On Saturday, the “East Coast, Always Right” team of Garrett Fletcher, April Zilg and Brian Meyer took an easy win for the Painkiller Cup race.
The event, which offered $10,000 in prize monies, was contested by 13 teams and a total of 70 paddlers from as far away as California.
The Fletcher/Zilg/Meyer trio took home $5,000 for finishing first, plus an additional $500 for winning the first leg to the Guana Island cut.
The second-place team — Spacekraft of Bill Kraft, Jeramie Vaine and Mariecarmen Rivera — finished in three hours and one minute to win $2,500.
Third place went to P2P from Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. The team took $1,250.
The top Virgin Islands team finished in sixth place.
“We were in the hunt at first,” said Brian Duff, of Team BVI. “We faded back as we left Tortola’s North shore for the open water leg to Sandy Cay.”
It was a close race for fourth with Fault Tolerant team battling it out with Team Bluerush. Team BVI was in the mix, but slipped back by mid-race.
Ultimately, Bluerush pulled ahead, but received a one-place penalty leaving Fault Tolerant in fourth.
Fault Tolerant included Josh Morrell, of the VI, who earned his share of the team’s $750 prize money.
By the middle of the race, conditions were out of the ordinary with a light north wind giving way to glassy conditions by the middle of the race. As the racers approached the finish a west wind sprang up offering a headwind for the last one to two miles of paddling.
The event format calls for three-person teams with at least one female paddler. The team rotates paddlers every 25 minutes through out the race.
The Painkiller Cup also features a shorter race — the Mini-Painkiller Cup — that starts on Sandy Cay and paddles the 2.5-miles to the finish at the Soggy Dollar Bar. Adam Thill took top honours with Chris Cillier in second and Paul D’Aloisio in third.
In addition to prize money, racers received original trophies made by Nat Ford, of St. John, and Lemon and Line bracelets.
{fcomment}