Well even though there's a good sup following on the Central Coast and around Newcastle, only 4 of us braved the conditions on the day...I still haven't decided whether I'm crazy or just plain stupid (maybe a bit of both) for having a go but every challenge makes us stronger.
Here's my account and I'm sure the other guys will have their own stories to tell...
Early forecasts during the week looked promising but by Friday night it wasn't looking like much fun so I'm guessing that put a lot of punters off.
With a forecast for a top temperature of 40 degrees, moderate northerly winds in the morning backing off under 5 knots of variable wind during the afternoon followed by a late southerly change, the call was made by the race organisers on Friday night to run from north to south.
Unfortunately the forecast had changed by Saturday morning with the strong southerly due earlier (in the middle of the race!) but the organisers weren't prepared to make a 'last minute' change to the race direction.
When we turned up at the rego, they hadn't really considered that sups are generally slower than skis and outriggers and hadn't made any plans for an earlier start even though it was a 25km race. (They were happy to admit they hadnt considered this when we were chatting to them and being the first race they had run i'm hoping they'll take it into account in the future). Anyway, the plan was to start the sups with outriggers and women's skis at 1:30 and the open men's at 1:50 but that was changed to a mass start at 1:30 to try to get the top skis to finish before the southerly arrived.
At the start there was some unofficial talk between the sups of turning around if the southerly change was too strong but I didn't pay too much attention to that...
Before the race had even started, the wind swung WSW (not a good sign) and then backed right off as the temperature soared. On the start line it was around 37-38degrees and we had 5-10 knots westerly breeze (we were paddling SSW) which gradually dropped off and by an hour into the race the heat had ramped up to about 42degrees and the water was as glassy as it gets without a breath of wind. Needless to say it wasn't the quickest start to a race and the skis had left us for dead off the line.
At the 1hr15min mark I'd only managed to get about 10km down and the 2nd sup was about 0.5-1km behind me whilst the other 2 were out of my sight already. This is when the southerly hit... You could see the white caps coming as the front approached, then bam, 20+knots straight away, I glanced back and could just see Pete still paddling, so I put my head down and started punching into the wind, pretty soon I couldn't see anyone behind me so figuring that if i turned around it would be near impossible to figure out where the other sups were, I just kept going (very slowly) and gradually approached the reef at Redhead marking almost halfway on the course. With a combination of opposing SE and NE swells and the wind bouncing off the headland it was really tough going.
Anyway I kept pushing into the wind for half an hour making only 2km progress and just before I got to the reef at Redhead, the Water Safety vessel approached me and said all the other Sups had turned around about 3km back and were heading back to the start. I thought about keeping going, but calculated that at my current pace, it would have taken about 3 hours to reach the finish and I could see a second, bigger storm front approaching from the south. The water safety guys didn't seem to keen on waiting for me to finish either, so they escorted me back to the other sups (about 4km back by the time we found them) and from there we paddled back to the start (at nobody's beach), then across the river and back to Stockton where I was staying. As we got across the river, the second southerly front hit, now gusting to 30knots, it was a challenge just to climb up the break wall with the boards and walk home in that wind.
If i hadnt turned at redhead and had kept going, I would have still had 4-5km to go when that second front hit and
I'm pretty sure it would have been impossible to finish the race on a sup in those conditions (i know thats a BIG call!!!) or at least impossible to finish before dark, so I'm kind of glad I didn't keep going for the extra 2 hours only to be forced out closer to the finish. Maybe if some of the top guys had done it you would have been far enough ahead of me to finish before the second front, but I'm not even sure whether that would have happened or not.
A few friends who were waiting for us at the finish said the talk among the ski paddlers was that it was a really tough race for everyone. The winning ski took 1hr45min (thats 17mins or 19% slower than the 20 Beaches over the same distance) and would have spent that last 30mins pushing into that headwind to get to the finish line - whilst everyone else was working against the wind for a lot longer.
I got the impression at the start of the race that this was the first time this event was being run (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) and hopefully the organisers will take on board all feedback and be more flexible to adapt the course to conditions on the day in the future.
