World Kayak Event Coverage

It snowed again the night before our second Chute Out and I wondered whether it was better to brings my skis to the river instead of my new All Star. Fortunately the winds changed overnight and by 11am it was about 20 degrees celcius warmer than our first event and the atmosphere was even more fun! The water level of the Medway River was at 1′ on the bridge guage and Fisher’s Hole was the spot to throwdown for almost 30 people from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We had people that had never been in a hole before smiling and sharing the eddy with veteran kayakers like Harry Cox our local legend. Several people in shiny new boats with big smiles that helped warm the freshly melted snow. We watched our youngest competitor Umeko, who still has the prettiest boat on the river, squeek out a couple of extra points to beat her mom again and get well on her way to beating her dad! But to be fair I must say that her Dad wore himself out safety boating for guys like Rob who probably wants to practice his combat roll a bit more and lose the title of ‘Iron Lung’.
The afternoon had lessons for all levels in both playboating and river running that went late enough that we ended up having dinner around 9:30pm. It was a great day and I’m looking forward to the next one this May 3.

Thank you to our sponsors Immersion Research, Jackson Kayak, Mion footwear, Red Bull, Smith optics, American Whitewater and Star Charters for all the great prizes that put big smiles on all our participants faces!
Results and more pictures to follow

Mens K1A

1 Jay Gillman
2 Laurie Brown
3 Victor Wareham

4 Keith Merrell

5 Eric Gauthier

6 Brian Laird

7 Ian Campbell

8 Harold Cox

9 David Ripley

10 Garth Gillman

11 Mark Richard

Mens K1B

1 John Newgard

2 Craig Smith

3 Jeff Cole

4 Matt Delong

5 David MacLean

6 Rob Cramer

7Kelly Brown

Womens

1 Umeko Laird
2 Sofie Gradmann
3 Pam Laird