Tauranga paddler Paul Roozendaal is hoping the New Zealand Open Men's white water rafting team will make a splash when they compete at this year's World Rafting Champs in Indonesia.

Paul is the only Tauranga representative in the six-man crew dominated by Rotorua paddlers Sam Sutton, Tim Pickering, Brendan Bayly, Brad Lauber and Joel Flamank.

The New Zealand Open Men's team competing at the 2013 world champs. Paul Roozendaal is fourth from the left. Photo: Supplied.

The Open Men's Crew are ranked number three in the world after placing third in the last world championships behind Brazil and Japan, held in the Bay of Plenty in 2013.

The father of one says the team have been training hard in preparation for the biannual event being held on Citarik River, Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia from November 29 to December 8.

'We struggle with having to train in our winter,” says Paul, 'and training in winter on our rivers is really hard.

'If it's not during work-time you pretty much can't do it, because it's too dangerous to be training on a river at night.

'At the moment we've been training on the lake at Rotoiti or the Ohau Channel because it's safe there and we've been doing a lot of bonding with the other New Zealand teams.

'We've been having training days with the Master Men's, the Master Women's and the Juniors. They're all coming along and we're mixing it up and paddling together. It's good in that sense but it's not the white water preparation we'd like.”

However, Paul is confident the team will be ready for the task come November.

'We'd like to go back and do no worse than third place again,” he adds. 'It's always the goal.

'We don't really get too nervous at all. We're not over there just to have a holiday. We want to compete with Japan and Brazil. We want to prove that we are one of the top three nations in the sport.”

New Zealand are sending five squads over, with the Master Men's and the Under-19 Girls' travelling as defending champions. They will be joined by the Open Men's, Master Women's and Under-25 Junior Men's squad.

The squads are dominated by Tauranga and Rotorua paddlers, with only Master Women's paddlers coming from Hawke's Bay.

Paul, 34, says the men's team has a good mixture of experience, depth and talent, with four of the six competing at the last world champs.

Although the team haven't paddled as a crew in Indonesia, he is confident their experience will see them adjust for the tournament.

'I think it won't take too long to start gelling and understand the river,” he says. 'Some of the guys have been raft guides for a very long time and they know how to read the water. They memorise every single rapid.”

At the championships, teams compete in four events; sprints, slalom, head-to-head and down river. The team's points are combined to decide the overall winner.