Competing in the men's 40-plus long recreational kayak division, Central Coast Canoe Club pair Jack Ward and Mick Carroll glided across the water to cover the gruelling 111km journey in a time of eight hours and 10 minutes, beating a field of 350 boats and more than 600 competitors to Brooklyn.

They were one of only 11 canoes to cross the finish line inside the famed 10-hour mark, and amazingly, all but four were in over-40 age categories, with the others being in the open divisions.

The Windsor Canoe Club crew of Bruce Goodall and Renae Watkins showed excellent form to clock 9:44.27 in winning the Open Recreational 2 paddler event by almost five hours.

Also in open competition, Simon Stenhouse (8:58.15) was easily the quickest individual paddler in the race when he raced to a dominant victory in the men's 40-plus UN1 event, Jo Dounias and Val Titov (9:59.15) scraped into single digits in the Ladies race,

The crews of Gordon Schoffl and Stephen Cannon (8:54.49) and Tony Haines and Mal Odgers (9:57.12) achieved the feat in the 40-plus UN2 category, Peter White (9:26.05) won the the men's 40-plus MREC event by more than three hours, Stephen Monger and Geoffrey Dawes (9:09.06) had a similar amount of time up their sleeves in the men's 50-plus LREC2 class and Paul Carter and Stephen Brett (9:56.12) took out the men's 50-plus K2.

The most exciting finish was in the Open LREC2, where Mark McDonald and Randall Fitzsimon (9:58.16) had just 23 seconds to spare on the line from Simon Blumenthal and Peter Anderson (9:58.39).

In a massive display of ach- ievement from the competitors, only 44 of the 350 canoes that set out from Macquarie Park on Saturday afternoon failed to greet the judge at Brooklyn, with the last finisher crossing the line at 11.57am on Sunday morning, beating southerly change that dumped 50mm of rain in an hour by just five minutes