Finally the photos

Huge thanks to Sharlene Winiata, Liz Ruatoto, Laurelle Winiata-O'Reilly, Lei Faletolu, Jo Washington and Emily from Paddle Life for all the work they did at registration, the timing and taking photos...these ladies worked like clockwork together and made everything tick along just nicely for us all.

To John and Turi Hodges and also Mike Oxnam to get 3 W6 crews and the craft to the event there's a lot of work co-ordinating this. Thanks to all the Waka Ama, Canoe Clubs, Stand Up Clubs and Groups, Mariska Angus and finally Gaylene from Hoe Tonga for putting the word out to get club members and mates along to this event.

Felipe Alonso Dos Santos from Art in Surf for coming down from Auckland with some of his beautifully coloured stand up boards...which are all available at Fergs Kayaks. Felipe works extremely hard to bring a Quality product into the Country, he paddles in all the events and also donated a couple of SUP leg leashes and an Art in surf tee shirt....we really appreciate any one from Auckland coming down to our Events.......the road is a two way track after all !

Mark Washington asked me 6 months ago..... "If I needed anything just sing out"........so I asked him if Sean could paddle on the World Championship winning 10.5 kg Uno Max carbon ski he owns. Mark said yes we can make that happen......he bought Sean and Emily across on the Ferry and Sean had full use of Marks ski for the 3 days in Wellington.

Thanks to all our travellers.......Wanganui Kayak Club and Wairarapa Waka Ama Club for travelling the extra miles to get to the event.

Thanks to Dave Annear at Fergs Kayaks who along with Welly Paddlers funded the spot prizes for this event. We'd also like to thank Watermark Signs (Wellington) and Verboom (Christchurch) who are the suppliers of our graphics and tee shirts......they both go out of there way to meet our orders and we love working with them.

In all we had 113 paddlers on the water........a little down on our goal........but still 35 % up on last years entries.

It was great to have an ICF World surf ski Champion Sean Rice at our event.......it's interesting that there was a random buoy along the course and not only Sean deviated to this random buoy...... but a couple K1 paddlers did this also.......but were hailed down to head to the correct buoy.......in the meantime Sean Rice was too far away to hear anything and was steaming home.......leaving Glenn Muirhead to head all craft home.....Glenn was only 15 seconds outside his previous previous single paddle event time from 2012.

Sean was on course to beat the all time best time of 59 mins flat set by "The Worlds Crew" in 2010......maybe next time huh.

Of course this event's..... "for everyone" and I'm sure well all be able to look and track the times we did this year against previous years and aim for those personal targets in the future.

Click on any photo to enlarge