at the wrong dock because a message stalled in one crew’s chat.
- Who’s coming, per boat: Each event shows its confirmed roster and its waitlist, so you can see which nights fill and which ones you’re scraping a crew together for.
Adding a fourth crew should cost you twenty recruiting conversations and nothing else.