The Gibraltar Canoeing Association
Adventure on the High Seas It’s a great way to keep fit, make friends and enjoy our amazing weather. Canoeing and kayaking seems the perfect sport for a small community surrounded by water so we caught up with Arturo Asquez, President of the Gibraltar Canoeing Association, to find out how everyone can get involved in this exciting leisure activity.
Arturo Asquez, first got involved in kayaking through his work as an adventure training instructor with the MoD, and has since risen to become president of the association which was started in the early ’90s by Eugene Pons and Nigel Jeffries. The association now has about 40 members who meet with one another three or four times a week to go for leisurely paddles. Arturo says the great thing about kayaking is there are so many different disciplines, you don’t necessarily need to be very fit, the sport really does offer something for everyone, young or old — from calm steady paced touring to exploring fantastic coastal scenery by sea kayak. “You can sit on the shoreline and paddle at your
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leisure or surf eight foot waves, which is not for the faint hearted, I must say,” Arturo adds.. The association organises all sorts of fun events for its members to get involved with, such as night paddles, paddles from Ceuta to Gibraltar, from Cape Trafalgar and even from Portugal, although the last one took the participants six days! — and all this undertaken on a self-sufficient basis (camping and cooking en route). The club night for the association is on Wednesdays from 5pm at the boat house behind the Tercentenary Hall, and is mainly used for coaching children from the age of eight. “Recently we have seen the numbers of
children decline,” says Arturo who is keen get more children involved in the sport, adding “Hopefully now the weather is getting warmer numbers will soon rise again.” A couple of the children from the association have gone on to compete abroad. Alexandra Asquez was runner up in the Andalucian Championship and 4th in the British Nationals a couple of years ago, and Jaron Mifsud just missed out on the finals in the British Nationals for flat water racing. A few of the adult members have competed in Spain but more on a friendly basis — “Norman Garcia has always done us proud when competing in sea kayak racing,” Arturo states
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • MAY 2012