Well all good things come to those who wait – and you’ve waited for the Brown’s Race 6 results, so here they are.
Fantastic weather greeted the 30 plus paddlers who turned up for race 6 – warm, sunny and a light sea-breeze to push paddlers up the river but to cool them down a bit on the return leg. Creek Boats dominated proceedings, making a huge wake and giving some big-surf action. And it was all followed by another fantastic barbie with food by Carol Furmston and beer by the Mollies.
In the first race – with the wind, Matt Dalziel stunned the regulars by defeating experienced international paddler, Lillian Maffre, in the highly competitive C1 class. Matt chose an open C1 as his weapon, while Lillian stuck with the tried and true circa 1979 DRR C1. Their times have to be seen to be believed!
In the women’s K1 Jen Brown was clearly the fastest, but in the "obviously pregnant K1" class, Imogen Pearce put all other competitors to shame. Even Jen, who dominated that class last year, was heard to comment that Imogen and baby-to-be were clearly a K2 and should be moved up a division.
In the men’s K1 it was a very very close race. Mark Dunbabin showed his class with a fast 7.44.5 – 1 second ahead of Brett Stewart, with Andrew Buckley only another second behind. In the creek Boat Class, Andrew Maynard out-muscled fellow Australian Team member, Stewie Bennett: 13.15.2 v 13.19.4 with the other creekers close behind.
On the return handicap leg, into the wind, most times were a lot slower, but Brett Stewart showed his consistency to do a 7.46 – only one second down on his time-trial result while for Mark Dunbabin, the first race had taken its toll – dropping back to 5th and 22 seconds behind his first race time. In his first ever Brown’s race, John Clingo crossed the line first, but can’t claim line-honours – race rules preclude a line honours handicap win without a race history to handicap by. So Jen Brown claimed Line Honours followed closely by Graham Mitchell and then Dave Gray and Travis in their DRR C2. Stewie Bennett turned the tables on Andrew Maynard to take out the Creek Class both in line honous and on corrected time.
