Wiki Factory Racing

The second race of the Brass Monkey Kayak Race Series was held today in far from ideal conditions with strong wind gusts and rain/hail pelting all the competitors during the briefing. Once on the water however, all this seemed to disappear as you focused on staying upright and not falling into the icy cold river (I did however manage to fall in to the river while getting into my kayak). After yesterdays lesson from Adam at the start line, I decided to take it easy today and not worry about keeping up with him. Luckily for me my sedate start resulted in a perfect start where Adam received a time penalty for jumping the start line. The wind didn't seem to effect me too much and I had a pretty perfect paddle down the river and found a few cheeky short cuts on the way thanks to Adam and Ian Huntsman. With the river having dropped 10 cumecs compared to yesterday I was expecting my time today to be slower than yesterdays by around 30 seconds to a minute. So I was pretty happy to ...

The Brass Monkey Kayak Race Series started around 30 years ago. The race is held over approximately 12km of the braided Waimak river from the pylons to the State Highway 1 bridge. It has been used for many years by people as a way to learn how to kayak for more important events such as the Speight's Coast to Coast. I started my multisport career at this event 4 years ago coming 2nd in the junior field with an average time of around 57 minutes. The series has become very competitive over the years with many fast paddlers competing against each other down the river.  Only time I was in front of Adam during the race  The morning dawned overcast with a little bit of rain and a high river which resulted in pretty much perfect conditions for racing. Due to the amount of people racing, kayakers start in groups of 3 departing down the river every 30 seconds. I was lucky enough to start pretty much at the back of the field with my dad and Adam Milne which would mean we would h...