Kayaking the 135-mile stretch of the Bayou Teche is easier said than done, but that didn’t stop 28 paddlers from trying Saturday during the annual Tour du Teche kayak race.
The race is actually a three-day event that starts at Port Barre and ends up at Berwick, and racers were in the middle of the intense stretch at Iberia Parish. Organizer Ray Pellerin said kayakers started the day in St. Martinville at about 9 a.m. and called it a day at approximately noon at the New Iberia City Park boat launch.
“The weather has been beautiful,” Pellerin said. “But some of these people, if you don’t train you may not be able to make it.”
The race was conceived in 2009. As a college student at Louisiana State University, Pellerin said he used to paddle the local lakes in a pirogue, which started his love of the pastime.
“Back in 2009 (Teche News editor) Ken Grissom called me and said ‘Let’s consider doing a race in Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville,” Pellerin said. “I said ‘Ken, lets just do the whole Teche, why not? It was a bold move but we did it and it worked out. Now we’ve got it fine-tuned.”
“Right now we have many races going on,” Pellerin said. “There’s Tour du Teche, Hot Sauce (New Iberia to St. Martinville), where some of them are going to peel off to St. Martinville. There’s also one guy starting here and going to Franklin. Tomorrow we’ll pick up two more races in Franklin, and going to Berwick.”
If racers can beat the best accumulated time from past years, they are awarded a “bourre pot”
There are two divisions in the race, racing and voyager. Racing, which is the professional division, cash and bragging rights are awarded to the winner. Pellerin said the pot had $5,000 in it, which is distributed to five different classes. The winning boat, he said, gets six percent of the total pot amount.
“Two racers on track now to break the course record,” Pellerin said. “If they do that one of them gets $1,500 and the other gets $500.”
However, results Sunday night showed the course record was narrowly missed. First-place winners in the A Division James Short and Dylan Mchardy finished with a time of 7:08:02. The course record to beat was set in 2012, and is still set at 6:53:03.
Second place in the A Division went to Joseph Geisinger and Ginsie Strauss at 7:37:32 and third went to Tave Lamperez and Tommy Cramer at 7:24:04.