Today was supposed to be the biggest day we’ve seen so far this week, although tomorrow is supposed to be even better. Today I was scheduled to do another run in a double ski, this time with American legendary paddler Carter Johnson. If you don’t recognize the name, check out Joe Glickman’s movie about the US Surfski Championships a few years ago where he points out Carter as being top American. It was Carter’s videos in the Gorge that convinced me to come here. I’m not sure what insane level of organizational skill you need to have to organize a week long event for 300 paddlers and still have time to go out for paddles with people like me, but Carter has it.
The forecast was for it to really start ripping by 3pm. We were scheduled to paddle at 12:30, but the wind actually picked up pretty strongly by the time we got on the water. Carter was understandably in a hurry, so we rushed a bit at the put-in and I forgot to hit start on my GPS, so I don’t know exactly when we got going, but I think it was around 1:15 or so. Also unfortunately, my problems with my GoPro continued so while I thought I’d gotten it started, it actually didn’t record anything. Which is really too bad, because Carter gave a ton of good advice and instruction that I wish I had a record of.
As we were walking down to the beach, he emphasized that we were going to let a lot of waves go – unlike the guys like Dawid and Jasper Mocke or Sean Rice who train 25+ hours a week, we have other jobs and so we have to economize on our paddling and only go for the waves that we can get on easily, not the ones that you have to really dig for. But by picking the right waves, we’d keep our boat speed up and get good rides. And he wasn’t lying – we ended up on huge waves, with Carter holding his paddle and arms up triumphantly over his head while I tried to catch my breath and get a look around.
As we started out, once again I noticed that twitchiness I mentioned yesterday, even before he got in. He tried to calm me down and relax me, and we paddled out at a warm up pace. But then suddenly he would give a signal and we’d sprint like hell, and 4 or 5 strokes later we’d be up on a wave and recovering. His sprints are amazingly fast, and it often took me a couple of strokes to get synced up with him and sometimes I’d barely get one or two strokes in before it was time to stop paddling. He’d point out a wave on our left or right that we were heading to next – unfortunately I relied on my GoPro catching all this stuff, so I’d just make sure my head turned that way with an eye to review it later, and not always taking it all into my consciousness. Carter keep up a complete monologue of what he was looking at and what he was doing. I just wish more of it had sunk in.
We went into Swell City, and it was even more amazing than yesterday. He warned me ahead of time that things looked a little hairy and he might not be able to talk all the time, but for me to watch his body language and try to match him when he needed power or when he needed me to stop paddling. He also reassured me that even if I blew my balance or leaned the wrong way, that I wouldn’t put him off because he could easily overpower me. Well, it turned out that I don’t think anything stopped his monologue. I blew my contribution a number of times when he was putting in huge amounts of power very quickly – sometimes all I could do was try to keep my paddle from dragging and just watch what he was doing. At least this time I didn’t clonk him on the back of the head like I’d done with Ryan yesterday – today I was a lot more cognisant that when you’re bracing down a wave front, your up hand needs to be forward rather than equal with the down hand. That’s a lesson I vaguely remember from Tarifa but it had never really been a problem until yesterday (and now today). I’m not even sure how that prevents you from catching a blade so well, but it does.
I spent a lot of time with a bucket full of water. This is especially true when trying going across the waves. Towards the bottom of Swell City, Carter said that the waves were driving us towards the left shore, but we needed to move right. I assumed that was so we could exit the big stuff near the end of the sand spit. But after crossing a few wave fronts and moving right, we seemed to be moving left again. I wanted to ask why we were doing that, but never got a chance. We were so close to the left shore I felt I could have thrown something onto shore. But then we got even further down – almost level with the sand spit. And now we in smaller choppier waves, and we were moving right almost perpendicular to them. We crossed behind the spit and were now in flat water and perpendicular to the wind, and it was suddenly obvious just how strong the wind is – it felt like it would have taken my hat if not for the (unfortunately useless) GoPro head strap. We paddled at what Carter considers a warm-down and what I would call a moderate cruise, and finished in the shallow water of the channel.
Tomorrow is the race day, and the winds are supposed to be strong again. I’m thoroughly intimidated by what Swell City looks like in big wind conditions. They say that there are less intimidating conditions to the right side of the river. The other factor is that after a 7 mile downwind run, I’ve ended up sore and tired and was actually wishing for the end before it came. The long race is 13 miles, but only the last 8 miles is through or beside Swell City. There is also an 8 mile race, but the start line is almost exactly in the entrance to Swell City, on the left side of the river. I could switch to the short race, but it seems like I’d have to go right through at least the early part of Swell City to get to the more benign part of the river. But on the other hand, I’d at least not be tired for that part of the river. I guess I’ll have to make that decision tomorrow morning.
Wednesday was forecast to not be a huge wind day. Thursday and Friday are, but more about that later. But even a “non huge” day in the Gorge is bigger than 90% of what I’ve ever done before. Today was my day to paddle in a double with Ryan Taj Paroz. I was really looking forward to this – I’d get to sit right behind a very skilled downwind paddler and see what he was looking at and get some insights on what he looks for.
Actually getting out in the boat was a bit of a comedy of errors. Kenny, the Epic dealer for San Francisco, supposedly had at least one V10 Double. He pointed out one, and we set it up – we tied in our leashes, adjusted our foot braces, taped on wave deflectors on the front and a big wave shield on the back (my) cockpit, and were ready to go when somebody came along and said “that’s my boat” and we had to take all our stuff off. So Kenny pointed out another double and said “that’s the one”. We set it up, and even got it tied on the rack on the bus out to the put in, and Ryan headed off to change into his paddling clothes when we saw somebody taking it off the rack. We ran over and found that the person taking it off had recognized the boat, texted the owner, and determined that the owner had not authorized us to take it. Finally, a friend of Ryan’s had his own V10 Double and said we could take it. Once again we got this one set up (and it gets faster after you’ve done it a few times – although this guy had a lot of customization that he happily ripped out for us) and on the rack. It was now about an hour and a half later than we’d originally planned, which wasn’t a bad thing because the wind had been building a bit while we faffed around setting up boats.
Unfortunately the heat seemed to have done something horrible to my GoPro and it died a few minutes after we started paddling.
I’ve never been in a double before, and it was a bit strange. At first I had that same sort of shaky reaction like I often do when first starting out in a less stable boat – I think it’s just the visceral reaction to the fact that the boat isn’t just reacting to me, it’s also reacting to Ryan. I think I settled down and relaxed pretty soon after we started paddling, though.
For much of the paddle, I was intensely focused on trying to match Ryan’s stroke. Many times I just couldn’t, though. Part of that is because he’s just a fast paddler, or because I missed the cue that he was about to ramp up the speed and it would take a stroke or two before I was in sync. But one of the things I’d been warned about and which happened a fair number of times is we’d be on a wave, and being in the back I’d be pretty much sinking into the crest of the wave, with water pouring into my cockpit. I had to keep my scupper drain fully open the whole time, and even so I probably had dry feet for 20% of the time. Once or twice I ended up with water almost up to my armpits, and it’s hard to paddle like that, which less match somebody else’s stroke. I’d been warned that I might have to hook my feet in the straps to keep from getting sucked out, but that didn’t really happen.
When we were in sync and I was paddling, I tried my hardest to actually contribute. I didn’t want to just be a passenger. So it was hard work. Ryan was doing a pretty good job at pointing out what “hole” he was aiming for, or where he could see one building to one side or the other. I have to confess that once or twice I thought I saw a “hole” and started paddling, only for Ryan to tell me to wait – I think I was seeing stuff that would have been big enough for a single boat but he was looking for waves long enough to fit a double on. I also worried that I might be leaning into things where it might have been appropriate if it was just me heading for a wave, but maybe not when it was two of us. Ryan didn’t seem to have any problem handling what I was doing, so maybe it wasn’t so bad.
At the end, you pass this sand spit and paddle through a very shallow channel. As we were in the calm water, we were paddling at what I considered a pretty brisk rate. Just as we were finishing up, Ryan asked if I wanted to try a finish sprint. First I said “you mean, this wasn’t it”, and then I said “sure”. He gave us a count down and then just poured on the power. After about three strokes he was moving too fast for me to keep up. He was just a blur. Man I wish I had that on GoPro. He said “that’s what I’ll be doing off the line at the race on Friday”. Wow.
One slight aside: In Tarifa, Boyan taught going for waves by looking at the back face of the wave in front of you. But most other paddlers talk about “nose in the hole”, looking for the trough. Really, it’s not that different. But another difference is that Boyan taught to start accelerating while you’re still nose up on the back of the wave in front of you, but Ryan and most other paddlers say to wait until you feel the tail lift on the front face of the wave behind you. I wonder if that’s just the difference between how strong an acceleration Ryan has versus my weak-ass acceleration.
The conditions were supposedly “not big” – Greg Barton remarked afterwards “I don’t know why I bothered”. But Ryan took me through “Swell City” and the conditions looked plenty big to me. I’m not sure I could have handled it alone. And my muscles are still pretty sore. I’m actually a bit worried about Thursday and Friday – the winds are supposed to be huge. To quote an email from the organization: “Thursday has the potential to get “Nuclear” from 3 to 5 pm out east but with possible lighter winds in the AM when the race would need to start at Home Valley (west). Regardless, Thursday after 3pm is forecasted to be Scary big in most all the Gorge.” and also “Both Thursday and Friday are forecasted to be bigger than anything we have seen this week.” Thursday I’m going to do another double run, this time with Carter Johnson, and we’re going to be done before 3pm. Friday is race day. I suspect that race day I’m going to have to be cautious and stay to the Oregon side of the river.
Early on Day 2, I got an email from the organization saying that the wind seemed to be arriving late, so they were extending the shuttle hours to 5pm. But they were still starting the shuttles at 11am. I contacted Hong, the guy I’d paddled with yesterday to see what his thoughts were – he said he was going to show up at the event site somewhere between 11:30 and 12:00, and we could play it by ear then.
I showed up at exactly 11:30. It was almost dead calm, except very suddenly at about 11:40, the wind started to pick up. Hong showed up, and we were going to go on the next shuttle and hope that it would build by the time we got to the put in, or at least would build as we paddled. But as we were discussing this, Carter came up and said to Hong that if he wanted to on that paddle with him in a double, he was available right at that moment but they’d have to go immediately, right after Carter patched a small problem with the rudder on his double. Ok, I can’t complain about that. so I needed to make alternate arrangements. Bob had already hooked up with another paddler, Jim from Rhode Island, but they agreed to let me tag along.
By the time we got to the put-in, the wind had actually picked up quite a bit. Maybe low by Gorge standards, but certainly conditions that in Rochester we’d be happy to do a downwinder in. And it was obviously building, so it would get bigger and better as we went along. As usual, I had problems with my video gear – the GoPro on my head had an odd display, and pressing the record button did nothing. I didn’t want to spend any time diagnosing the problem, so I just threw it back on my head. At least the GeekPro camera on the front of the boat would work, even if it sucked. As long as the suction mount didn’t wash away.
We started off, and we were catching some good runs. Bob was lagging behind, for some reason, but Jim was well ahead. Jim would wait at regular intervals and things seemed to be working fine. I wouldn’t stop when I caught up to Jim because it was obvious Jim could catch and pass me quite quickly after he started paddling again.
A few minutes after starting, I could see Carter and Hong heading almost perpendicular to the waves towards the nearest shore – I can only assume the patch hadn’t quite worked and they were heading to shore to fix it. Some time later they can charging through and I could hear Carter giving Hung some good instruction.
It was probably 45 minutes into it that Bob managed to work his way off to the left into the biggest stuff and was finally getting ahead of me like he had yesterday. Which means that Jim was waiting for me, not for both of us. I was trying to follow them out to the left, but it was getting to the limit of my ability.
It was about an hour into it that I’d decided that I was right on the edge of my ability, being past the point of fun and into the zone of “I can stay upright, but I’m not enjoying it this much”, and next time they waited for me I was going to ask them if they minded if I moved right into the gentler stuff. But instead, what happened was I ran into a HUGE mat of weeds – it practically stopped me dead. The waves stripped most of the weeds off the bow, but I think I had some on my rudder because suddenly I was broaching on everything. It was terrible, and I was out of control. I was wondering how you clear your rudder when every wave is throwing you sideways and making you brace for your life, when I suddenly fell in. That fixed that problem of the weeds on the rudder – the rudder cleared itself as it ended up out of the water.
But after I remounted, my two “buddies” were way ahead, and way off to the left. There was no way I was going even further into the big stuff just to be able to tell them than I was uncomfortable in that big stuff, so I headed to the smaller stuff on the right. After a bit of time in the smaller stuff, catching some rides and generally putting my mind and body back together, I could have headed into a bit bigger stuff towards the middle, but there’s no way I could do that without a buddy. So I stayed further right than I needed to, paddling in stuff that would have been a highlight on a Baycreek downwind but which seemed light by Gorge standards. I passed a guy and a girl in Think Eze boats who didn’t seem to be catching anything even though there were some waves to catch.
Rather than moving out far enough to go around the sandbar, I just portaged over it. That actually saved about a kilometer of paddling compared to yesterday.
So once again I’ve done only one run, but my muscles are sore. I’m not feeling up to doing a second.
While I was hanging around the finish area, I talked to somebody who said that the Wildeside Relay had finally gone off today, which means that Ryan’s schedule has finally cleared up. I’m hopeful that means we’re going to do our double run tomorrow (Wednesday). The same person said he thinks the actual World Cup race is going to happen on Thursday. I’m hoping that means I get my double run with Carter on Friday or Saturday. Whatever single runs I’m going to do in that time period, hopefully I can do them with Hong or a paddler of similar abilities rather than with buddies who are too fast for me.
So after the Canadian Surfski Champs, I headed down to Hood River, Oregon for the Gorge Downwind Championshops. I don’t actually like the name, because it makes it seem like it’s a single race, but it’s not – it’s nearly a full week of downwind shuttles with a race somewhere towards the end (they’re going to announce when the race is when they get a better handle on the wind forecast). The Gorge is famous among wind/water sports enthusiasts like wind surfers, kite boarders, and now SUP, outrigger canoe and surfski paddlers for the consistent winds and waves that roar upriver along the Columbia River Gorge for most of the summer, and now we have a bunch of days where we can enjoy the waves without worrying about the logistics of arranging car shuttles and stuff. There are 300 of us at this event, and shuttles run from noon to 4pm, meaning that a sufficiently well organized and motivated paddler could get an early run before the wind has peaked, and then another one when the waves are just about at their highest.
Driving up yesterday, I was impressed by just how strong the winds were. You didn’t get a lot of views of the river from the highway, and mostly I was concentrating on trying not to get killed by horrible Oregon drivers – including the tow truck blocking the left lane on a semi-blind corner in a 60 mph zone with no cones or flares and the 18 wheeler who decided that one blink was all the warning he needed to give before moving left and checking your mirrors is for sissies. So I didn’t see if the river waves were as ripping as I’d been lead to believe. My motel is a construction site – they’re building a second set of units and they’re way behind schedule, so the parking lot is partially blocked by construction equipment and there is caution tape up all over the place.
I woke up this morning with butterflies in my stomach. I know I’m not as fast as most of the paddlers who live in places with good waves – the Canadian Championships proved that pretty definitively. And the rules are that you must paddle with a buddy. So what if I couldn’t find anybody to paddle with? Ryan Taj Paroz is a top junior (under 23) pro paddler from Australia, and he said he was going to take me out on a double, possibly tomorrow. But that’s just one run. I want to make at least one a day, hopefully more. I tried to hit up some people at the Canadians who said they’d be coming down, but none of them seemed all that interested. If I couldn’t find anybody to buddy with me, I would have wasted my trip.
When registration opened, I headed down to the park and registered. They were already loading up boats for the first couple of shuttles. I saw two guys who looked fit but not super fit who were setting up V8s. I asked them if they’d buddy with me, and they agreed. Bob and Hong. They were friends from San Francisco and obviously paddled a lot more on the ocean than I do. I thought this could be a problem, but maybe the fact that I’ve got a faster boat would help level that gap.
By the time we got to the put-in, the wind was pretty strong. A couple of the more experienced people were complaining that it wasn’t as big as yesterday, but it seemed like plenty to me. We launched and got ready, and off we went. A couple of the guys who launched with us immediately went rocketing off towards the Washington side where the waves were said to be the biggest. But some of the others didn’t pass us and I’m not sure where they went.
I immediately started catching some nice waves – stuff that would be pretty big on Lake Ontario, more like what I got when I was in Tarifa. Bob was ripping it up and was ahead of me, and Hong was pretty much even with me – sometimes I’d link together some good runs and get ahead of him, but he always came storming back and pulled up even or ahead. Bob would sometimes resort to zig-zagging or even throwing his feet in the water to wait for us, but because Hong was his buddy and I was keeping up with Hong, I never had to worry that I was making him wait or ruining his day.
As we got further on, the waves got bigger and bigger. Bob was angling out to the left, towards the Washington side of the river in the part of the river I think they call “Swell City”. Hong and I didn’t get quite as far over as him, but we were in some good stuff. We could see some SUP paddlers ahead, but otherwise it was just the three of us. I can definitely say that I was on some of the biggest waves I’ve ever been on. The V8 Pro was awesome – so stable and nimble. I was carving S-turns down waves. I frequently got swamped with waves coming in the side and filling up the cockpit when I stalled on the back of a big wave, but the water was warmer than it had been at Squamish and because it was all coming from behind or at least from the rear quarters, I never felt nervous or overwhelmed. After the cockpit filled, you’d get a small run on a small wave, and maybe put in a dig to jump onto a bigger wave, and in no time flat the drain will have sucked the cockpit dry. A double surfski that had launched with us came up level with us and then fell behind – I heard them complaining afterwards that the wavelength had been too short and they ended up “high centered” with water filling both cockpits a lot, so they couldn’t get up to a good speed.
After an hour or hour and a quarter, though, I was starting to feel like I wasn’t enjoying it as much anymore. I don’t know if I was tired, or the waves were overwhelming, but I just started trying to figure out where the end was and if we were getting close. Hong came up to me and said we should be moving over to the right towards the Oregon shore because we were getting near the end, and I was a little relieved to get into the smaller waves on that side. Bob was still way out in “Swell City”. As we got closer to the end, the double that I mentioned before came up beside us, as well as a guy in a V12 who had been on our bus. We paddled a bit together and then Bob came over and said we should wait because Hong was a ways back. That was a bit odd, because Hong and I had been neck and neck the whole way, but afterwards I found out that he’d caught a weed. But as I was stopped in the water with my feet out, I wasn’t as stable as I’d been when I was moving and just as Hong caught up and Bob took off, I fell in. Hong and the double got to watch my not very good remount, but I don’t even know if Bob noticed.
Hong and I weren’t 100% sure where the end was – the people in the double and the V12 evidently did, but they were behind us. I thought I saw boats on the shore in this little bay, so I paddled over, but it was just wind surfers not boats. That’s when the guy in the V12 pointed out the sand bar. It was crazy – from where I was in near shore, it looked like the sand bar was blocking almost the entire river. Google Maps shows it isn’t really the whole river, just the Oregon half, but from my angle there was a person standing on the sand bar and he looked like he was directly under the middle span of the bridge that was behind him. But the place we had to land was a channel on the other side of that sand bar. So we went around it, and then paddled through side waves for nearly 500 meters. Bob and Hong actually got out early because it was so shallow they thought they were going to run aground with their surf rudders, but I found the deep part of the channel and paddled in closer to my car. Which is a good thing, because it was way too windy to be carrying a light boat alone, especially one that doesn’t belong to you.
To my great disappointment, however, I discovered that while I’d turned on my GoPro, I hadn’t hit “Record”. I really need to get better at the “switchology” of these various cameras.
Before I came here, I’d hoped that I’d be able to paddle two downwinds a day. I did a lot of long paddle workouts to make sure I had the aerobic stamina to handle two 7 mile runs in a day. But what I didn’t count on was the muscle fatigue. We finished this one around 2pm and Hong was talking about meeting back at 3:30 to do another, but after getting back to my hotel room to change and get some lunch, I decided that my shoulder muscles were sore and tired, and I didn’t want to be out there in the big stuff if I wasn’t strong enough to power through it. I didn’t want a whole run that felt like that bad kilometer or two of this run. So when Hong called I told him to go ahead without me. There is a pilot’s aphorism that goes “It’s better to be on the ground wishing you were up there than to be up there wishing you were on the ground”. Change “ground” to “shore” and “up there” to “on the river”, and you’ve got how I feel right now. So yeah, the plan still is to try to do two runs a day, but this run was so awesome that I won’t kill myself to do two runs – if I only get one a day, and it includes a few more runs like that one, I’ve got my money’s worth.
I’m back in Squamish, British Columbia for the Canadian Surfski Championships. I came last year and had a really good time, so I thought I’d try it again. Only this time, instead of spending a week before the Championships doing family stuff, I decided to be selfish and come in a few days before the race, spend two days in Squamish preparing for the race, then head down to Hood River Oregon for the Gorge Downwind Championships. Also, because I’m also going to be spending some time in “Da Gorge”, this year I elected to get a slightly slower but more stable boat, an Epic V8 Pro. Last year I paddled the V10 Sport identical to the one I spend most of my time in at home, and I was a little bit on-edge at times (and I fell in during the race).
Thursday evening after I checked into my hotel, I went for a short paddle to get used to the boat. I met a couple of paddlers who were coming in as I was going out, including Jasper Mocke who I don’t think recognized me from last year. The area in front of the delta was the usual squirrely mess and I ended up with a cockpit full of water several times – and the water was quite cold. Because it was cold, I was alone, and it was overcast and threatening to rain, I decided I didn’t need to spend a lot of time in that squirrelly water and I basically just went out to about where I’d dumped last year and turned around and came back in. The boat handled well, if a little slow, but it seemed solid and stable.
Friday was beautiful and sunny and I debated with myself whether to do another paddle, but it came down to “will I be faster tomorrow if I paddle today”, and I decided the answer was no, so I did touristy stuff instead. If I’d gotten another offer of a downwinder with some pros like last year, I might have, but no offer showed up.
Saturday morning was another overcast, cool day and it looked like it was going to be a complete shut-out in the wind department. The terrestrial forecast said it was going to remain cool in Squamish with 4-8 km/hr winds, and the all important inland forecasts for Whistler and Pemberton didn’t look any better. If there was one thing I remembered from last year, it’s that hot days in Pemberton are what generates the wind in Howe Sound. But in the parking lot at the hotel I ran into Ryan Taj Paroz, a top “junior” (under 23) pro paddler from Australia. Last year he’d been in the truck when we went for that downwinder, and the next day he found and friended me on Facebook, which was unexpected, and then he’s been really nice to me ever since, which is AMAZING. He’s even offered to paddle with me at the Gorge, which I can’t really believe because like I said he’s an experienced pro who paddles at the top levels of the sport, and I’m some schlub who can barely manage a not-quite-last-place finish at these events. So anyway, Ryan was telling me that somebody (sorry, I forgot his name even though it was one I recognized) had a better forecast that said that things were going to build by race time and we should have two to three footers at least. He also told me that the tide would be going into the channel instead of out like it was last year, so we won’t have to avoid the tongue of water coming out of the channel like we did last year. Cool.
Driving up at 9am to drop off the boat at Porteau Cove, Howe Sound wasn’t just flat, it was glassy. You could see the reflection of the mountains in the water, and there wasn’t even a boat wake on it. Oh oh, am I going to regret my boat choice? Well, not if Ryan’s prediction was right, but based on what I was seeing? Hell, I could have paddled my V12 in that.
After dropping off the boat, I went down to the O’Siem pavilion to pick up my goodie bag and formally register. I’d already gotten my boat number (applied by Deep Cove staff) and race shirt when I’d picked up my boat on Thursday. They gave me a choice of number (actually, they said “pretty much anything bigger than 41 is still available”) so I picked 042, the answer to life, the universe and everything. The goodie bag had some food stuff (a couple of pieces of chocolate, a protein bar, a bottle of Muscle Milk, etc) in it, and a few other things, including a combination bottle opener and knife that I’ll have to make sure stays in my checked bags when I fly home. I went back to my hotel room to change and wait for closer to race time. Most of the food stuff didn’t survive this delay. At 11:30 I went back to the pavilion and had to park literally a kilometer away because there were multiple activities happening in downtown Squamish including a farmer’s market and every street was parked up. At 12:00 we jumped on the bus back to Porteau. On the drive back to Porteau, we could see that the wind had picked up a bit and there were some whitecaps out in the Sound. Good news!
At Porteau Cove, we milled around for a while making sure our boats were set up for the race, talking to other paddlers, admiring other people’s race setups, and getting nervous. At 1-ish, Bob Putnam and Ian Lowe did a paddler’s roll call, a safety briefing, and then we launched and paddled up to the actual cove where the race started.
Paddling out to the start, it was obvious that while the conditions were not as big as last year, they were still big enough to provide a challenge. The side waves on the way to the hotspot buoy weren’t going to be the problem they were last year, but I was still not going to be going full speed on them. But it did look like I was going to be catching some waves on the way down the Sound. The hotspot buoy looked literally on the other side of the Sound (it wasn’t) and many people expressed disbelief that that was actually the buoy we were seeing. We knew it was supposed to be 1 to 1.5 kilometers to it, but it looked two or three times that distance away.
The start horn went off, and once again my typical slow start ensured that I’d be practically in last place by the time I got up to speed. Have you ever paddled in nearly 100 surfski wakes? I have now, and it’s pretty amazing what a mess of reinforcing waves they make. Early on, a guy I’d met at the hotel, Billy, was just in front of me and I tried to get on his stern wake, but he slowly pulled away. Then I was behind two women paddlers, one in a purple Huki ski and I tried to stay with them, but they had a few boat lengths on me by the turn. I went a bit high on the turn and came in sharp, and my stern got clonked by somebody who obviously stayed low and turned wider, so I knew I wasn’t completely alone.
After you make the turn, it’s a sight to behold as some paddlers veer sharply to the right back towards the shore, others go far left out further into the middle of the sound, and some go straight downwind. So from my position near the back, you see this amazing sight of more surf ski paddlers than I’ve ever seen in my life all spread out in front of me filling the Sound from left to right.
As I’d expected, once I turned I was getting some rides. Not like last year where you’d get on the wave and just put on a slight brace and enjoy the ride, like the classic view you have of a surf skier on a wave, but more the type where you continue paddling but with very little effort behind it so as you feel the wave starting to fade you can put on some effort and either get over it onto the one that’s building in front of you, or you can put on a little less speed but be ready to handle the next one coming up from behind. I was getting some good linked runs. There was a guy I keep seeing off to my right who was keeping pace with me. Every time I put a good set of runs together and I thought “surely I’m pulling away now”, I’d look over and he’d also be putting in a good set of linked runs. Fortunately when I stalled out on the back of a wave and didn’t link runs, he’d still be there. But other than him, I was pretty much alone. The woman with the purple Huki was nowhere to be found, nor the other woman who’d been with her at the hotspot.
As we approached Watts Point, which is where Howe Sound makes about a 45 degree bend and the wind and wave conditions change abruptly, I noticed three things:
The guy who’d been on my right was now way over to the right, almost to the shore.
There were a lot of people who looked like they were almost under the cliffs at Watts Point.
The waves were trying to push me directly to those cliffs.
I didn’t want any part of that – I didn’t want to get near cliffs, and the rebound waves from those cliffs were already bad enough as far out as I was. So I was using the techniques I’d learned in Tarifa to use the waves, but redirect to the direction I wanted to go. I ended up passing a little closer to Watt’s Point than I probably should have, and I ended up in the calm water past the tip of the point. Probably not where I wanted to be in this boat – if I’d stayed further out I might have gotten more rides, but it seemed like everybody still out on the course was in tight.
As I got closer to the confused water in front of the river delta, I was thinking that it was much rougher than last year, but also I seemed to be handling it much better – to the point where I was catching waves and getting the occasional ride. There was one guy ahead of me who was the picture of me last year – he was going brace, brace, brace, brace, tentative little paddle stroke, brace, brace, brace. I passed him. Then there was a guy doing a remount who had a safety boat alongside. He managed to get upright again and was paddling with his feet still in the water for stability when I suddenly caught a really big wave and whizzed by. Three people with cameras in the safety boat turned my way and started taking pictures, so I gave them a big smile and a bit of a whoop. Unfortunately just after the wave petered out, I got caught by a couple of cross waves and had to put in one of the only safety braces I’d done the whole race. But I got paddling again and headed up the channel.
The confused water lasted further into the channel than I remembered it from last year, and at one point I was worried that the waves were going to carry me into the log booms on the right of the channel until I managed to get to the hard left where it was more sheltered. I put on what little speed I had left to make sure neither of the two guys I had passed passed me back. I didn’t know if anybody else was behind me, but as far as I was concerned those two were my insurance that I didn’t come last. I was disappointed to see the purple Huki was already in the grass on shore, but I looked back and could see a few people finishing behind me.
They use WebScorer for this event, so the results were online almost as soon as I finished. And while I was a not very respectable 93rd out of 108, I felt pretty good about it. I was 10 minutes faster than last year, and it was a big field of people most of whom spend a lot more time on the ocean than I do. A couple of things I noticed looking at the results though – the guy who was dead last last year was 25 minutes faster this year. I find it amusing that they call the class for V8s and similar surf skis “18 foot male”. Those guys aren’t that tall. Speaking of V8s, last year there was a guy who I passed not long after the hotspot in a V8 who every time he caught a wave, he’d whoop with joy. In spite of my remount last year, he finished a minute behind me. This year he finished 3.5 minutes ahead of me. So I’m not the only one who improved.
An aside about WebScorer. Over the winter of 2014-2015, I was thinking that I should write an app/web site to do registration, timing and results for kayak and other races (I was thinking mainly of orienteering, because I’d meet directed and run registration, timing and results at many orienteering meets in the past). I wrote about 3 pages of requirements for what I wanted this app to do and diagrams of how it would do scoring, etc. And then when it came time to register for the Canadian Surfski Championships, I saw they were using this thing called WebScorer. So I had a look at WebScorer’s web site, and looked at their capabilities. And checked off about 80% of the things I’d had on my list. The only thing I didn’t see on their site that I had on my list were the ones I wasn’t sure anybody would care about, like social sharing, multirace leader boards, and the ability to do timing with devices that were not connected to the internet but which would sync up after they got back into coverage (so you could do split times at a remote location with no cell coverage, for instance). And I also found out about another web site that does the almost exactly the same stuff WebScorer does, only very specifically for water sports, called PaddleGuru. I put my idea back in the drawer of forgotten dreams, along with the other million ideas I’ve had that were either not practical or where I’d been beaten to the punch. Oh well, maybe idea one million and one will pan out.
