"I was watching the speed dropping on my Garmin, and when this got below 13 km/h I knew I was out of the main current. I looked over my shoulder, saw Cory hunting me down, and I made a conscious course change to get back into the running current, the first of a few conscious course changes!".

The long, flat grind ensued through the Motuihe Channel, normally the hunting ground of the big ocean swell, driven into the Hauraki Gulf by the cyclonic summer north easterlies. this would take its toll on a number of paddlers, especially those favouring themselves on the downwind courses. Digging deep for all hidden reserves, and sucking feverishly on empty juice bladders for those last remaining drops, the scattered armada ground its way into the shelter of Matiatia inlet, on fair Waiheke Island. Dawid Mocke held onto his lead to finish comfortably in first place in a time of 1:42:04, almost 2 minutes ahead of Cory Hill, still a good 2 plus minutes ahead of Mark Anderson. Local boy Simon Longdil, fighting fit on his workup for Molokai, had an incredibly strong finish, peeling past most of the rest of the front runners, to finish fourth and first Kiwi paddler home, passing young Kenny Rice in the last few hundred meters, and fellow Royal Akarana clubmate Tim 'Rooster' Grammer just before this. Seventh and eighth place went to the Tahitians Hiromana Flores and Leopold Tepa who had worked well together for much of the hard grind, with ninth and tenth place going to myself and another Royal Akarana clubmate, Andy Mowlem

In a perhaps unexpected twist, the womans race unfolded with the same top three result as last year. Rachel Clarke took out the womens race in fine form, securing the Queen Of the Harbour title. Silver went to young Becs Cole, and former Olympian and evergreen Dene Simpson took the bronze, with Teneale Hatton using the race as a training session, refusing to comprimise on her K4 team training the same morning.