This past weekend we took a road trip to Cradock where the all famous Hansa Fish River Marathon takes place. This year was the 30th Anniversary of the Hansa Fish and promised to be a good one as the race entries topped over 1700 entries making it a record entry for the 30th Fish.
We arrived on the Tuesday before race day to get settled in at camp and scout the river for any changes. I was very fortunate to have Knysna Racing Kayaks sponsor us a new Boat "The Rush" K2 as well as a new paddle. The combination of the two just made paddling on the fish that much more pleasant knowing i have trusted equipment to take me down river.
Race day came sooner than expected and all preparation had to be done as the nerves began to sinc in. The Fish has a Le man start with all the boats lined up on the waters edge and all the paddlers about 100m back making it a mad dash to get in and have a clean start.
The gun goes and its frantic pushing to get through to our boat only to have the paddle next to me inform me that my partner had run back to get his shoe??? Confused, i carried on jumped in and realized he wasn't joking. Zaren had lost his shoe in the mud and some how convinced himself that it was a good idea to go back and get it after reaching the water already. So the start wasn't what it should be but we put the hammer down in hope to catch most of the field before the dam wall portage. I had worked so hard across the dam and most of the portage that with 200m left to reach the river put in i had to walk. The sprint across the dam and most of the run had just killed me. I thought this was the end, from here on its a social race. But what is SOCIAL? This is river racing and anything can happen so keep racing. We were probably around 30th position when we finally climbed in the boat. The entire day from there on went smoothly and with no further mistakes to finally end the day in 13th. Disappointed but happy with the work we had done to catch up.
Day 2 was always going to be a tough day. We started on our own in elapsed time with a group of 5 boats hunting us down. Everything was going well until i lost steering 5km down river. It took some time to reach the river bank and fix the problem and by then the chasing group of 5 had passed us. Unsettled and annoyed we went off in a flat sprint trying to catch the back of the group. Through doing this we had used up too much energy and only lasted another 10km with them before we fell back and just tryed to hang in there for the rest of the day. Fortunately we had created a large gap so we could paddle quite conservative. We finally ended the stage in 18th overall. A long day day out and many lessons learnt.
The overall victory went to Hank Mcgregor and Grant Vd Walt winning there 3rd consecutive title. The surprise of the day was Tom Schilperoort and Jasper Mocke finishing in 2nd place having just come off a very successful international surfski tour.
The Hansa Fish is famous for its after party and boy what a party it was. They had the brilliant band of "Good Luck" on stage and rocked right on into the night.
