Team Xcite AR took on the wild waters of Redland Bay for the 4 hour Paddlegaine run by Qld Rogaine Association. The race was a 4 hour (obviously) points race on kayaks around the island of Karragarra (start/finish point), Macleay, Russell, and a couple of others I don’t know the name of.
The start was a ragged old affair, with a bit of argy-bargy resulting in Fiona being “politely” tapped on the head by a competitors paddle. That caused us to change our starting direction, which then caused us to have to sit and wait for a ferry to pass (it looked a bit big for us to stare down). Off we headed in a north-westerly direction behind Team Krome and, I think, the Giddy Up Girls. There were only about 5 teams heading in our direction (out of 50 teams) so we were thinking “Did we pick the right way to go?”
Conditions were a bit blowy, with the wind seeming to be getting stronger. After about 20 minutes we were already starting to cramp, but luckily our third checkpoint (CP81) was on land and we could stretch our legs a bit. After that everything was tickety-boo and we were off and racing again.
We picked up all the CPs in the west loop, and then headed back across the roaring channel, into a raging headwind, towards Karragarra Is. Once into the channel between Karragarra and Russell Is the conditions eased up and we were feeling good again. We headed down a side creek to pick up CP72 nice and easy, then up a side channel to the hut at CP35. Sounded like quite an angry dog was in residence, so we didn’t hang around (possible scenes of Deliverance came into my head). Off to CP23 back on Karragarra, which was at about the2 hour mark so we thought it was time for a bit of a feed. There was a very feeble effort by Roar AT to distract us and cover the CP, but we saw through that flimsy plan.
After skirting around Karragarra, we hit some more open water and Fi spotted a dugong, and also saw some turtles. Me, sitting in the back, only saw an orange T-shirt, map and compass all day.
Trying to get to CP44 we had to wait for another ferry. We got hit by a couple of large wake waves against us, but couldn’t get across to the other site to catch the waves which would have given us a nice ride. Not too much of a problem as we had some wind and tide assistance, only trouble was, we had to come back into it to CP54.
We thought we would zig-zag back to the finish, picking up some cheap points. That meant outrunning another bloody ferry (max heart rate peaked around 200 at this point). However, we were back to CP34 much sooner than expected so we headed up another channel to CP33, then to CP43. With about 40 minutes to go, and about 2 km or so back to finish, we thought about getting to CP82. We even paddled about 200 m to check it out, but then sanity prevailed and we headed home. Just as well as it was an almighty slog back to the finish and we only made it back with about 5 minutes or so to spare.
We ended up with 580pts of a possible 990, and in 15th place overall. Quite a good result for our first paddle-only race. Well done to all competitors (our friendly rivals, Team Lantana, got the best of us this time – maybe we should have tried for that extra 80 pts). Thank you to Adam and Mark, and the rest of the team at QRA for putting this race on. Your efforts are very much appreciated.