2011 Florida West Coast Championships

The 2011 West Coast Champs turned out to be a great event this year. The Florida weather finally turned warm which allowed everyone to enjoy the sun and long awaited time on the water.

The OC-6 sprints and 6-mile race went off with a big hit on Saturday. Two outrigger clubs from Miami and Ft. Lauderdale joined in on the races which were organized by the Clearwater Canoe Club. The day started off with the typical traditional outrigger canoe style 500 meter sprints. All of the races were tight with only a couple of seconds separating the field. Each club did two heats of a mens division and two heats of a mixed division. The best time from each heat was used towards the final time which in turn named the Florida West Coast Champ. Clearwater Canoe Club came in first for both the men and mixed sprint races.

The 6-mile course started directly in front of the Sailing Center with a mark placed 1.5 miles to the south east of the sailing center. The two mens teams from Miami and Clearwater battled it out on the first leg to the mark while the Ft. Lauderdale mens team and the Clearwater mixed team were neck and neck for most of the race. Conditions were sloppy with lots of wind driven chop and boat traffic. In the end, the Clearwater mens team came in first, Miami mens in second, Clearwater mixed in third, and Ft. Lauderdale mens in third.

After all of the finishing times were tallied up, the Clearwater Canoe Club (Kai Aniani) kept the trophy in their home town.

On Sunday the events were followed up with a 8.5 mile Surfski and Outrigger Canoe race. There was also a 4 mile Stand Up Paddle board event which took place in the bay. In the surfski division Reed Hyle came in an impressive first place with a time of 1:03:47. In the OC-1 division, Brian Renner from California came in first with a time of 1:16:57. In the OC-2 division, Bob and Derick Bez came in first place with a time of 1:13:49. In the SUP class Brandon Rahe finished first place in the mens open division with a time of 0:51:07. Mary Ann Boyer-Willis finished in first place in the woman’s open division.

A special thanks goes out to the Clearwater Community Sailing Center for the great venue location, Clearwater Community Youth Sailing Team for the great food, and all of the participants that drove the many miles to enjoy the event. We will continue to grow the event in the coming years so hope to see you all again next year!!

If you want to see the full race results, go to the following link and download the results excel files.

http://crazypaddlers.net/Events.html

You can also view pictures of the event on the Crazy Paddlers Facebook page or on the clearwatercanoeclub.com website.

Posted by crazypaddlers on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 4:21pm