by Peter Cole

Winter in Cape Town brings with it the passing cold fronts and monstrous waves from the South Atlantic. I have had the most  relaxed winter paddling  program since I started paddling  a long time ago, focusing  on helping a few of the paddlers prepare for various races both locally and abroad. But with the Berg over and the weather looking a little better I have got back into the swing of things trying to get fit for the Breede  River Marathon (2 day K2 river race of 80km) and ultimately  the start of our surfski series and Cape Point Challenge.

So when Sean Rice said he needed a little more mileage as he is doing the Chicago Shoreline Marathon and US Surfski Champs at the end of this month, and looking at the gap in the weather I decided that Saturday was a good day to do a run from Scarbrough (Cape Point Start) to Buffels 33km away.

So myself Sean and Steve Farrell set off from a chilly Scarbrough in a light NW wind and straight away got nice small runs all the way to Cape Point, being winter things were quite different to doing this in summer, the sun is fairly low in the sky at this time of year so the water seems darker and more intimidating the Sea life was far different with various creatures further North than usual escaping the cold Antarctic winter. We had two Albatrosses follow us for ages, not once flapping there wings just using the wind and waves for lift, quite a few Whales at the Point and various seals and African Penguins along the way, luckily no great whites.  It was great to be back on the Sea paddling such an awesome stretch of coastline.

On rounding the point we now had 6km to buffels straight into the NW wind but managed that fine hitting the beach in a little over 2 hrs 30. What a way to kick start my Cape Point training.If you have not done the Cape Point Challenge before, put it on your things to do list, if you have this year is looking like a cracker, so dust off the ski and get training you will not want to miss out.

Lex has asked me to run a Cape Point training program on this site so from the beginning of September up to the Fenn Cape Point Challenge I will have a training program and blog of what is happening.

Good luck to Sean in the US.

Pete