It's that time of year when we dig out our Down River kayaks or Wavehoppers and start practising around a section of buoys. These sessions really help develop skills and are a huge asset to any paddler no matter what discipline they paddle.

Kayaks best for this training are DR kayaks or Wavehoppers without rudders, but Finn kayaks, a 415 or other kayaks 4-5m long that are manoeuvrable can be used.

If you don't have a kayak and want to give it a go just give me a call on 0417977330.

Day: Friday mornings 6.00am to 7.00am
Venue: Claughton Reserve, Katanning Street, Bayswater.

Cost: Free

Length: 5.20 m

Width: 54.00 cm

Depth: 35.00 cm

Weight: ~23kg 

Capacity: 135 kg

Storage: 100 l

Material: Polyethylene

I am writing to try and clear up what seems to be a lack of understanding about why the Sprint Committee needed to include the following for all competitors wanting to compete at the Sprint Kayaking State Championships. 

There are extra roles at State Championships that we do not usually have at our normal regattas, such as Boat Control and Medal Presentations.  It also came to the Committees attention after the very rough conditions we had out at Champion Lakes last regatta that we needed to have Boat Safety.

Because we have consolidated what is normally a 2 day schedule into 1, our regatta will potentially run for an extra 3 hours and breaks will be shorter and limited. We also need to be prepared for hot temperatures, this means that for some of the outside volunteer roles there will need to be shifts.

We have 35 Volunteer Roles that need manning at State Championships.  This does not include set up, pack down or shifts.

Due to our numbers being down in our sport, and there are many reasons why this is the current situation, this obviously leads to a drop in Volunteers.  Last regatta we had 61 paddlers but because of multiple family members, this resulted in 51 Volunteers however 19 of these were Self Volunteers. That left us with 32 Volunteers.  Expecting similar numbers to these, or perhaps a little lower, do to some of our paddlers heading east to compete, we were aware that we would not be able to fill all the roles and certainly not be able to relieve some of the more taxing roles, such as Starters and Boat Safety.

We did however include this In the Sprint email that was sent out:

As we obviously didn’t want anyone to have to miss out.  We just couldn’t afford to have the same amount of self-help volunteers that we have had at our other regattas.

I will take this opportunity to also give information as to the costs associated with running a regatta at Champion Lakes.  Venueswest charge us $1234 per day for the use of the Regatta Centre. So, with numbers declining Sprint does not only suffer from a loss of Volunteers but an increase in costs to the paddlers.  We are so lucky to have a venue like Champion Lakes that allows us to simulate National and International conditions and as such it is important to the Committee that the Regattas are run at this same level. 

We must remember we are a community of people that are choosing to use our spare time to either paddle or support our children paddling and we should be able to do this with the support of others in our community.

If anyone wants to understand more about any of the Sprint Committee decisions, please do not hesitate to contact one of the Committee members, we would be more than happy to discuss with you why we have had to make the decision we have.  Or better still come and join the Committee.  What I can assure you though, our only mission is to build our community, run professional regattas and to have fun.

Sprint Committee Chair: Dione Anthony (waskc.chair@gmail.com)

Sprint Committee Vice Chair: Steve Egger

Sprint Committee Treasurer: Mary Smee