A large number of paddlers from the local Outrigger Canoe Club attended Round 4 of the Grand Prix Regatta series at Mission Beach last Weekend.

The Day started with the 9,5 km OC6 (6 paddlers per canoe) race towards Dunk Island and back.

The mass start at the first event included the clubs Master Men, Master Women and Open Mixed teams.

The Master Men crew of Dimitri Stievano, Lee Foster, Vernon Carpenter, Mike Schuck, Kevin Bellero and Justin Whyte established themselves quickly at the front of the field and eventually crossed the line 3rd overall behind teams from Coconuts (Innisfail) and Coral See (Townsville).

In the meantime the Master Women and the Open Mixed crew (Glen Thorp, George Beeby, Jan Ward, Denise LeeLong, Kelly King, and Kim St.Piere) where battling it out against each other.

“Shortly after the start, we got sandwiched between our own Open Mixed crew and the Senior Master Men from Hekili (Cairns) it was race on right to the finish line. This was for bragging rights and we were not going to lose that one. , “Lili Jansen said smiling.”

The fierce battle resulted with a 3rd  place for Lili Jansen, Mia Messinger, Ingrid Juchem, Danielle Bellero, Monique Matthews and Karen McClure  in their own division with the Mixed crew less than a second behind to finish 7th in their division and over 5 sec in front of the Men’s teams from Cairns.

The second event of the day took the Master Mixed, Open Men and Open Women OC6 over the same course.

The Open Men’s Crew placed 4th overall with the Master Mixed crew 1min, 30 seconds behind in 7th overall and 2nd in their division.

“Most of our paddlers had to back up for theses 2 events to ensure we could get all our members in to  a team” Club President Glen Thorp said.” Our goal was to have as many teams as possible racing over the weekend.”

The Open Women crew of Ingrid Juchem, Monique Mathews, Danielle Bellero, Kelli King, Katie Pickford and Edith Wild (both at their first Regatta) went on to win a silver medal at 500 meter sprint. “There was a strong current going towards the northern start buoy, so I lined the canoe up right next to the southern buoy. The start was a bit delayed and by the time the flags dropped, some of the canoes had drifted very close together. It opened up a gap for us and we had a clean run for home.” Ingrid Juchem said. ”We just came in behind Maggie Island (Townsville) but way in front of the rest of the field.” The open men’s team used the same tactic and won bronze in their race.

The afternoon saw racing for the single (OC1) and double (OC2) crafts. Flat water and unusual warm weather conditions made the 4km course a tough task to complete.

“We consider a distance like this, a long.sprint. So you have to be at top speed straight form the Start. We had 21 top 10 finishes out of 21 entries across all of divisions, including 7 medals and four 4th places.  A very good result.” The clubs Vice President Kevin Bellero said.

The  goods results continued on the Sunday with  2nd Vaka Tua Moto race. The Mixed Crew of Jansen, Bellero,. Bellero, . Schuck,. Messinger and  Thorp  took  2:10.11.hr to complete the 24 km race around Kamboola and Dunk Island and placed 2nd,. J. Whyte and Cecil Casey also finished the course placing 4th and 5th.