Water point with a difference for Surfer’s Challenge

AN EXPERIMENTAL environmentally-friendly water point will be set up for the first time for the Discovery Surfers’ Challenge next Saturday.

Race director Neville Wilkins made the announcement at a media launch on Wednesday.

The much-loved 17.5km trail run and surfski paddle along the spectacular local coastline incorporates four races – the main run, a surfski race, the 5km Junior Surfers and the so-called halfSurfers from Gonubie to Nahoon Beach.

However, with 3 000 participants, thousands of plastic sachets have had to be distributed by organisers, which has seen too many of the sachets pollute the pristine coastal environment.

Two women, green living consultant Karen Harvey and Caron Williams, who runs a high-performance sports centre based at Stirling Primary, have been knocking on the race organisers’ door for the third year to ask for a discussion on alternatives.

Harvey said of the experiment: “That’s great! We hope it will lead the organisers of the Surfers to engage in some kind of discussion about alternatives because we need to find a way around the problem”. Tossing a sachet on the ground in any race has started to raise protest about this being an act of littering, and last weekend’s Tomato Trot did away with them in favour of durable, reusable, locally manufactured cups.

Wilkins said: “We have decided to set up one of our water points at Sunrise-on-Sea where we will have reusable cups.

“We will be trying the cups on a small scale. We are an environmentally friendly race,” he added. —