Category: Kayaking

Downwind in Howe Sound

So today at breakfast in the hotel, Jasper Mocke was sitting at the next table with somebody who I later found out was Carter Johnson. They were looking at a laptop and discussing details of this weekend’s race course. I couldn’t see the screen, but I was trying to subtly eavesdrop and figure out their tips for the race. But as they’re leaving, Jasper comes over to my table and says “Hey, Paul, we’re going out to Britannia Beach to do a downwind on the second half of the course, do you want to join us?” Well, you don’t have to ask me twice.

So at the appointed time (well, actually a few minutes late because I got slightly lost on the way there) I met up with them and loaded my boat on Carter’s trailer. Carter has a bunch of boats on his trailer – evidently he’s bringing boats for people doing the triple from Squamish to the Oregon Paddle Festival to San Francisco. There was an woman in the truck who I think had come up with Carter – I thought she was Australian, but I heard from somebody else that she might be from New Zealand. Just as we were ready to leave, a guy named Ryan from Australia met us almost by accident, and he jumped in the truck – his boat was already on the trailer.

On the drive up to Britannia, Jasper and Ryan were comparing notes on this years Molokai versus last years and whether it or Mauritius was a better race. Evidently Ryan is as well travelled as Jasper and paddles many of the same races. HIs boat had stickers from Clint Robinson Racing and other sponsors.

When we arrived, Jasper said that they were going to wait half an hour for the tide to get closer to what it will be at race time on Saturday. I decided half an hour head start is probably appropriate for me, so I set off. The waves were coming at a bit of an angle rather than straight down the sound, so I paddled out a ways so that I could avoid being pushed directly into the shore at the point. In retrospect I probably should have gone a bit further because I had to take the waves from behind at an angle.

But it was amazing. I’ve never paddled anything like it before – the waves were huge and powerful and going just enough faster than me that with some work I could hop on. I got some great linked runs, although I was working harder than I’d ever worked in my life. I was averaging about 11-11.5 km/hr, but according to Garmin Connect I hit a peak of 17.1 km/hr on one wave.

Around the point, the Sound curves nearly 90 degrees and at first I was in relatively calm water. This is more like what I’m good at – enough of a tail wind and small waves pushing you along, but nothing you have to sprint on to ride. I managed a nice steady 11 km/hr through that without working too hard and with no real highs or lows.

But I was gradually allowing myself to get out into the bigger waves, and that’s when I got into trouble. There is a section on Lake Ontario that some of our local paddlers refer to as “The Potato Patch”, an area around the mouth of the Genesee River where you have waves and wakes hitting you from every direction at once. Well, imagine that except all the waves are bigger than 4 feet high and there is a 20+ km/hr wind behind you. It was like that about 2km from the entrance to the river. It was really rough, and I was barely hanging on. I was making very little progress, and I was seriously concerned that if this were the conditions on Saturday I’d have to scrub the race, provided I managed to make it to shore alive today. I was also sure that if I dumped I was a goner because there would be no way to remount in this wind and these waves, and the water was as cold as you’d expect from glacial meltwater. So of course, 2 minutes later I dumped. I did it fully by the book, going under the boat to get upwind of it, elbow in the bucket, pause for a rest once I had my body up on the boat, and pivot. Somehow my paddle ended up wrong way round, but it didn’t matter. I paddled a bit with my feet in the water and gradually got up some speed and put my feet back in the boat. At this point I headed straight to the nearest land, even though it wasn’t in the direction I should have been doing because I just wanted to get out of this stuff and call for help. But almost immediately I found myself out of the worst of the waves and still with the wind behind me, so I paddled on. I even started to enjoy it again.

I wasn’t 100% sure where I was supposed to go at the end of the sound because there are three major branches of the river delta emptying out into the bay, but I used logical reasoning: the cars were parked on Loggers Lane, so I took the branch that had a big logging operation and log booms nearly completely blocking it. Turns out I was right – except I stopped at the first boat ramp I saw instead of paddling on a few hundred meters or so to a non-descript little beach that was right opposite the park where “Race Central” will be on Saturday.

I actually got my boat on my car and tied down before the woman whose name I didn’t catch showed up, followed a few minutes later by Jasper and Ryan. I tried to make myself useful by helping to carry boats and hold them down while people got a strap or two on them. It was still pretty windy.

I guess if the conditions are the same on Saturday, after the point I will make an effort to stay in closer to shore where it is slower, but it fits my abilities better. It’s not racing if you’re not making forward progress.

Paddle With The Stars

I’m in British Columbia to participate in the Canadian Surfski Championships. On Tuesday, I picked up my rented V10 Sport Ultra (just like the boat I have at home) at Deep Cove Outdoors. Bob Putnam, the owner of the shop didn’t like the look of my jury rigged pool noodle “rack” and convinced me to buy an inflatable kayak rack (mostly by telling me that the cost of getting it wrong would be “you break it, you bought it”). I got the boat tied down and then headed to Deep Cove’s kayak center on the water for the Tuesday Night Race, billed as the “Paddle With the Stars” because several of the pros who are coming to the champs were going to be there.

While warming up before the race, I introduced myself to Sean Rice, and he suggested I move my foot plate forward a notch – I’d been experimenting with different distances and I thought I’d found the right position, but evidently not. I’m looking forward to my clinic with him on Sunday. I also introduced myself to Jasper Mocke – I’d signed up for a clinic with him on Wednesday, but it got cancelled because I was the only person to sign up.

The race was a mass start, and there were a ton of boats there. They started amateur surfskis in the first wave, then the SUPs, then the pros. I’ve never seen such a tight group of skis at the start of a race – at Adirondack races there is usually a wider start line and at Lighthouse to Lighthouse Mike and I deliberately lined up outside of the main pack to take advantage of a better line. But here it was such a narrow line that just before the start I actually pushed another guy’s boat forward so I’d have some place to put my paddle for the first stroke.

In the first mad rush, the wakes from the other skis as well as the various boat wakes and waves in the cove were challenging, but I think I did a good job of using what I could and not getting thrown off by the ones I couldn’t. Better than some of the locals, I think. After a bit, I was trying to get on this guy’s side wake, but couldn’t quite get up to it so I tried for his stern wake, but there was a woman there already. She and I paddled side by side for a while, both of us not quite locked into this guy’s wake but getting some benefit from it. After a wave from the rear quarter shoved us all to one side, I found myself on this other guy’s stern wake just as the first pack of pros came through. A minute later, another big wave hit us from the same quarter just as another one of the pros came through, and I was handling it better than the guy whose wake I was on so I passed him. I then tried to chase back to the guy whose stern wake I’d been trying for earlier, but I lost him in the big knot of people rounding the first island. It was nice back there, shady and sheltered from most of the waves, but there were also big rocks lurking just below the surface, and a couple of people hit them with their paddles and disrupted their strokes. And I was here to race, not enjoy the scenery so I pushed on.

Out from behind the island, it was into the wind and I used my size and power to grind my way back up. I found what I thought was the guy from before, paddling beside the woman from before. It’s only reviewing the video afterwards that I realized that it was a different guy. But I’m 90% sure it was the same woman. Anyway, I paddled beside and behind and beside this guy under a bridge, around the island, across the little strait, and along a shoreline. As we rounded behind the island, the woman who was still neck and neck with me hit a submerged rock and dropped behind me. We passed a pack of paddlers, some of whom I had to wonder how they got ahead of me in the first place – there was one woman in a green top with big numbers on the back who was holding her paddle with her hands way too close together, but somehow getting decent speed out of it, for instance. I think the guy was trying to scrape me off, because twice he passed a SUP very close on the side that I was on, forcing me to go all the way around the SUP. But we had a tiny bit of swell from behind and I was using it, which is why I had managed to get up beside him in the first place. Somebody, I don’t know who, was on my stern wake and tapped my stern three times in quick succession. Possibly the yellow Think ski which shows up in the video. With about a kilometer to go, I don’t know if he sped up or I slowed down but he dropped me in the finish “sprint”.

I’m not sure who the guy I was chasing is because there are a couple who finished a few seconds ahead of me. However I did identify the woman I’ve referenced several times here as Cynthia Wonham because she has a distinctive boat and I got introduced to her in the pub afterwards. Oh, did I mention that after the race, everybody went to The Raven pub to drink, eat and watch a video of the race? Also, did I mention that one of the large boat wakes that was interfering with us all the way around the course was Bob Putnam on a power boat attempting to film us? He referred to his boat as the “unsafety boat”. Unfortunately he hasn’t published much of the video he shot online, I suspect because what I saw at the pub was pretty shaky.

At the pub, I was sitting pretty close to Jasper Mocke and I repeated the joke that Joe Glickman had put on my Facebook page about how after Joe’s show about the 2012 US Champs had aired, Jasper had had a bunch of contracts with major record companies offering him big bucks if he’d just promise never to sing in public again. Jasper said that Joe had goaded him into singing. And then he turned to his other side and talked to Sean Rice and a woman who came in with Sean for the rest of the evening. I hope I didn’t annoy him.

I’m happy with my results, coming 29th out of 77. Considering how much more experience these people have in these exact conditions than I do, I think that’s respectable. Only time will tell if I do as respectably this weekend.

Next couple of weeks

This coming Sunday, I have to go down to Owings Mills for work. The following Saturday, I leave for British Columbia. The Saturday after that I participate in the Canadian Surfski Championships in Squamish, British Columbia. The Saturday after that, I participate in the Blackburn Challenge in Glochester, Mass. I would not be exaggerating to say that these are the two most important and highest prestige surfski races of my life.

I obviously need some way to stay in shape while I’m down in Owings Mills, which is why I’m going to drive down with my bike on my roof rack. There are practically no paddle options within a reasonable distance of Owings Mills, except “Liberty Reservoir”. There are only two problems with Liberty Reservoir:

  • I’d have to buy a yearly pass from the City of Baltimore. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve given enough money to the City of Baltimore and I would be happy if they never saw another cent from me.
  • They require you to sign an affidavit that your boat will never be used anywhere except their reservoirs. I’m not about to sacrifice a boat for them, not even my ancient V10 Sport club which I haven’t paddled in two years.

Also, because I’ve got an early flight on Saturday morning, I’ve put my colleagues at Owings Mills on notice that I’m leaving no later than noon on Friday. I repeated this over and over again when we were planning this visit, and I’m still anticipating a fight when I need to leave, because 2 out of 3 times I go down there nothing actually gets done until the Friday afternoon. That’s going to be their problem, not mine.

My problem is that even if I leave on the stroke of noon, I probably won’t be home until nearly 8, and I’ve got a 6am flight the next morning. That doesn’t give much time to get all my kayaking and other shit together for the flight. And also I want to get some last training paddles in this weekend including the Sunday before I leave for Owings Mills, which means it’s going to be tricky pre-packing my kayaking gear *and* making sure it’s somewhat clean.

As well as the logistic problems of getting back from one trip and immediately leaving on the other with completely different packing parameters, I also worry about the fitness aspect.

I’ll probably get a couple of long paddles in before I leave for Owings Mills. Then when I get there, really the only option for fitness will be bike riding, as I’ve said before. Bike riding isn’t great preparation for paddling, but it will at least keep my cardio fitness up. I’ll bring some rubber bands and I think the fitness center at the hotel has some hand weights, so maybe I can do something for my core. I have this mental picture of me taking my paddle into the hotel pool and trying to do stationary paddling in the pool, but I doubt they’d allow it.

Then there are going to be two travelling days, Friday and Saturday. Then family visiting (and the fun and logistics of trying to visit two close family members who live an hour apart and refuse to get together at once place or the other) for several days. I pick up my rented surfski and have a short race on the Tuesday before the champs. Then I’ve been promised that there is some sort of down-wind paddle going on on the Wednesday in North Vancouver, and I’m hoping to scout some or all of the course on Thursday, then a rest day and then the race. Then Sunday I’ve signed up for a clinic with Sean “Prawn” Rice. Then Monday travel home, and get ready for Blackburn the following Saturday. Phew.

That didn’t go well

This morning a group of us met at Irondequoit Marine Park (which we refer to as “Seabreeze” because it’s near the Seabreeze amusement park) for a paddle on the lake. The forecast was for very light winds and very small waves, so I didn’t think it would matter if we headed east or west. We had a good group, Mike and I often paddle together and we’re pretty evenly matched, and Pete G has gotten really fast this year and he’s probably going to be blowing us away in not very much longer. John H is a really fit guy, mostly a runner and a SUP paddler but he’s taken to paddling a surfski this year and he’s picking it up fast. And Jim managed to get back from yesterday’s Madrid race to come with us as well.

It started out as expected, with very little wave action. But what there was was almost directly on our beams. By the time we got to the Genesee River outlet those waves had built up a bit, and so had at least one other source of waves, on top of the boat wakes and the reflections from shore and the pier. The problem is that all these waves were about 1 foot high – big enough to affect you, but because they were all the same size there was no one wave that was dominating and making it so you could ignore the others. If you have one foot waves coming from three different directions, that’s far worse than if you’ve got one foot waves coming from two directions and three foot waves coming from one. You end up with two waves stacked when something hits you from the third direction and it really throws you off.

By the time we decided to turn, we were getting straight beam waves and an exactly 180 degree off reflection from the shore, as well as at least one other set, and I was bracing more than I was paddling. When we turned 90 degrees to directly off-shore, it actually became way easier, and I actually started enjoying it. Except I didn’t want to go 90 degrees off shore, I wanted to go back along the shore to where we’d put in. After we’d gotten far enough from shore that the reflection from shore was much reduced, I turned as much as I dared putting the incoming waves about 45 degrees off my right bow. That was still heading us directly towards a sailboat race, which we probably didn’t want to do. But after a short time, we got a another wave set, this from about 30 degrees to my right, so I tried to angle a few more degrees off the first set so I was almost directly into the new set. That was actually giving me an angle that would allow me to pass further out from the horrible mess that Mike calls “the potato patch” at the mouth of the Genesee. John H seemed to not make that turn, and so he continued towards the sailboat race. Luckily Jim went with him so he was taken care of if he got into trouble. Mike and Pete somehow managed to cut further in shore, and were just skirting the end of the Genesee outlet right in the horrible stuff. I was completely alone, and hating every second of it. I found myself thinking “why did I ever think I had any talent at this? I’m completely useless.”

After getting out of the worst of the potato patch, I managed to work my way inshore enough that I was beside and then slightly ahead of Pete, but Mike was literally a mile ahead of us. He didn’t seem to slow down at all. Being in with Pete made me more comfortable, both because I now knew I wasn’t going to have to go completely beam on for the rest of the paddle in order to get home, and also for the comfort of knowing that somebody would notice and possibly be able to help if I fell in and had trouble remounting. John and Jim were still miles off shore, but heading in quickly. I was getting a bit more confidence, and getting a bit more speed, but the number of boat wakes was getting more and more problematic. At one point I got hit by two sets of boat wakes that were more than 2 feet high and exactly 90 degrees apart, so instead of getting something I could surf, I just got pyramids of water.

After the paddle was over, the unenjoyable part of the day wasn’t over. When I’d set off, I’d decided to carry my Mocke PFD instead of wearing it, and I’d put my phone and car key in the big pocket on the front. I’d previously realized that the pocket has a bit of a flaw in that the velcro that closes it is much shorter than the width of the mouth of the pocket. I’d decided that I should go to Home Depot and pick up some a couple of snap rings or mini-carabiners or something so I could attach the keys and phone securely to the PFD, but I figured just for today it would be fine if I just made sure the bungees that hold the PFD to the boat were laid between the keys and phone and the mouth of the pocket so things couldn’t fall out. It seemed like a perfect plan. Once I got the boat out of the water, I discovered that somehow the key had managed to sneak out. I have no idea how, I have no idea where. I just know it was gone.

This lead to an hour or so of the whole group of us scouring the sand to see if just possibly it dropped out when I’d been carrying the boat to or from the water while back home Vicki searched to see if she could find the other copy of the key. We both thought we knew where the other copy was, but it wasn’t in any of those locations. So I called AAA and settled in for a long wait. I had my phone, and it was pretty fully charged, but unfortunately my spare reading glasses were in the car. But with a bit of squinting and pinching, I was able to keep myself amused for the first hour or two. But then it started to sprinkle. Since the only shelter at the boat launch was a really stinky public toilet, I called Vicki and she came so we could sit together in her car for a few hours while we waited for the locksmith to come, and them while he attempted to get a key made for the car.

We eventually got home just before 5pm. Not a great way to spend the day.