Woogie heading out for a Friday Afternoon Surf
Mike Taking out the Queen Mary for a paddle before the massive Weekend
The Friday was a day to relax and have some fun with some of the Hawaiian Boys who had made the trip over to Australia for the Nationals – this is the 2nd year they have had the trip and it has been well received by all. Conditions were not the best but all still had fun on the boards. The Fusion 9’ was great in these condition and a couple of people took it out for a test. Keeping in mind a lot of these paddlers are OC1 paddlers not surfers or SUP paddlers at all.
Chris Simmons Getting Wet before the weekend
Woogie Paddling out
Woogie Laying back
Riggs Napoleon getting some waves before the weekend
Sam Williams
Race Day Long Course Briefing - Still no defending Champ
Canoe Line Up
2nd Place Getter Todd Cohan
With just minutes to go before the race start Woogie was still waiting on the beach for Greg Long. After a massive couple of hours a travelling Longi made it to the Park Beach side of Pier Beach with minutes to spare.
Longi had traveled from WA the night before on the red eye to get to the National Titles to defend his OC1 ranking. He arrived into Brisbane Airport at 2:00 am then had to drive to the Gold Coast for a couple of hours sleep before the massive 4 hour drive down to Coffs Harbour for the Long Course race. What they didn't factor in was that NSW has Daylight savings so were running late right from the start - with a couple of quick calls the Long course race was put back by 1 hours with a start time of 12:30.
Waiting on the beach when all the other competitors heading for the start line was good mate Woogie with all his race gear ready and canoe number. Mike had instructed the two to head off from the rock wall on the Park beach side of the harbour. Longi pulled up and Woogie helped him unloaded the canoe and helped rigged it up. This was a great sign of sportsmanship as Woogie could have left with the rest and been waiting on the start line ready to race.
They both got on the water and headed to the start line - Yellow flag went up - cool 2 minutes until race start we have time - with in 30 secs the start grabbed the wrong flag and up went the Green - SHIIIIIITTTTTT they were off like a flash. Woogie was still mucking around with his drinking system that he just got that morning - Bloody ANDY from Paddles sold me a dud - I will have to go 25km without water.
Longi & Woogie started there massive task of fit back - coming back through the field to get towards the front of the pack. Woogie's goal was to improve on last year this is not a good start. With a 100m handicap to make up it was not going to be easy.
Both paddlers made there way through the pack - Woogie ended up getting the drinking system going with one big pull so he was relieved to have fluids.
Final race results
Tavis Grant 1st - OC1 National Title Holder
Todd Cohan 2nd - Improved from last year
Greg Long 3rd - with a 100m handicap you can only but wonder.
Woogie ended up 7th a great improvement from last year and with the fire still in his belly he was happy with his result and only hopes that one of these days gets a race day perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment