Michele Eray’s recount:

I braved the gale-force wind to drive to East London on Friday to take part in the Kia South African Surf Ski Champs.

My Thule racks held up well, and my Neloski and I made it there in one piece! The wind on the drive was phenomenal! haven’t felt anything like it for a while!

It was so great to have a Surf Ski Champs back in the Oos Kaap! Charl and his crew at Border Canoe Club put on an unbelievable show. Well organised, great prizes, fantastic food after each day, and an AWESOME race course.

The race was epic! Great downwind conditions, with a following swell made the 22km course feel pretty quick. It was very quick in fact, as I finished in 1h16 (which is a 3:27min/km average pace or 17.3km/hr average speed!)

I actually had so much fun I never really felt like I was racing! (Until the endsprint that is!)

Nikki and I kept exchanging the lead, until just before the very end. I managed to leave my GPS at the house, and so had to guess where the finish was. A moment of not concentrating left me wondering why she ducked around this point, until I realised that it was the finish. She managed to catch a small wave, and then the Bay went flat! I paddled as hard as I could and managed to close the 50m gap to 20m. I had also checked out the finish a few hours before the start, with Beth Burton, my host and local legend! Her brother Dave also gave me some tips about the finish, and he mentioned that that the river mouth would be flowing out to sea.

Nikki paddled into the current while I went a bit right and managed to move a bit quicker than her. She also then made a massive error by hopping out of her ski while I paddled all the way to the beach, even if it was only 20-30cm deep and then only had to run about 2m up the sand to the finish line. I won by half a metre! Very exciting finish and a really great race!

I am now 3x in a row SA Single Ski Champion!

On the Sunday Nikki and I hopped into a double and raced the same course, but without that great wind of the day before it turned into a bit of a slog! Got to see 3 whales though!

Next up I am off to CT for some Sunday series races as final prep before I fly to Dubai for the Shamaal on 3rd December.

(Thanks Albert for that handle! It made all the difference when I had to run up the beach to the finish!!)

From: http://micheray.wordpress.com/

Tim Jacobs cemented his position as the leader of the Ocean Series with his fourth straight win this weekend in the Bing Lee LG Epic Kayaks Ocean Series Race 4 Narrabeen Downwind Challenge.  A clear victory against a tough field sets Tim up perfectly for his campaign to win an unprecedented third Dubai Shamaal in a row. The question now is, at the pointy end of the season, can Tim keep up his form, and can anyone beat the crocodile-riding champion?

Once again, the first half of the race turned into a struggle between TJ and Murray Stewart. Nathan Smith was unable to race so that left a hole in the potential podium places. Murray lead until Newport Reef: “I saw Tim on the inside – I thought he was too narrow, but as I got around the reef he was 200m ahead!”. After that, no-one came close to touching Tim until he crossed the finish line. Murray, underestimating the distance, felt the grand piano drop at 15km and fell out of contention to 4th place. David Smith, the stroke of Australia’s 1000m K4 in Beijing, took the opportunity and came screaming home in second place. In third was Corey Hill, “fresh” from a second place in the Coolangatta Gold last week (to Caine Eckstein). Corey is a rising star in Ocean racing so watch out for him over the next few years.

It turned out to be a good day for the Smith family: as well as Dave’s second place, younger sister Lauren won the women’s race over Kelly Jury, who dominated last year’s series. Lauren has won three races in this year’s series, but it’s the first time she has beaten Kelly. Both Dave and Lauren are elite kayak paddlers, but both have turned to ocean racing in the off-season. Dave will be heading to Dubai in a few weeks’ time and will be one of the many trying to de-throne TJ. Lauren won’t be making the trip this year, but hopes to get across in the future. Instead, she’ll stay at home and focus on winning the 20 Beaches, hoping to take out the series win and the trip to Molokai 2011.

We are happy to have such a talented group of paddlers in the Nelo Team, well done TJ, Smithy and Lauren!

The wait was worth and the conditions today were amazing for Surf Ski!

After a beach start the competitors headed to a buoy 3,5 km with side tail wind, before turning into 13 km of straight perfect downwind, and only than the conditions were not great as they had to paddle with strong chop and wind from the side, to a beach finish. The wind was up to 20-25 knots with no ocean swell, but big wind swell that took the paddlers on some amazing runs up to 25 km/h.

The winner was Bevan Manson followed by the French Yannick Laousse and Benoit LeRoux, with a time of around 1h24m.

For the Nelo Team, the conclusion is that we need to work more on our routes, as without any opening boat both the 2 Dutch and Henrique Silva POR missed the island and faced the consequent disqualification, they were not alone as it was a common mistake among the field. Andre Santos led the pack trough the first turn and than went head to head with Bevan, but the choice of an inside line was a big mistake that costed an extra 1500 mt of catching up to the front French duo that in the meantime was in a direct line to the island. Bevan that had a bit of a lead and more outside line managed to recover the gap but Andre ended up in 5th place, around 2 min behind the winner.

A special mention for Team Rider Ben Brown that was suposed to be present but after facing all kinds of problems in getting here, had to pull out, but i am sure he will be back in full force in Dubai!

This was a great event, well done to all the organizers managing a race in the stormy conditions ( including more than a handful of rescues!) and their time window to perfection ( it could not have been any better), was an even harder challenge than finding that Island!

We look forward to see the official pictures and video.

The rain and cold did not help the organizers and they stayed around for the 1st day of racing.

On the program was a qualifying race of about 800 mt, that helped the organizers to seed the field for sunday’s race, in total there will be 3 starts with 10 min interval and the best paddlers of today’s race will start last.

It was a fun day with some exciting racing building up to the big event on sunday, from the Nelo Team ( 2 from Portugal and 2 from Netherlands Kajak.nl) all will be in the last start on sunday.

Tomorrow the wind is suposed to be at gale force, still a small group training is scheduled for 10.00.

Check the Video from todays racing here http://www.nelo.eu/tv/musicvideo.php?vid=02062d90f

Winter in Europe has arrived, but it was not enough to cool down the enthusiasm around Ocean Racing, France presented the Challenge and Europe has answered!

The weather predictions http://www.windguru.cz/pt/index.php?sc=18 could hardly be better.

Follow all info and results here http://www.breizh.oceanracing.fr/