Category: Activities

Lighthouse to Lighthouse 2016

In 2014, Lighthouse to Lighthouse was my first ocean race. They didn’t hold it in 2015 due to problems with permits or something. So when it came back, I was looking forward to it.

In the intervening years, I’ve gotten a lot more experience in waves. I’ve also got really into making videos of my paddle races. So I was really looking forward to not only doing much better this time, but also producing a really nice video. Sadly, neither of those things came to be.

Before the race was great – lots of old friends, people I’ve met in my travels all over the place for surfski paddling. The weather forecast had been for cool temps and semi-overcast conditions, and so I was dressed in my “V-Cold” Vaikobi gear, but it was abundantly clear that it was too warm (and sunny) for that. I changed into a lighter shirt, but retained my V-Cold pants. The part of the forecast that was correct was that the winds would be pretty light, but what winds there were would come almost exactly 90 degrees from the main part of the race course. Ugh. So there would be no swell or wind driven waves to overwhelm the bazillions of small boat waves coming from every direction.

Because my multiple video cameras, and the fact that the one I wear on my head only has two hours and twenty minutes of battery life (just barely enough for the whole race) and because our start wave was 48 minutes after the first start, I took myself away from the hubbub of the start area to just sit by myself on the beach and listen to the start waves. Unfortunately instead of sitting there quietly composing myself for the race and hearing the exact right time to start my cameras, this old guy approached me and started telling me his life history. I had to stop his story before it reached any sort of point because I heard the starter calling out my name – I’d missed the wave before ours going, and now I had literally 2 minutes to get my cameras started and get out to the start line and find a position on the line. And it turns out that in my rush, not only had I managed to not start the camera on my head, I’d also gotten moisture in the camera case so when I finished I found it was fogged, so even if I had started it, I probably wouldn’t have gotten a good video from it.

I rushed out to the line and found myself hard up against the left most start buoy. I was also just a little discombobulated and no-where near as composed as I would have preferred. When the start siren went off, there was a woman on my left who tried to squeeze in ahead of me on the buoy, found herself unable to paddle on that side because of the buoy, and stopped almost dead. I found myself banging into her on my left, also unable to paddle on that side, and also almost stopped. Not the best start, and not what would have happened if I’d gotten to the line to position myself behind somebody whose wake I could have ridden.

After that got sorted out, I ended up finding some decent wakes, most of which I could hold for a while and then drop, and then find another. At one point I was on Wesley Echols wake for a few minutes. I also spend some time on some strong looking guys in V10 Sports and other mid range skis. Things up to the first lighthouse (Peck’s Ledge) were looking pretty good. Maybe not as good as it would have been on flat water, but I was being aggressive and feeling strong.

But that all changed after we turned onto the main semi-straight part of the course. With almost no wind driven waves and a plethora of boat wakes, I couldn’t get any sort of rhythm to my paddling. For the entire rest of the race, I got passed by a (small but still non-zero) number of surf skis, and didn’t pass a single ski. I just felt worse and worse the whole way. And then we leave the shelter of the small islands to the north of us and do the one mile to the second lighthouse and back to the shelter, and it was even more horrible. I never felt like I was having trouble staying upright (ok, that’s not 100% true – I missed a stroke here and there and had to brace) but I also felt like I was barely making forward progress. The only thing making me feel good was at this point I started passing some of the people in the sea kayak class. This guy in a V8 who was paddling with no shirt under his PFD came by and I could not hold onto his wake, even for a minute. Very dispiriting. But I also got passed by the first OC-6, and possibly because of that there almost the constant buzz of camera drones overhead.

I kept hoping that maybe the reason I was so slow on the way out was that the tide was running against me, and maybe I’d start to actually feel some speed one the way back. But I didn’t feel it – it felt just as horrible and discouraging on the way back. Not long after the lighthouse, before we got back into the shelter of the islands, a man and woman came by in Epic V10 Sports, identical boats to mine. I had hoped to latch onto their wake, but I couldn’t even get over to them before they were gone. A bit later I thought I was catching them with me further out to sea and them in tighter to the islands, so I was thinking maybe I’d caught a bit of tide, but then they started pulling ahead.

A few times I tried to psych myself up saying “ok, from now on, nobody passes me”. But each time I did, I got passed again.

There is a spot about 5km from the end where you see the Peck’s Ledge lighthouse between two islands. It’s a good way to lose the race – if you head directly to the lighthouse instead of going around the island on your right, you’re disqualified. But it was about that point that I started realizing I was feeling quite sick. As a matter of fact, the discussion in my head was whether if I just puked now, would I feel better and speed up, or would I be faster if I tried to hold it in until the finish. I don’t know if it was the heat, the uncertain and non rhythmic waves, or the clamping effect of the camera strap around my head, or a combination of all those things, but I felt worse than I’ve ever felt in a race before. But I’ve had enough DNFs this year and I was determined to carry on. Well, at this point even cutting between the islands and heading direct to the finish instead of passing the last turn buoy would have only cut off a few hundred meters, so really the pain wouldn’t last that much longer by completing the race. Of course, just to add insult to injury, Leslie Chappelle passed me about 700 meters from the finish and pulled away strongly. No amount of “I thought I wasn’t going to let anybody beat me” self pep-talks would give me the strength to pull back to her. Of course the other “don’t puke, please don’t puke” self pep-talk was mostly drowning out the other pep-talk.

After the finish, I somehow managed to not puke. I stumbled to shore and let Dan and Todd take care of my boat. A bit of a sit down in the shade, a rinse off in coolish water in the kiddy water park fountains, and then a bit of food, and I felt a million times better. Reconnecting with old friends, listening to war stories, not telling much of mine because it just depressed me, and suddenly that lousy two hours seemed like it was counterbalanced and then some by the rest of the day. Once again, I’m glad I came, but man I wish I’d done better.

In the final result, I was about 2 to 2.5 minutes slower than last time. Probably if I hadn’t gotten sick towards the end, I would have been closer to last time. I know I’m a fitter and more competent paddler now, but all those factors of wind weather, and my pre-race prep, and wearing that damn head camera (and without even any video from it to make up for the negatives) and it all added up to a worse performance. So now I’ve got to make sure I’m not over-trained and over-tired next weekend for Long Lake and maybe I can redeem this season.

Review: Motionize Paddle Edge, updated

I reviewed the Motionize a couple of weeks ago, and my summary was “If I were you, I’d hold off buying it until they can work out some of the problems.”. Well, I’m pleased to say the worst of the problems appear to have been fixed, so I’m giving it a tentative “This might be for you”.

So here’s basically what I said, and what has improved:

  • I complained about app freeze-ups. I’ve paddled it four times since then without a freeze-up, so they’ve possibly fixed that problem. Update: it froze up again a few days after I wrote this.
  • The battery life. I did a 95 minute paddle today and the battery went from 100% to 55%. That’s acceptable battery life versus before when a 90 minute paddle took it from 85% to 5% to a complete shut-down.
  • The paddle display is still pretty sensitive to boat tilt. I doubt there is much they can do about that. I only use it on flat water, which helps. Also, when I wrote that review I’d been doing intervals on the canal and when I was going upstream the display was fine but when I turned downstream it was displaying very wonky data. Now it appears that after a 180 degree turn the wonky data corrects itself after 3 or 4 strokes. Better, but still room for improvement.
  • My complaint about double tap not starting the workout seems like it might have been my mistake, because it’s worked fine for me since then.
  • They put an option on the website to order new sticky mounts. I’ve ordered another one so I can use this device on my V12 as well.

What hasn’t been improved:

  • One thing I forgot to mention last time is the heart rate monitor. Fully 1/2 to 3/4 of the time, it doesn’t see my bluetooth heart rate monitor, either in the “Pair Devices” screen or actually during the workout. Other apps and the Settings screen can see it, but Motionize can’t. And then another time it will see it fine. Very frustrating, especially when people are saying “this could replace my Forerunner”. That recalcitrance when it comes to displaying heart rate is an instant disqualification.
  • Still no improvement in the information it gives you either during the paddle or in the post-workout summary screen.
  • Still no indication of what is sensor data and what is general advice. Obviously “Remember to hydrate” is just general advice, but is “For a better experience, look forward rather than down” general advice, or can they somehow detect that I’m hunching my back? Obviously if they provide all this interesting feedback from a device down near your feet, it’s a pretty good guess that you’re going to be looking down at it rather than counting herons.
  • It’s still trying to connect to the ConnectIQ Garmin Store. I should probably contact tech support about that.
  • And again, not their fault, but I wish there was some solution to the difficulty seeing the screen in bright sunshine.

I get the same warnings every time I train with it. I try to remember to bring the paddle out before my knees (something I’ve been working on for years). If I were Motionize, I would link this advice to a page with drills you can do to correct the problems as it identifies them. Also it tells me things like meters/stroke and paddle depth, and I don’t know if my numbers are good or bad. Again, it would be useful if Motionize gave some feedback on how I compare to other paddlers in my same general age/fitness/ability levels and gave personalized drills and training.

I was thinking about what would be the best use-case for this device, and I think if I were a kayak coach, what I’d do is buy it, and require everybody I coach to buy a couple of the sticky mounts and a RAM mount, and then I’d just loan it to different people between group works out. I’d use that info to get them doing appropriate drills for whatever deficiencies the Motionize points out. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for something like Sean Rice’s PaddleFit online training to use this to really get to know what you need to work on.

Cheap camera mount option

I thought the “hat mount” for my camera isn’t perfect, because I think it moves around a bit and also it puts the side of my face as a static object in the side of the frame. So I was thinking what I really want is something like what Ryan Paroz had at the Gorge – a suction cup mount and a pole to put the camera up high enough so it’s sort of looking over your shoulder. I’ve been looking high and low for a pole, and couldn’t find anything for regular tripod mounts, just for GoPros. The closest I could find was this selfie stick that has a 1/4″ socket on the handle. It was only $6, so I figured it was worth a try.

The result wasn’t terribly bad, except the camera moved over the course of the paddle. I tried to tighten it up afterwards to see if I could make it less likely to move, and I think I stripped the thread a bit. So back to the drawing board.

Actually though, what I think would be really good would be some sort of reverse pendulum. In case you don’t know what I mean by a “reverse pendulum”, here’s my crude drawing:
export

Buffalo Paddle Festival

So they had this race last year, I didn’t go, and it was a bit of a mess. Multiple laps around the inside of the harbor in an area that was weedy. It was so bad that racers were stopping to clean off each other’s weeds. Evidently it was a permit problem or something. But this year, they said they had the permit problem licked and planned multiple courses from a nice beach well outside the harbor. The long course was to be 12 miles, and go along the shore to the harbor, enter the harbor and paddle along the inside of the breakwall, then exit the harbor and paddle back along the outside of the breakwall, and then paddle back to the beach. For some odd reason they put the start and finish areas a few hundred meters apart, but no matter. At one point they were talking about having people run along the beach for that few hundred meters, but changed their minds and just had a short finish chute and some great volunteers to catch your boat while you ran for the finish.

On race day (today), it turned out this course would be too hard. There were whitecaps coming straight into shore. One of the local paddlers said he sails out of the harbor and the entrance we were going to have to use to get into the harbor was damn near impossible in these conditions in a sail boat. Plus we’d be running along the outer breakwall with waves pushing us directly into it with rebound waves bashing us from the other side.

The organizer made the last minute decision to do a completely different course. Instead of heading north towards the harbor, we’d be heading south west towards a very visible house on a beach and jetty and turning on a buoy, then coming back to the start where there would be a buoy (but just in the return, not on the start), then back to the first buoy, then back to the finish chute at the RedBull tent. The medium course would just go out to the buoy at the house and then direct to the finish, and the short course would have an even closer buoy then back to the finish. The organizer said that according to his map, each leg to the buoy would be about four miles. (Foreshadowing alert: it wasn’t.)

The start was a bit of a mess – he’d said to go out beyond the breakers, and as soon as everybody was out there he’d sound the horn. There was no start line or buoy, because the guy who was placing buoys was still placing the buoys for the short course. So people weren’t lined up in any coherent manner. I was still trying to drain my bucket from the complete fill I’d gotten going out, and my foot strap was twisted around so I couldn’t see my GPS. When I heard the horn, I said to somebody near by “I think that’s the go signal” and took off. The seas were about 30 degrees off directly abeam, which was a relief, but they still made me slow. There were sets of fairly large waves, maybe four feet high, interspersed with smaller ones about one to two feet. At first I seemed to be the only one going, although Todd came through pretty quickly. As I saw a gap in the big stuff, I shakily reacted down to start my GPS, but instead I saw the big red square indicating that I’d stopped it. I guess it had started when I was untangling my foot strap. I quickly started it again.

A bunch of racers came through, including Jim and John. Everybody seemed to be following Todd, who was to my eye was way too far upwind. There was one guy not very far ahead of me in a v12, and he was bracing more than he was paddling even on the intermediate waves. I couldn’t understand why he was ahead of me – he must have gone past when I was fiddling with my GPS. I was on the same line as everybody else trying to catch this guy.

Dan rarely races these days and initially said he was going to do the short race, but he loves these waves so much that he upgraded to the medium race, and he came through pretty quickly. He was also on a very direct line to the buoy. I decided to go direct as well, and abandoned my attempt to pass the guy in the v12. But I was a little disappointed in myself to see Dennis coming through. Dennis is a local triathlete who has been paddling with us a bit, but today he’s in a sea kayak today because he’s not comfortable in his ski yet. And here he is going faster than me. Up ahead I saw a v10 double flip over, and the two of them were so slow remounting that I was able to pass them. There was a sea kayak over with them so I guess they had help if they needed it. There was also a large coast guard boat standing by near the course line.

At the buoy, I had caught up to the guy in the v12. But I knew that if a wave threw us into each other we’d both be practicing our remounts in difficult conditions, so I gave him a real wide berth. My GPS was beeping at 1km intervals, so I know the turn was about at 3km mark, depending on when my GPS started itself.

After the turn, the waves were now about 30 degrees off my stern beam, not conducive to surfing. But in spite of that, I very quickly passed the guy in the v12, and not long after, Dennis in his Seda Glider. One nice thing about a 180 degree turn in a race is you get to see if there is anybody else behind you. There’d been a couple of people at the start who I hadn’t seen pass me and I didn’t see behind me at the turn. I guess some of them abandoned. Can’t say I blame them.

The rest of the way back was pretty uneventful. Like I said, I wasn’t getting much of a ride off the big stuff, although there was a set of smaller waves that were going almost directly in my direction and I got a bit of help from them. Everybody ahead of me was well ahead, barely visible, although I could see Todd leading the main pack well offshore rather than directly to the turn buoy. I stayed on a direct line. That coast guard boat was still standing by just offshore from our line.

After the turn back up, things were a repeat of the first time only much more lonely. But it was still looking like 3km per leg, so at least I knew it wouldn’t last too long. The guy in the v12 was still behind me, but Dennis wasn’t. I guess he decided to do the medium course. I could barely see some of the leaders rounding the buoy way, way ahead of me.

After the buoy, the route back to the finish is only a little bit further downwind than the second leg, so still not much surfing from the big stuff, although there was still that small swell heading in a favorable direction. I was trying to turn off course to get a diagonal ride on the big waves and then turn back towards the finish between the big ones. It didn’t work very well because I couldn’t get going fast enough to really catch them. I ended up far enough offshore that I was able to turn directly down the big ones straight at the finish and catch them that way. I got two actual fast rides. Not enough to make the race fun, but enough to bring it up from “man I suck at this” nearly all the way to “glad I came”. 

I didn’t want to ride a big wave right into shore and smash up my boat, so I tried to get behind one as I had been taught in Tarifa. It mostly worked except a small breaker caught me – I turned sideways on it and very nearly stayed upright as it broke over me, but I fell over at the last moment. It was shallow enough to stand up so I just started running and dragging the boat. The helpful volunteers came out and took the boat while I did world’s slowest beach run. I crossed the line and two little girls attempted to outdo each other with passing me a ice cold bottle of water, and a mug with two beer tickets and a lunch ticket. That definitely pushed it up into “glad I came” territory.

I heard an amusing story after the race. After the v10 double flipped, one of the paddlers decided he didn’t want to continue but the other one did. So they pulled into the finish and the one who didn’t want to continue swapped out with one of the ski paddlers I’d mentioned who seemed to have dropped out early, and with the substitution they completed the long course. I wonder how they divvied up their two trophies?