A class of it's own - outclassed

Last Tuesday, Sept 22nd, was the last race night out at Deep Cove and Bob the owner declared it a doubles night. Usually it's only a few surfski double showing up each Tuesday and Jeff and I are usually the ones dominating the field. This week though, we had about 15 surfski doubles show up, even some coming up from the US. The course was 3 laps around the cove (each ~2km). Wow!!!! The wash just of the start was incredible and Jeff and I had trouble to get into our pace. Result - we dropped of the lead pack with about 7 or 8 men's teams in it pretty much right away. Some of the lead boats were featuring US national team paddlers or ex-South African paddling gurus - those guys that usually hang with Jeff and I for a chat when they are in their singles and easily take off at the end to win by open water. But also racers like Bob and Warren who I would not have expected up there. Well done guys. So Jeff and I were hanging out all by ourselves - again - 100m behind the lead guys and a couple 100m in front of the next set of surfski doubles. Near the end we tried to catch up to Dion (US national team paddler) and Jim (BCKC member and high performance K1 paddler) who fell off the lead -surprise, surprise - but could not quite catch them. Congratulations to Chris and Gareth (South-African paddling guru) for finishing first!!!!