Author: Paul Tomblin

This morning, Doug, Mike and I agreed to meet at BayCreek for a paddle. I’d scouted it out on Thursday when it was about 42 degrees out, and it was remarkably free of ice. But as I got in the car to go, I noticed that the temperature this morning was only 25 degrees. Not quite as pleasant. I won’t be paddling without pogies today.

I arrived at the parking lot to see that Mike was already there, but he’d gotten his car stuck in the snow. I helped push him out, which is not exactly the sort of warm up I wanted. Doug arrived almost as soon as we’d gotten Mike out, and we didn’t waste any time getting ready. As I’ve done so many times before, I realized that I’d left my GPS on the table where I was getting ready. Oh well.

The creek had a bit more ice around the edges, and the water was cold and dense. The shallowness of the water and the swiftness of the flow meant that we didn’t make very good speed, and we had to constantly hunt from side to side to find water deep enough to paddle in, even if it meant being in the main brunt of the current. Often we ended up in single file because it the only deep water was too narrow for side by side paddling.

After 15 or 20 minutes, I was finally warmed up enough to take off my paddling jacket. There was a very narrow fast bit just downstream from where the weir used to be, and Doug and Mike waited for me just above that. As we warmed up, we started really enjoying it. I have to say, in spite of the ice forming on my jacket, in my beard, and on the top of the boat, I was warmer paddling this morning than I am sitting in my office right now.

In spite of the cold, we saw geese, ducks, swans and one kingfisher. We also saw lots of people walking their dogs in Ellison dog park. A few of the people looked at us like we were crazy. They were probably right.

By the time we were ready to turn around, I was dragging behind the other two guys a bit. After we turned around, I enjoyed the feeling of actually making some headway so much that I went out hard and lead them through a line that went from deep fast part to deep fast part. I think I managed to keep the lead for about half a mile before first Mike and then Doug pulled past me.

After we “finished”, we decided to paddle out into the bay to look around. We could see some motorcycles running around a pylon course on part of the ice, and the ubiquitous ice fishermen, and there were were out nearly half a mile from shore. We hit ice a few dozen feet short of where the time trial turn-around was, so I said “to hell with it” and paddled out into the ice. My Looksha does an ok job of breaking thin ice, but when I went to turn I got about 90 degrees around before I hit thicker ice that I couldn’t break through easily and turn at the same time. That’s when it hit me how silly this little stunt was. I had to paddle backwards a bit, breaking ice with my paddle for every stroke, and then once I got into thinner ice, turn for home and paddle back, still breaking ice. Not the smartest thing I ever did, but not dangerous. At the worst, I would have had to paddle backwards around the curve that I’d already cut in the ice, and I didn’t have to do that.

It was a great day out, and I’m hoping there will be more thaw days.

NYMCRA has announced their points calendar for this year. It’s only seven races this year, instead of the ten last year. Assuming that these races are going to be on the same weekend as last year, here’s what my race calendar looks like so far:

Probable Date	Race	Points Race	Comments
15 May	Round The Mountain	Y	I didn’t do this one last year because it was too early. It was pretty rough. I may need to use the Looksha.
5 June	Tupper Lake 9 Miler	N	Not a points race, even though it was last year. It was my first real long distance race, and it’s very well suited to me, being a river without massive waves or long shallow stretches.
12 June	SLVP Madrid	Y	Up near Ogdensburg, NY. 9 miles with a portage. I know nothing about it, but the Google satellite view shows Madrid is on a river with a lot of shallows.
26 June	Rochester Open Water Challenge	Y	I’m hoping I’ll be comfortable enough in waves by then to use my Thunderbolt, or maybe borrow a surf ski.
10 July	Armond Bassett	Y	This was my first 10 miler last year, and in spite of the thunderstorms and my bad pacing, I’m looking forward to it again. It will be a perfect race for the Thunderbolt.
17 July	Electric City Regatta	Y	12 mile race in Rotterdam, NY. I don’t know anything about it, but the web page says it starts on the upriver side of a lock, so it’s probably an up and back race.
1 August	Owasco Lake Challenge	Y	I missed this one last year because Vicki and I went to Pulaski with the Huggers Ski Club. I heard it was a good one.
8 August	Great Race	N	This isn’t a points race, but I enjoyed it this year and Vicki is talking about maybe doing the short course.
25 September	Long Lake Long Boat Regatta	Y	My favourite race last year.

I’ll probably fill in some non points races too. I enjoyed Tupper Lake last year, and even though it’s not a points race, I’ll probably do that one.

Yesterday, Jim contacted me minutes after I woke up asking if I wanted to paddle. It’s been above freezing during the day for a couple of days now, and there was open water near where he lives. He had to get going quickly because he had something going, and I had to do some work too, so I rushed down to the water. Unfortunately in my rush, I forgot my GPS, but even worse, I didn’t stretch properly. Jim brought this funny boat with no deck on top and a one-bladed paddle. I think he called it a “canoe”.

We were paddling up into a strong current, which meant hugging in as close to the bank as we could, and then when the river was blocked by ice, he turned up this creek that was running pretty fast. And worse still, it would get very shallow and very fast at the same time, meaning that I had no depth to paddle in just when I needed it the most – I ended up being pushed backwards several times and I was worried I was going to break my rudder. The rudder is designed to kick up if you run over something going forwards, but has no protection for going backwards. But mostly what I ended up doing because of the lack of stretching was hurting my shoulder. I didn’t want to make it worse, so I paddled very easily back to the put-in and let Jim go off and do some real paddling without me.

Today was even warmer than yesterday, so Jim, Stephen and I met at the same location. This time, my plan was to stretch a lot more, get woken up and warmed up, and show up a bit early so I can start paddling easy before they both show up. And it worked – my shoulder was a bit sore, but it felt more like a residual from yesterday, and got less sore as time went on.

I got to wear the new Hydroskin shirt, paddling jacket and neoprene socks that Vicki bought me for Christmas. They were very good. Actually too good – after warming up for a few minutes, I took off the jacket and my pogies. Man, it’s great to be warm and comfortable while paddling in January.

We warmed up by paddling downstream, because it was clear of ice a long way downstream and not very far upstream from the put-in. Jim said “once we turn upstream, it will be `anything goes'”, which is code for “Jim and Stephen are going to try to race and leave me in the dust”. One thing about paddling my Looksha that I think I’ve mentioned before – in spite of being wider than the Thunderbolt, the cockpit is actually might tighter, and in winter clothes my hips are locked in place and I don’t get much rotation. I should probably see about removing or planing down the foam sides of the seat. Because of that, I didn’t feel my technique was really working right. I really miss paddling the Thunderbolt, but every time I crunched into an ice floe or over some debris close in to shore, I was glad to have my “beater boat”.

When we turned upstream, Jim started going hard before Stephen had even finished turning, which I thought was a neat trick, but it turns out afterwards that Jim had seen that I was ready and thought we were both ready. Anyway, I held Jim’s wake for about a mile or so as he snuck in between fallen trees and ice floes up the shore, but it was hard going. My heart rate was a pretty steady 160 bpm, which is close to my anaerobic threshold. Stephen managed to grind his way up to us, and when I found my heart rate going even higher than 160, I decided to let Jim go and Stephen passed me and continued to ride Jim’s wake. I kept grinding along at 160 bpm and losing some ground. Eventually they decided to stop for a rest, and I caught up to them, but they continued to go at a fast pace so I started losing again. This would never have happened in my Thunderbolt! (Mostly because I would have broken my rudder on a submerged log in the first mile and been out of action.)