Race Report – 2019 Maroochy River Paddle, Sunday 11 August
The race is the joint effort of the Sunshine Coast Paddlesports Club and the Marcoola Surf Life Saving Club and raises funds for the Hear and Say Foundation (Nambour Branch).
On-line entry and payment is encouraged. Based on the on-line entries, competitor packs were assembled which contained colour-coded wrist bands and boat numbers.
The race was conducted under the ICF marathon rules and sanctioning with indemnity insurance from Paddle Queensland. All appropriate Council and Maritime Safety permits were obtained prior to race day.
The briefing was conducted by Scott from Marcoola Surf Life Saving Club.
Starts were staggered in groups according to craft. We would like to acknowledge the assistance from Julie and Ian Frost in running the Web Scorer program and starts. This was greatly appreciated and was a big factor in the timely provision of results.
There were three safety boats positioned on the river and a VMR crew following the last paddlers.
Coloured wrist bands were collected at the finish line. These were used for random prize draws following the awarding of prizes for first place paddlers.
The Caloundra Rotary Club ran the BBQ which was well supported.
There were 175 online entries on the Friday night. However, on the day the temperature dropped to under 100 and the wind increased to 23 knots. This may account for approximately 20 people who registered on-line and didn’t collect their registration pack.
Fortunately the wind dropped during the day and paddlers were not too badly affected particularly in the last 3km which is quite an open-river stretch of the river.
The range of paddle sports represented this year included: racing kayaks, sea kayaks and fishing kayaks; outrigger canoes; surf spec skis and ocean racing skis; stand-up paddle boards; Canadian canoe; plastic sit-on-top and one C1.
There were a total of 163 paddlers and 102 craft.
Following acquittal of expenses, remaining funds are divided into three. A third each goes to the Marcoola SLSC, the Sunshine Coast Paddlesports Club, and one third is donated to the Hear and Say Foundation (Nambour Branch).
A huge amount of volunteer effort from both clubs goes into this extra-ordinary, successful event.