FREEDOM PADDLE

FREEDOM PADDLE

SA Surfski use SafeTrx Flotilla Event for the 28-kilometre Freedom Paddle held annually in Cape Town, South Africa. Over 200 paddlers take part in the Freedom Paddle event, braving the weather conditions and currents to paddle around Robben Island from Cape Town. In 2018, one of the competitor’s race ended unexpectedly. The NSRI Table Bay sea rescue station was alerted to a surf-skier who activated an emergency using his RSA SafeTrx app, south of Robben Island. The NSRI lifeboat located the paddler at the coordinates provided on the RSA SafeTrx app emergency activation.

The Freedom Paddle has used SafeTrx Flotilla every year since 2018. In 2019, SafeTrx Flotilla was the tracking system for event safety, and with 100% SafeTrx usage the event safety team had complete visibility on the full field of paddlers. With 191 doubles teams or single paddlers entered for the race the safety team verified the SafeTrx app was running on paddlers phones at the registration event on the evening before the Freedom Paddle. This eliminated the need for any paddlers new to SafeTrx to download the app on race morning. Back