Category: Kayaking

I was waiting on some information at work, and kind of stuck until I got it, so I headed off to meet up with Stephen and Jim for their regular 1:30 paddle starting at the Black Creek access. I got there just before 1:30, and there was no sign of them. I paddled a 10 minute warm up, and still no sign of them. So fine, I thought, I’d head up stream at a moderate pace, and either I’d get a nice long paddle at my own pace, or they’d catch me up. Usually when I paddle with those two, they end up going hard so I end up in the 150-165 heart rate zone, but on my own I tried to keep it down in the high 130s or low 140s. I wasn’t entirely successful at that.

As I reached about the 2 mile point the river turns, and I took one last chance to paddle out into the middle to look downstream, but I didn’t see them. Ok, long slow paddle it is. I decided to see if I could reach the 6 mile point before I turned around. Since I’d done about .75 miles in my warm-up, that would leave me 5.25 miles to return, and put me over 10 miles on the day. Mental arithmetic isn’t my strong point – I really should have aimed for a turnaround at the 4.7 mile point to reach the 10 mile goal. But I wanted a bit of a cushion because on the way up you’re following the banks pretty closely and ferrying across the river to keep out of the current, but on the way back you blast down the middle.

The current was strong, and the wind was also strong in places, but at least they were going the same direction. The current swirled and eddied, and a couple of times I found myself having to brace to avoid dumping. As I got higher and higher up the river, I was getting slower and slower. Once I decided not to ferry across the river to get on the inside because I didn’t want to be so exposed to the wind, and that was a big mistake because not only was it slow on the outside of the bend, but it was also more roiled up with eddies and swirls and other challenges. I wasn’t sure if I was getting slower and having to brace more because the current and wind were getting stronger, or if I was getting fatigued and making mistakes because of that, and I was a little worried about being out here alone if I was making mistakes. After one really hard brace, I decided I’d had enough and turned around at the 5.6 mile point.

Turning downstream, my speed immediately went up into the low 9s. I don’t think I’ve ever paddled that fast before. I was just flying down. And I was starting to think my problems before were really problems with the river, not my own fatigue. After 6.7 miles (1.1 miles after I turned around), I met Jim coming upstream. That was good, that meant I’d have company when I was most tired. Not too much later, we met Stephen and Julia coming upstream as well. Stephen wanted to go as far as the RIT dock before he turned downstream, so I turned upstream again and went with him. That added another half mile of upstream to my total.

Going downstream was uneventful except when Stephen and Jim did their inevitable sprint for the bridge at the end, I didn’t have the energy to raise my speed even an iota to try to catch one of their wakes. But the worst was yet to come. Where Black Creek comes out into the Genesee there is a hellacious eddy. Last time I hit it just right and it spun my boat and accelerated me into Black Creek. This time, I hit it wrong and dumped. With about 10 yards left to go, I dumped into the freezing cold water. I walked up onto the bank, and slipped in the clay mud and fell back into the water. But I got my stuff semi-organized, and Julia jumped out of her boat to help me wrangle my stuff on the shore, while Jim paddled over and helped me dump out the water. Fortunately the air was wonderfully warm, so I wasn’t too chilled.

I just checked my blog, and the first time I paddled 10 miles last year was May 30th, the weekend before the Tupper Lake 9 miler. I’d say I’m a bit ahead of that schedule this year.

Total miles: 11.16
Total time: 2:09
Year to date: 83 miles!

Yesterday I went paddling with Jim and Stephen and Julia. It was warm and brilliantly sunny, and so I was able to paddle without a wet suit for the first time this year. What a difference it makes! I felt like I was getting 20 degrees more rotation on every stroke, and consequently a couple of inches more pull, and a couple of inches more glide. The Genesee River was still high and a bit swirly, but it wasn’t windy so we didn’t have the waves to contend with like we did on Saturday.

Jim was content to paddle along with us for a while, but then he decided to school us in how to use the current and the debris sticking out of the bank to our advantage. He took off, I tried to follow a few boat lengths behind, and Stephen held onto my wake. A couple of times Jim took a line right in close to shore over logs that were a little below the water line, because he had no rudder, whereas I took a line further out in the current around the end of the log because I have an under-stern rudder. I was surprised that Stephen didn’t take Jim’s line with his kick-up rudder because he probably could have gained on me, but maybe he didn’t want to lose my wake and have to pull on his own.

After a while we realized that we’d left Julia all alone and out of sight behind us, so we turned and went downstream with her. With the huge current behind us, I was paddling with long, long pauses and getting huge glide and still making 8mph. When we got back to Black Creek, Julia left us while we paddled up the creek a bit (to the bridge where the water was too high to go under) and back, then Stephen left and Jim and I paddled upstream and back a short way.

I recorded 8.15 miles on my GPS. Didn’t feel all that tired – I would have gone further but I have to work some time.

After last week’s warm sunshine, March had to tap us on the shoulder and remind us all who was in charge. It was about 37 degrees, extremely strong winds (gusting 17-29mph), and off-and-on rain. But Stephen and Jim were going paddling, so I went as well. I was delayed by something at work, so I texted them to tell them that I’d be half an hour late, so they agreed to circle back and pick me up, for which I’m grateful.

It’s been raining for a day, and I guess that caused some snow melt, because the Genesee River is at least a foot and a half or maybe two feet higher than it was on Thursday. The flood conditions caused swirling water, tricky currents, and lots of floating debris. On top of that, the winds were kicking up high waves in the other direction. I was definitely out of my comfort zone in the Thunderbolt today, but that’s a good thing – I need to get better at boat handling with this boat before the ‘Round The Mountain race. I got lucky that Small Swells and Long Lake were pretty calm conditions last year, but I can’t count on that for every race.

We started off down river into the wind. The fast current was definitely overwhelming the effect of the wind, but some of the waves were coming up on to the deck of my boat. Mostly I didn’t have too many problems handling the swirls and waves. We were doing 7.5 to 9.5 mph on the way down stream. We paddled all the way from Black Creek down to the Genesee Waterway Center.

When we turned around, we suddenly had a pretty strong bunch of waves coming from behind. I was definitely getting a bit of a ride on the waves, but even so I was having trouble going as fast as 5 mph, and I was definitely feeling the challenge. We got out of the waves and into the slower water near the inside shore, and the speeds increased a bit. We did a lot of that sort of reading the river and picking our way up through eddies and the like, and then ferrying over to the other side when the river curved the other way.

On one of those ferries, there was a very strong wind from behind, and so I was surfing and dealing with the swirls and currents, and I had to stop paddling and brace at one point – and just as I braced, I got a terrible cramp in my left foot. I’d had foot cramping problems last year, most notably during the last 3 miles of the Armond Bassett race. The cramp at this time was really bad timing. That’s the one time today when I felt most like I was lucky not to dump. But I didn’t, and I carried on to the end in spite of the cramp.

It was only when I got out of the boat that the raw wind and cold really started to hit me. My hands felt like claws as I was trying to get my boat back in its protective bag and back on the roof rack. The fact that there was a snarl of fishing line trapped in the rudder didn’t help. But I got out of there relatively unscathed and my nice hot shower afterwards felt really good.

Total distance: 7.22 miles
Total time: 1:18.

Today was brilliantly sunshiney and “warm” (41°F), so Doug and Mike and I went paddling. We went up the creek, battling the current and the “suck water” low water levels. Since I’m in my slow fat Looksha (the same boat that this time last year I thought was too tippy to venture out in the bay), I was kind of holding everybody up, but they waited for me. After Ellison Park dog park, Doug was ready to turn back, but in spite of the fact that I was the slow guy, I wanted to go on. We ended up going nearly as far as the rapids that I’ve never managed to get up stream from, not even in a plastic boat. We probably would have gone all the way to the rapid, but there was a guy fishing and we figured if we turned back two hundred yards early we could avoid two encounters with his line.

On the way back down, we encountered a couple of guys in plastic recreational kayaks coming upstream. You have to admire the determination, because they didn’t have races and training goals to meet, they were just out enjoying the day. Doug warned them about the new law about having to wear a PFD between November and May because one guy wasn’t wearing his, and I think they were a little cheesed off about it as they defensively told us that he only had it off because he was in the process of taking off his jacket. After we were out of earshot, Doug mentioned that in a very short time the trout season will start and there will be more game wardens and cops around.

A little while later, we passed a canoer heading downstream. Again, not a racer, just a guy enjoying the brilliant day.

After we got back to the dock, Mike had to get going, but Doug and I took a short paddle out into the bay to look around. There is a lot more open water than last time, but the water level is at least a foot down from mid summer levels, and there are a couple of dangers lurking just under the water. Doug suggested we go out in BayCreek’s war canoe and put a marker or extension on the ones we can’t move.

We ended up doing a total of 9.68 miles in 2:07:26. Not exactly speedy, but not exactly fast conditions either. I was reviewing my GPS data from last year, and while I didn’t have the GPS until April, it’s clear that I’m way ahead of last year on fitness. (Another thing that’s clear is that I wasn’t really good about stopping the GPS at the end of a work-out. Either that or I ended a lot of workouts by paddling at 40 mph along city streets.) Last year the first time I did a workout of longer than 9 miles was the 30th of May when I did 10 miles to prove to myself that I could finish the Tupper Lake 9 miler that was a week later. I didn’t go to the “Round the Mountain” race last year because I didn’t think I could manage 10.5 miles in the middle of May. This year, I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem. Surviving the kind of waves they had last year, now that’s a different matter.

Today was a gorgeous day, brilliant sunshine and warm, but a bit of wind. Doug, Bill and I met up at Bay Creek for a paddle on the creek. The water was a bit lower than last time, but it was more open. Doug’s Burn is in the shop getting fixed, so he paddled a much tippier Jet. Or is it the other way ’round? I can never keep the KayakPro boats separate – too many 17’3″ long boats, and their web site says one is 438mm wide and the other is 438cm wide, which probably is wrong. Bill showed up with a Romany sea kayak – his wife and daughter are in the Rough Riders club, so this is his secret other life kayak. Since he normally paddles a surf ski, I can’t blame him for paddling a more stable (and more importantly, one without a leaky drain in the cockpit) boat.

Doug was paddling a strange boat and was on a low intensity week, I’ve had sniffles and sneezes for a week, and Bill hasn’t been paddling for months, so we took it easy. On the way up, a Forge Racing canoer came paddling down, and barely managed to grunt out a response to our hellos. One of us made a remark about how unfriendly the Forge Racing guys, and wondered why Jason, a kayaker and a really friendly guy, hangs out with them. And a few minutes later, Jason came by in a canoe – and unlike the first guy, he had a friendly greeting for us and a smile.

We didn’t go all that far, and we didn’t paddle that hard. But it was a beautiful day, and we were in boats and with friends. And that’s what’s important.