Course
Director Report
By Steve Cooper
This inaugural event was run on Saturday 3rd Feb, over 100
souls turned out at the Georges River National Park for an 8am
start. The task at hand was to collect as many of the 24 Checkpoints
(CPs) located along, in and around the river inside of 5hrs,
accumulating as many points from them as possible.
The Preceding weeks had organizers combing the area for suitable
CPs, keeping in mind access would be a major factor on what
was one of Sydney’s biggest oyster producing rivers, and
not to mention the maze of mangroves surrounding the river.
The National Park is tucked away surrounding the Georges River,
and even some of the more local residents hadn’t explored
all its surroundings. Organizers had calculated roughly an 11am
high tide, this was just over midway through the race and would
make route choices interesting.
The event attracted a range of athletes from seasoned adventure
racers and paddlers like “Team Millie” to first
timers who were looking for something different and could paddle
the supplied voyager 2s. As one racer put it, the focus is quite
often taken off kayaking in AR, and the aim here was to try
and cater for everyone with a course that would involve almost
95% paddling, you were allowed to paddle pretty much what ever
you wanted, as long as you were competent in it and it met buoyancy
requirements, in the wash up only 1 K1 fronted with the rest
of he field comprising of fast racing skis, singles and doubles
a few AR specific doubles, a lot of sea kayak and multisport
type craft and then 20 or so supplied voyager doubles which
were evenly split across three of their own categories.
The morning started with glassy conditions on the river and
a tide on the way in, after rego competitors started pouring
over pre-marked maps in readiness for the points handout shortly
after the start. Having some of the farthest away CPs worth
up to 60 points made up competitors minds, there was going to
be some paddling for sure, the elite paddlers amongst them felt
confident they could potentially clear the course of all CPs
so went about mapping their route.
Paddlers were then notified of the points handout, this was
to be around the corner at Cattle Duffers Flat an unused part
of the National Park and a few minutes paddle away, and teams
had to paddle there.
The mass Le Mans start had paddlers running for their craft,
the immediate area had several CPs close by, and no sooner had
the competitors converged on the 2 officials at the give out
they were sprinting for the ridge track and the first CP of
the day for most.
From here on in teams went to all corners of the river, the
CP at pleasure point was under water at high tide and on initial
inspection had teams wondering how far down it was, thankfully
at most about 4 feet, but this could be lifted and was there
after returned to its original position.
Deadmans creek was a no go zone, as was mill creek near the
start at low tide, but luckily for the likes of Pete Tedesco
and Paul Dreghorn, Deadmans creek had enough water in to be
one of the first points they visited, unfortunately vandals
looked after CP5, CP4 had some paddlers guessing, described
as “Submarine Pipes” attention to the wording was
crucial as they were several signs in the vicinity but only
one worded as such, and only visible once on top of it.
The majority of other crews had headed towards the ocean and
the furthest CPs with the intention of working back. CP12 was
at the junction of the Woronora and Georges River and was the
target of Matt Blundell and Mike Snell (the eventual winners
in the “own doubles class”)
As the day wore on the orange voyager 2 craft could be spotted
by the safety boat dotted along the banks of the river looking
for various CPs, two points had paddlers ascending to high points
at high tension power lines overlooking the river and a nav
error by a couple of teams resulted in commanding views over
the start finish area from another high point, a mooring buoy
tested the balance of a few folk and Oatley Park at the bottom
end of the course gave competitors another chance to stretch
their legs.
Meanwhile a single bolt of lightning and a thunder clap followed
by a 2 minute torrential down pour on 1 part of the course had
racers cooling down but wondering what was to follow, thankfully
the race continued on and all returned safely to the finish,
a blistering pace by Millie ProKayaks had them finish in a shade
under 4 hrs with Jay Wilson and Brett Greenwood 19mins behind
in 2nd, first ladies home were Powell Power Paddles with 440/550
4mins under the 5hr mark and an awesome effort by the Disco
Diva girls to take out the “double supplied class”
and beat the boys (Team Underdone) and the mixed crew (Team
Kachiki) in the same boats by 10 and 20 points. The solo class
saw Michelle Giardini win over Janelle Wallace by 24 points
and the Solo male class had 23 guys battle it out with the top
3 all on the same points but with Anthony Anderson beating Darren
keen and paul Grundy on time.
At the end of the day all shared in near $5000 worth of prizes
supplied through the Kayak industry, Prokayaks-Narrabeen, Blue
Earth-Drummoyne, Horizon line Canoes-Penrith, Q-Kayaks Ingleburn,
Abadu Outdoor Accessories and Perception Kayaks.
A big thanks goes to all these guys not to mention National
Parks’ Barry Hodgson for his work, the volunteers for
their help on the day, and the local scouts for catering for
some very hungry paddlers.
See you next time.
PS
A bit of history or useless information I picked up while setting
the course, Lime Kiln Bay which contained CP22 was so named
because of the Kilns used to turn shells from aboriginal middens
on the banks of the river into Lime for use in cement in Sydney’s
early years.
Also Oatley was named after James Oatley a convict deported
from the old dart who then became the local clock maker.
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