Cardiff Bay Paddlers

With the Nationals only just up the road in Worcester this year the largest numbers of CBKC paddlers ever, entered. The onsite camping on the racecourse made for a great social weekend.

The Nationals are organised into age class racing with K1s on the Sat and K2s on the Sunday. We had paddlers in age classes from the U18s to the over 65s. The course was a 6.5k lap of the river with a portage on the longer courses. The oldies only had one lap but the youngsters had to do up to 26k. The circuit nature of the course meant that spectators could follow the racing.

K1 racing on the Sat was as expected very competitive and produced a couple of 4th places and a 2nd & 3rd. On the Sunday the highlight was a great silver medal in the U18 ladies K2 by the Geddes sisters in their first competitive K2 outing. We also had a silver in the O65 mens K2 and a Gold in the Ladies O65 K2. Most paddlers raced twice on the Sunday as the last race of the day was the open mixed K2. This is a legendary race with usually a massive entry and carnage on the start line. This year 67 boats lined up and as predicted there was carnage on the start line. All bar one of our boats finished and the only non-finisher was due to an injury on the portage.

There was a club points competition and out of 48 clubs CBKC came 11th which was an amazing result considering the size of the club.