No Rest For the Weary in Hong Kong

In a world increasingly concerned about the environment and global warming, The Clean Half marathon swimming relay upped the ante. This year, the 14.5K race around Hong Kong Island offered a "carbon neutral" escort boat option for the 22 teams entered in its 2008 race.

Incredibly, the local team, called Team WindHunter, of Doug Woodring, Doug Woo, Eric Helfer, Jeff Fiola, Philip Sohmen won The Clean Half marathon relay using an outrigger canoe instead of a motorized escort boat.

In traditional open water swim relays like the Maui Channel Swim, the Trans Tahoe Relay and the Fiji Swims 18K Inter-Island Relay, teams of 5-6 swimmers rotate in legs of 10-30 minutes. When the relay members are not swimming, they are usually relaxing in the escort boat, cheering on their teammates, plotting the course with the pilot and eating.

Using the carbon-neutral option required the swimmers to constantly paddle instead of relaxing on the deck of an escort boat. The swimmer-paddlers each swam for 20 minutes for the first rotation, jumped in the outrigger to paddle for their teammates and then continued with 10-minute rotations until the race finished.

Under beautiful blue skies, strong easterly winds and enormous swells, Team Windhunter won in a course record time of 3:22.35 despite almost huli-ed their outrigger (i.e., flipped it) in the large swells.

The race results, including three solo swimmers, are below:

Team Windhunter 3.22.35 (carbon-neutral outrigger canoe)
IHP Jaspas 3.25.07
Callum McKinlay 3.34.21 (solo)
IHP Sunseeker 3.38.26
LRC 1 3.50.08
IHP Blue Seventy4.03.43 (mixed)
Porcas 4.07.37
LRC 2 4.10.55
Budgy Smugglers 4.13.37
Elisabeth Atwood4.13.44 (solo)
Mary Kwoh 4.15.09 (solo)
Mola Mola 4.18.19 (carbon-neutral outrigger canoe)
IHP Blue Seventy Mens 4.20.18
Nothing Much to Look At 4.20.53
Procrastinating Jellyfish 4.23.49
Ironfish 4.27.59
LRC 3 4.33.59
Grey Power Team 4.34.34
Lucky 5 4.34.55
Fitfish A 4.40.58
IHP Blue Seventy4.55.27 (mixed)
Cool! 4.57.41
Frog Team 5.03.14
Otter Express 5.13.30

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