(photos added April 3rd)

(27th March 2006)

Thanks to everyone who helped us get there. Taniwha for letting us train in the club waka’s. The other teams who put up with us when they turned up training and we were out using the waka. To Jan Nicholson and Christine as our managers. To Jean Tetohu and Ace for there expertise. To our sponsors Blacktop, Highway Stabilisers, Gleeson & Cox and Trenz and to anyone else I may have missed thank you.

To give you my version of the race I watched again on telly last night and I guess some one was looking after us as I thought we were ahead of the Tahitians and they were chasing us hard. But it appear on the telly that we turned at the same time as the Tahitians and then out sprinted them to the line. Before the race started Tom Nathan, our steerer said that he would not be able to keep an eye on lanes one and two (fastest qualifiers) as they were to far away I told him not to worry about them as we were going to race our own race. Power into and out of the turns and keep boat speed/pressure on between the turns as we felt this is where our weakness was during the heats. We had been watching some turn races before hand and because of the strong wind people were having difficulty on the second turn back into the wind so I decided that it might be best if I drew from three as well. We were all focused as we had strong waka speed and with the Hawaiians just inside us they were also just ahead of us into one and two turns which means they were also shielding us from Tahiti Hoe in lane one and Tahi in lane two. At the time I thought we had made an excellent third turn which set us up for the win. But on tv it was the same as Tahiti Hoe and they seem to have the lead out. Our sprint down the last leg is what won us the race. I remember on the second last call of “GO” the waka just lifted up and we shot forward. I looked up and said thank you God. Once over the line no one knew where we were but I remember John Leonard saying very excitedly “we’ve got silver, we’ve got a silver medal” I knew we had something but I was not to sure what it was. It was not until we were coming into dock that John said I think we have won the tv cameras are coming onto our dock. Even for a while after we were not to sure we had done but it certainly is a very nice feeling once everything was confirmed.

The team as follows were: Seat 1 (stroke)  John Leonard seat 2 Mike Dolan seat 3 myself, seat 4 Eddie De Vires, seat 5 Francis Ah Wong and seat 6 (steerer) Tom Nathan.

Thanks guys it was a pleasure paddling with you.