About Ocean River Paddling Club

The Ocean River Paddling Club is designed for people who want to paddle performance kayaks and canoes for fitness and competition. The Club has a downtown on-water location below Ocean River Sports at 1824 Store St. in Victoria's Upper Harbour. Paddlers can reach the open waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 10 minutes or choose the calmer waters of the inland Gorge waterway.

Ocean River Paddling Club (ORPC) was established in January 1999 by Rosemary and Brian Henry. Both Rosemary and Brian have extensive paddling backgrounds in sea kayaking, whitewater kayaking and canoeing. Their love of paddling is evident in their enthusiasm for the development of Ocean River Paddling Club. The Club now boasts over 120 members who are involved in individual and team paddling activities.

Membership Benefits

Paddlers at ORPC enjoy the use of:

• 4 six-person outrigger canoes (OC-6's)
• 8 single outrigger canoes (OC1's)
• 3 tandem outrigger canoes (OC2's)
• 3 surf skis
• 4 K-1 Olympic style kayaks
• 1 Marathon canoe (tandem)

Ocean River Paddling Club is associated with Ocean River Sports, Victoria's leading paddlesports store that is also a kayaking school and a touring company. Ocean River Sports provides Club members with a convenient telephone reservation system to book boats, offers equipment discounts, a registration centre, personal service and 150 feet of dock space.

Members of Ocean River Paddling Club receive a monthly newsletter updating them on racing events and results, upcoming clinics, training tips and general Club information. ORPC hosts special activities such as guest coaches, training clinics, in-house sprints, weight training seminars, capsize drills, navigation lectures and inter club races. Victoria has an excellent race series every spring for outrigger paddlers.

ORPC is a member of the Canadian Outrigger Racing Association (CORA). The CORA race schedule runs from January to the end of summer. These races encourage paddlers to compete around British Columbia and offers them another level of competition. Many of the CORA races have now included small boat categories such as single and tandem outriggers, surf skis and sea kayaks. An outrigger youth division has been incorporated into the ORPC program in 2002. Local high school students are invited to try out the six person outrigger canoe for team training and competition. It is a great way to meet other young people interested in water sports. The spring and summer racing season has a youth category (12-18 years old) in which racers from the Lower Mainland and Okanagan attend.