42nd Balmoral Blast – Today’s event results are available online as always!

Sydney harbour put on an another postcard perfect day for our 42nd Balmoral Blast.

If you didn’t make it today, you really did miss another great event, here is a photo from the morning to savor. I didn’t get as many shots as I had hoped for, I was distracted as I was watching the close finish:

42nd Balmoral Blast

It’s both exciting and a little scary to think that in ten weeks we’ll have been running back to back weekend Time Trials and Race events for a year with only two weekends off for Christmas and Easter.

That’s a pretty impressive track record. It’s also a lot of 5am starts on Saturday mornings.

Today was further evidence that we’re in for an awesome sprint and summer, with nothing short of perfect conditions and another awesome event on the wonderland that is Balmoral beach.

A fresh sunny morning, a medium strength cross wind, with just the right mix of rough water and bump to keep things challenging enough for the average punter, and you have the 42nd Balmoral Blast.

Today was without a doubt, a perfect 10 on all fronts, weather, ocean conditions, a fantastic bunch of Blasters on the water, and thanks to today’s race director Stephen Newsome, and his support crew of Mark T Smith and Angie Thorpe, we had the pleasure of another world class event, run like clockwork by the Blast crew.

Today’s race was run on our Fairlight 8km course, and after some humorously delivered, yet very welcome clarification of the turning markers at Dobroid point (although some might say additional confusion at one stage) from our resident nautical guru and wine aficionado Master Robin Tedder, todays race director Stephen Newsome kicked off the race and sent off the scratch star group to see the 42nd Balmoral Blast off and running.

There is quite a gap now between the scratch group and our next starting bunch, in fact today the second starting group was somewhere around the six minutes from memory, so there are a lot of you improving your times out there.

The ten minute group saw a solid bunch put in a good start, with a blistering first 200 yards, and it wasn’t long before our rising star Ben Dibly was away as the last starter on something like a 15 or 16 min handicap, and the race was officially away and running.

With the handicaps getting more and more accurate due to the tireless work of our guru of timing and handicaps Master Stephen Nicholas, the finishes are getting really close and it was fantastic to see a constant stream of healthy tussles for the last few meters to cross the finish line.

We only had one DNF today, but understandably so, as the Fairlight 8km course isn’t an idea course to cut your teeth on with a cross wind, and any DNF is really just an opportunity to come beat it the following week.

The results of the 42nd Balmoral Blast can be viewed online via the following URL:

http://BlastPaddlers.COM/rms/results

I’m really excited to announce that next week, on Saturday the 12th of September we are running a special event, an 18km race, from Balmoral beach, up to the Roseville bridge and back.

This is going to be a warm up race leading up to the Fenn Cup series and the Ocean Series. This is the race you need to come to, for not only will it get you set for the longer events in the soon to run ocean races, you’ll also get a change at a large race start, and you’ll be rubbing shoulders with many of the big names in paddling.

Doug Lucas, president of Long Reef Surf Life Saving Club and event director of the Fenn Cup in conjunction with the legendary Dean Gardiner, is very generously providing us with two support and safety craft (IRB’s) with drivers for the event.

To capture the event, we have photographer William Bullock shooting the event, on the beach and from one of the IRB’s, to provide an online gallery of the event.

I’ll have further information on next Saturday’s race at Balmoral going out by email and on our web site on both Tuesday and Thursday.

And just to make next weekend bigger and better than any before, we are also launching the Blast at Cronuall with a kick off race and post race BBQ for the official launch of Blast Paddlers Cronulla, which will be run by site founder and race director Master Stephen Newsome.

See you on the beach next Saturday at Balmoral for the 18km race, and at Cronulla on Sunday for the inaugural race to open the new site there.

Cheers, Dez

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