Wānaka Watersports Facility celebrated its first anniversary with an open day and family picnic at the lakefront site on Sunday.

Event organiser Claire Radford said it was a “fabulous event” with several hundred people coming through to see what the facility had to offer and more enjoying the free kayaks and paddleboards on the beach provided by Paddle Wānaka.

Santa also made an appearance, arriving and departing via paddleboard with his elf helper.

Since opening its doors in 2019, the facility has established 200 regular users, the majority of which are the Wānaka Lake Swimmers and the Wānaka Rowing Club, whose storage shed at the facility opened in August. 

As part of the celebrations, the club displayed their boats for the public and Jaime Hutter (senior member and trustee of the facility) completed a 45km length-of-the-lake marathon on an indoor rowing machine to highlight his upcoming fundraising challenge with fellow members Rob Taylor, Mike Toepfer and Shane Gibson, who will be rowing the actual length of the lake - although this event had been delayed due to an injury in the crew.

Radford said it had been an amazing but eventful first year for the facility, having survived the floods of 2019 just ten days after opening its doors and the Covid-19 lockdown, as well as being the base for multisport events including the BRECA swim run event and the recent Challenge Multi race.

“Now we are absolutely pumping,” she said. “There are always people coming in and out of the facility, heading out on their kayaks etc which they store here, and it is just so good to see people getting out and making the most of our beautiful lake.”

“We have lots of plans for the coming year,” she added. “Lots of events are booked in and we can't wait to hold more community activities.”

Read edition 1003 of the Wānaka Sun here.

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