We were blessed by the weather gods this year (unlike last year) with fantastic conditions at Frenchmans Bay, La Perouse on Sunday 16 October for the 2022 Pacific Dragons Outrigger Canoe Regatta.
With members representing 20 clubs travelling from far and wide, the racing was high quality, with all teams vying for glory early in the new season.
The OC1/V1/OC2 race attracted a field of 30 entrants in both the long, short and ultra-short course categories. Winners of the long course included our own Matt Spies and Rachel Mosen winning the mens and womens division. The winners of the short course race were James Munzone from Bondi and Jenny Madden from Port Hacking. And finally the novice OC2 team from Five Islands won the ultra short course race. Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who paddled hard and gave it their all!
Next up was the OC6 racing, which was both spirited and supportive. A field of 5 junior crews and 2 novice crews competed in the 4km race. For nearly all, it was their very first regatta. All should be super proud of their efforts. All junior crews came from local club Maia’s junior program who have done an awesome job with this program!
Next up was the short course 8km race, with a total of 19 crews racing across the men’s, women’s, and mixed categories. The men’s winners were the Bondi club, who battled with Northern Beaches. The women from the Northern Beaches club were very impressive taking out line honours by over 7mins, with the PDs own mixed crew taking out the win in that division!
In the 12km long course mixed race The Lakes won and the Northern Beaches womens crew also took home another win (great job ladies). In the men’s long course, the Cronulla crew took out line honours and the next day flew to Tahiti to represent Australia in the upcoming world marathon titles – good luck to all racing!
Congratulations to everyone who raced and thank you to everyone from team Pacific Dragons who volunteered on the day to time keep, operate the support boats, register crews, help clubs with parking and unloading trailers or selling raffle tickets. A big thank you to our crew on the BBQ, who always make the best post-paddle bacon and egg rolls all day and thank you to those who baked the delicious treats that helped to keep the energy levels high.
Another thank you to NSW Marine Rescue who tagged on as support to help keep us safe and sound, we appreciate you coming along to support our regatta.
Finally thanks to all clubs who supported our regatta, we hope everyone involved had a fantastic day and we will see you again at La Perouse in 2023!