News from Batemans Bay

Rob Howard / 10.11.2016

The transition from stage 5 to 6 is at the town of Bateman’s Bay, at the mouth of the Clyde River, and the leading teams in the race were coming through in the middle part of the day.  It is another spacious transition with good facilities, overlooking the wide river mouth and the bridge on the A1 highway that crosses into town. (Though I suspect facilities may get a little more rustic as teams head into the mountains from now on.)

Seagate were the first to arrive at 10.47, still racing a couple of hours ahead of the fastest expected schedule, and almost 40 minutes in front of second placed Adventure Medical Kits.  Thule Adventure and Estonian ACE Adventure came in together 15 minutes later, having both gained places on the last couple of stages.  Behind Seagate there have been a lot of position changes in what is a very competitive race and when Tecnu came in in 18th place later in the afternoon they noted there were 11 teams ahead of them all of them within 40 minutes.

Another team who had a good coasteering stage were Godzone Adventure ... until Tom Gibbs fell and hurt his arm. They arrived at Bateman’s Bay in 7th, but Gibbs was in some pain with a shoulder or collar bone injury, a recurrence of a recent biking injury brought on the fall on the rocks.  (He’d been out for 2 years before that with a bad leg break as well.)  The team pushed on, with Warren Bates and a resting Gibbs in the front kayak, and all their gear and the other two team members in the SOT at the back.

Merrell Adventure came in 11th and were complaining they’d had no food for almost the whole of the previous coasteering trek after their gear box went missing at the previous transition. Some food and kit was pulled together for them to continue, and last I heard their box had been found, but that was no help to them at Batemans Bay.

The other South African team, Sanlam Painted Wolf, arrived with Tecnu Adventure.  Painted Wolf said they’d had a good stage until the end when they lost concentration and the route and found themselves in a swamp. 

Tecnu said they’d pushed hard at the end of the coasteering to arrive at the TA on their schedule. They are planning to hit the tough trek (stage 8 in the Budawang Wilderness) in the daylight and setting their pace for that target.  Benjamin Midena was directing the team in transition. He’s a former world champion and you could see he was concentrating on avoiding any logistical mistakes and thinking several stages ahead as he gave instructions. His intensity and energy was helping the team make a fast transition too.

As the leading 20 teams passed through the race was not much over 24 hours old, and already it’s developing into the close fought and tactical contest we hoped for and expected.

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