​100km Hawksbury Canoe Classic 2026 Windsor to Brooklyn done and dusted.

 

I thought the proudest moment would be the finish line. It wasn't. It was somewhere in the dark, mid-river, when the whole boat hit an existential crisis at the same time. What did I drag these poor souls into? What are we doing out here? Why did we sign up for this? Someone brought up the five stages of grief, and we actually debated it until we reached a crew decision: we'd stay in Anger. Anger paddles well. Acceptance can wait for Brooklyn. We just burst into laughter and that is when it hits hard, this is the crew, right there.

 

Then there was the river itself. A moonlit Hawkesbury under a sky full of stars, six of us moving through it in rhythm. Picture perfect. I just closed my eyes and stroked because it is now in every fibre of my body, easy as. And the boat glided along. I'll be keeping that one for a long time.

 

It wasn't all poetry. The first leg was tough against unfavourable current and headwind. We overshot Wisemans. Some of us started seeing checkpoints or obstacles that didn't exist, when you had a colour-blind Seat 1, it didn't really help. We started yelling our boat number 144 loudly to random boat houses that had their lights on (sorry guys).

 

When the tide turned against us on the last stretch, every stroke felt like it was paying double, boat speed dropped right off to 5-6km/hr. And the final 3km was its own special kind of torture: Brooklyn Bridge right there in front of us, and somehow floating further away.

 

But that's the thing about this crew. There wasn't one moment we came together. It was every moment. Every river bend, every hallucination, every "how is that bridge not closer," we answered it as one boat.

 

A huge thank you to our land crew and deepest gratitude for our transport crew.

 

I am asked, "will I get bored now this is over" and "what's next". The honest answer to the first is that there is a quiet that comes after this HCC. For the past three months it shaped our training, our weekends and our conversation. It filled every blank space of my mental capacity. Now it is done and there is that space where it used to be. I don't think that is boredom, I think it is a sign of how much it meant, to me and to my crew.

 

The second question, before yesterday 100km was just a number. Now it is something we have achieved. And once you have found out you are capable of more than you thought, it is hard to go back to only doing what you already know you can. I don't know exactly what it is yet (I do actually), and it is something big enough to scare me a little.

 

Felix Hamilton

Cockatoo Va'a - October 2026.