Christmas Race
The Christmas Race held recently at Swan Reach was a successful and enjoyable day. Although numbers were down on past years there were plenty of land crew on the beach and 22 people stayed for the evening meal.
Both the 29km long course and 14km short course were supported well despite a couple of unavoidable apologies. Paddlers in both courses found the paddling challenging on the out and back course with several paddlers commenting that it was tough to push through the shallow water into a 15kn head wind on the way home.
The winner of the Sands of Time record was novice marathon paddler Alistair Smith who missed his time by only 6 seconds. His award was presented to him by past SOT winner Pip Archer.
The Christmas tea provided by the Swan Reach Bowling Club was a great meal in a very “country” venue with paddlers enjoying the comaraderie of the Bowling Club members.
Swan Reach like other Murray River communities seems to attract it’s fair share of characters and the visiting MCC-SA members were regaled with many a story in the Bowling Club.
Thanks to Bob & Wendy Bristow for providing water cover and to Sue Speck who was both starter and time keeper for the day.
Race results and a few photos of the day are below.
| LONG COURSE 29km | ||||||
| Boat | Class | Name | Boat No. | Offset | Adjusted Time | Place |
| TK1 | MV55 | David Speck | 1 | 5 | 3:49:27 | 2nd |
| TK1 | MV55 | Philip Archer | 9 | 5 | 3:32:07 | 1st |
| TK1 | MV65 | Bill Griffin | 7 | 5 | 3:31:57 | 1st |
| RKS1 | MV45 | Alistair Smith | 2 | 5 | 3:40:06 | 1st |
| RKL2 | XO | Brad Butler | 6 | 5 | 3:16:45 | 1st |
| Emily Rozee | ||||||
| SHORT COURSE 14KM | ||||||
| TK2 | MV65 | Fred Lamprecht | 4 | 5 | 1:18:29 | 1st |
| Bob Schmidt | ||||||
| TK2 | MV70 | John Hales | 8 | 0 | 1:35:42 | 1st |
| Ron Blum | ||||||
| RKS1 | MV35 | Sean Hames | 5 | 5 | 1:55:23 | 1st |
| RK2 | XV45 | Debi Gobbett | 3 | 5 | 1:55:25 | 1st |
| Arron Hendes | ||||||
