BayCreek Paddle Center has an “every Wednesday night” race series, which started for the season tonight. The race course was out into Irondequoit Bay, turn at a buoy, and come back and paddle up the Irondequoit Creek to another buoy, and turn back and paddle downstream to the start location.
I took my GPS along, but since it was on my lap it lost signal each time I bent forward and so it wasn’t very reliable when it says I paddled 1.4 nautical miles in 27:11. Next time I’m going to put the GPS inside the cockpit, and run the external antenna wire up to the bow.
Just about everybody else milling around the start area had these tiny little carbon fibre and/or kevlar wisps of boats that were slightly wider than their incredibly skinny hips. Most of them were wearing t-shirts from other races, or fancy racing wet suits. I felt terribly outclassed before anybody had even started paddling.
I never paddle on the bay, and today I discovered why – there was a fairly strong breeze, and the bow of my boat was slicing through waves that were about a foot and a half or two feet high, washing off my racing numbers and soaking my t-shirt and shorts. It was pretty hard going, and by the time I reached the turn I was sure I’d used up all my energy. The turn was a bit hard, as I tried to avoid broaching in these waves. Then the downwind leg was my first attempt to surf waves, and it wasn’t entirely successful – my bow ended up totally submerged in the wave ahead of me for much of the time, and I paddled quite hard to try to stay there. I wasn’t sure if I should slack off a tiny bit and see if I could actually just stay on the wave without effort, but every now and then I’d start turning sideways. I would sweep repeatedly on one side to try to point myself back down wind, but it wasn’t working, so I’d have to stop paddling and rudder like hell. (After the race, I talked to one of the experienced looking guys and he said “too bad you don’t have a skeg”, and I admitted that I had one, but I didn’t know how to use it in that situation. Next time, guys.)
Once back in the creek, it was just tiring. My arms and shoulders were aching, and every time I stopped paddling to rest a bit or take a drink of water, one of the fast guys coming in the other direction would yell encouragement at me.
I finished in 27:11. Most of the other people seemed to be clustered in the 16:15 to 17:30 range. But I figure if you measured it by minutes divided by pounds (either boat weight or total weight of boat + paddler), I won by a long shot.