Upcoming Events

After much sweet anticipation please follow this link to the video of the 2010 Gold Coast Cup

Gold Coast Cup 2010 from Heidi Uytendaal on Vimeo.

And here is Sam’s Story on the event….

First Steer in a Changeover
This year I had grand ideas of steering the Gold Coast Cup iron and on the Thursday before the race was a bit disappointed when I heard I would be in seat one again this year. Anyhow, the disappointment soon gave way to relief after I had been in the steerer’s seat for an hour and had gone numb all the way down my left leg. I guess that’s a downside to paddling in the same direction for most of the race.
So, having started the race and done one more change into the canoe, just before Burleigh it was time for me to climb into seat six and put us on a course for the turn buoy at Miami. From there it was on up the coast towards Surfer‘s and the Q1 tower that we had all been seeing on the horizon since several hours before on the beach at Greenmount.
Finding my rhythm and trying to work in harmony with the swell coming at us from the right, I heard a call for the next change. It snapped my mind onto the next challenge of aiming for three bobbing heads intermittently hidden by the slightest bump or white cap. Well, they all got in and out with no problem so it was time to charge for the skyscrapers again. The changes all went smoothly, although on one, I briefly thought I had put two of them down the left and one person had slipped down the right side until I saw three heads on the left.
Then, soon enough it was time to jump out again. Craig had said to just sit on the back of the canoe and steer until he was in and then pass him the blade and slide off. Sounds easy I thought. As we approached the three heads I jumped on the back but it was trickier than I had bargained for, as I hadn’t planned for the spray skirt and hoop that were in my way. The canoe was pulling hard left so I jumped back in the seat, corrected it and slid as far onto the spray skirt as I could. El Presidente took the reins and then I could slip into the refreshing ocean once more and relax, but only for about 20 minutes as we all know too well.
The finish was definitely one to remember, as we realised we were about 500m behind the Brisbane women’s crew just as they were going into the seaway. By this stage I was back on the support boat and we made sure to let our crew know they had to pull something out of the bag. They did and we watched them sail past a struggling mixed crew passing through the seaway and then we planned our next move. We made one last change where the wall finishes less than 1km from the finish. We had to be careful to keep the support boat behind the girls’ canoe so they didn’t know we were sneaking up on them, so once we jumped in the water our canoe was almost on top of us. It’s just good there was no more swell by this stage. So the rest is history but let’s just say the girls did pick up their game pretty well when we pulled alongside them. It’s a good job their support boat was too busy thinking about champagne and prawns rather than who was right behind them at the finish…