Here are some words which have probably never been uttered at a sporting event – until yesterday.

“There’s a 10-metre tiger shark feasting on a turtle in the changeover zone”.

The “10-metre” shark turned out to be “10-feet” but it was still another example of what makes the Powerade Hamilton Island Cup outrigger regatta a unique event in Australian sport.

Popular with many Sunshine Coasters who make their annual trip to the Whitsundays around this time of the year, the Hamilton Island Cup is a Queensland sporting success story.

It started off 25 years ago, when outrigger canoe paddling was virtually unheard of in this country, and has grown to a level where a couple of thousand paddlers, including a host of overseas visitors, take part in the Cup each year.

There’s competition and there’s fellowship – a sense of a sporting community where anyone is accepted.

The people who race vary from teenagers through to people in their late 70s – male and female, serious and not so serious, fit and could be fitter but having a go.

For four days they race 250m sprints, 500m and 1000m sprints, all for the six-person outriggers, before you step up to the endurance stuff, and the grand daddy of them all, the 42km Powerade Cup.

And the Sunshine Coast has a proud record in the major event which was run yesterday on a different course to normal after “Hammo” was hit by blustery 25-knot winds.

Charging into the open seas wasn’t on this time, even though the best paddlers would have loved to have taken on that challenge, and instead around 90 crews tackled a more sheltered course, albeit one with the odd shark or two.

The Mooloolaba open women’s crew has often been the best of the lot at the Hamilton Island Cup but yesterday, with their leader Lisa Curry-Kenny having to watch on this time after her recent surgery, they finished second behind Southport.

The Gold Coasters did have a Sunshine Coast influence, with former Mooloolaba paddler Jasmine Cohen sitting in the steerers’ seat at the finish line.

Although the Mooloolaba open women’s winning streak ended at six, their master men again ran well inside the top 10 overall to take out their division for the seventh straight year and their senior master men made it four wins in a row.

Gold Coast club Northcliffe won the opens title, beating Outrigger Australia by just 24 seconds after thrashing it out for three hours.

They were almost as content as that shark which finished off the turtle in regatta record time.