Ready, set, paddle
EMMARENTIA – Dabulamanzi Canoe Club hosts it's annual Gauteng High Altitude Surfski Championships.
EMMARENTIA – Dabulamanzi Canoe Club presented it’s annual Gauteng High Altitude SurfSki Championships to an excited audience on 4 February.
Canoes were prepped and paddles were in hand, ready to take to the dam in the hope of coming out a winner. The event, which spans 10km, had paddlers race to complete 10 laps around the dam. If that was not hard enough speedboats raced around the dam to create waves to further challenge the paddlers.
This year’s winners were pairs Dave Hamilton-Brown and Wayne Jacobs who were followed by former world champion Hank McGregor and his wife Pippa.
The hotly anticipated championships had paddlers of all ages with varied levels of skill participating in the unique challenge. Committee member of the club and co-organiser for the event, Steve Jourdan said there were 160 boats on the water this year, which to him was unheard of. He explained that the championships came about almost six years ago when the need to have one in Gauteng arose.
Jourdan said this is the largest surfski championships in the world.
“It is an opportunity for everyone who loves surfski paddling to do it right here, at Emmarentia dam, which is just absolutely amazing.”
He added that to prepare for the event, paddlers have to participate in various forms of paddling. Most of the paddlers had recently competed in the Dusi marathon.
“Doing all the different disciplines of the sport gets you prepared for the championships.”
Winners for the event were:
1st – Wayne Jacobs and Dave Hamilton-Brown
2nd – Hank and Pippa McGregor
3rd – Andy Birkett and Colin Wilson
4th – Jasper Mocke.
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