The inaugural Mountain Maryland Dragon Boat Festival kicked off Saturday August 27 and was a smash success! The festival was organized and staffed by The Dove Center and volunteers, with the proceeds from the event benefiting The Dove Center. The festival included dragon boat races, food trucks, beverage vendors, artisan & goods vendors, live music, bike safety + fitting demonstrations, and line dancing demonstrations. For their first year, we can say that they knocked it out of the park!
Railey Realty & Railey Vacations were proud event sponsors, and entered a boat into the competition! Each boat is manned by 16-20 paddlers, one drummer, and one steerer. The steerer is provided by Dynamic Dragon Boats, the company who also provided the boats, instruction for paddlers, and event support. Dynamic also supplied drummers for teams who needed one! There were seven total teams this year: Railey Realty, Vagabond Taproom, SkyDragons, Garrett County Outdoors, Deep Creek Lions Club, Steel City Dragons, and First United Bank. All of the teams were given one practice date to learn the ropes, as this was a brand new event for most of them!!
Each team raced three times, with the last heat deciding the final placement of the teams! Railey Realty was the only team to be under 60 seconds all day, and finished the festival in first place, with a 200 meter time of 56.331! Garrett County Outdoors had a tremendous final run to end up in second place, just edging out First United Bank, who finished third.
Our team had an incredible time and can’t wait to do it again next year!
The Dove Center did confirm that this event will take place again next August, and will announce a finalized date soon, with spots opening up for registration after the first of the year.
The Railey Realty/Railey Vacations Team Included:
Nick Fratz-Orr, Zach Wesolowski, Ashley Fadely, Kelsey Meyers, Caroline Mason, Mike Fenton, George Collins, Denny Skeweris, Mike Richards, Lee Ware, Jarrod Harper, Adam Fadely, Kristin Skeweris, Jon Bell, Matt Friend, Dale Carpenter, Jess Seib, Julie Mead, Kellyann Green, and Madeline Collins.
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