What a day. There was great joy and even greater sadness at our event today. We lost a member of our ohana - one of the 70+ Kapuna Men from Team Hawai'i passed away while doing what he clearly loved to do. Our emergency responders tried their best to revive him but it wasn't to be. He was led away in full salute by all the paddlers, volunteers and family. It was a procession with bagpipes, drumming and singing, and chanting by Hawaiians & Kiwis. It truly showed how much everyone cared & felt the loss. I can't tell you how deeply saddened all of us in Calgary are and we send out our heartfelt condolences and prayers to his family back in Hawaii and his on-water family - his teammates.
His team bravely made the call to continue the races & I think any paddler would want the event to go on. Team Hawai'i is in our hearts.
We had another paddler - one of our own from Calgary, Bill Hemstock - go down with a medical emergency just a little bit later, after the races had resumed. You may have seen one of my earlier posts where I gave a link to some amazing photos he and his wife, Edie have taken. I'm happy to report that the last I've heard is that Bill's doing ok & is able to go home. Thank goodness. We'll keep thinking good, positive thoughts for Bill & Edie.
Kudos to Lynda for keeping everything together, to everyone who gave out medals in the dark, to the medics and the doctors & EMTs who happen to also be paddlers and who were on the scene to help out when needed, and again to all the paddlers for doing what they love with this amazing giant paddling family. Love to you all.
I'll post a bunch more photos tomorrow, but for now, it's been a long day & I will leave you with the race results:
http://www3.telus.net/public/cccweb/OCsprints/documents/RaceResults-Day5.pdf
And this beautiful photo of the Glenmore Reservoir as it looked this morning (thanks Khara Sauro for the photo!)
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