Brass Monkey Race 2 2013

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 cross the line only 8 seconds slower than yesterday placing 12th in Open Men and 18th Overall. Still several minutes off the winning time but it looks like I may finally be starting to get some speed in the boat. Will have to see how I perform in a months time for race number 3&4.

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