If you're looking for the Sakonnet River Race report, you can find it here.
On a beautiful night at Lynch Park, we gathered together to race course #1 - a simple out-and-back around Eagle Island. This is the longest of the Salem League courses, totaling 6.2 miles. It can also be one of the toughest since it takes us the furthest out into Salem Sound, with the rocky far side of Eagle serving as the perfect wave reflector. With a mild NW breeze this night, however, conditions were benign. Or so we thought!!! No, wait, they were in fact quite manageable. Or were they!?! Yes, it was fine I tell you.
We had a good crew. Chris made the trip up, leaving work at about 10:30 on Monday morning to beat the traffic. He brought his Nelo up, but paddled Ed's red-tip V10. In addition, we had me, Mary Beth (in a borrowed blue-tip V8), Francisco, Mike, Kirk, Bill, Matt, Ken, and Bruce (also in a borrowed blue-tip V8 while his black-tip is being repaired).
We lined up for a refreshingly short beach run. Ed counted us down and we were underway. As usual, Francisco had a great start and held a 3 or 4 boat length lead once everybody was on the water. Matt also had a solid start, but in addition really kept the power going in his V8. Given Matt's recent trajectory, it's clear that it won't be long before he's challenging for the lead in these races. We've therefore equipped him with an early warning device that will always let us know when he's threatening to overtake. I argued for something more like an invisible fence collar that would prevent him from overtaking, but there was too much paperwork involved. So we stuck with an mp3 player with external speakers.
I sprinted and caught Francisco after a few minutes and settled in behind him to catch my breath. Still struggling to hang with him ten minutes later, I realized that tonight oxygen wasn't a luxury I'd be able to afford. I took one last deep breath that was going to have to last me the next 35 minutes, then made my passing move to the left. The leftwardness of the move was much more pronounced than the passing aspect. Over the next ten minutes I continued to drift further and further left. I think I was also moving ahead of Francisco, but given our distance apart it was getting difficult to tell.
I've gotten some guff about my navigation. Looking at my Garmin track for the night, I'll admit that I veered pretty sharply from a course that would have taken us counterclockwise around Eagle to one that would take us clockwise around Eagle and an imaginary aircraft carrier moored a quarter mile off the east coast of Eagle. In my defense... stop following my course, lemmings!
I saw a large yacht heading towards us from the Beverly shore when it was quite a distance away. With various people milling about on the decks, it seemed like some kind of party boat rather than a private vessel. Based on its motion relative to the land behind, it was was clearly going to pass behind me. Apparently the captain saw the strung out line of paddlers that he would have to pass through and therefore decided to change course in order to run down the lead boats. I can only assume that he figured after cutting off the head of the pack, he could pick off the remaining boats one by one as they fled in panic.
I remember an instance from a couple of years ago in which Kirk stared down the replica fishing schooner Fame as it cut across our course. I suppose figuring that he wouldn't live forever, he cut the crossing close enough to spit on the ship without missing a stroke (but possibly skipping a few heartbeats). I wasn't looking for anyone to remember my name, but I also didn't want to sacrifice my thin lead on Francisco by giving way to this yahoo. Not that I even knew how to get out of his way given his obvious blood lust.
As our paths converged it became evident that the captain had some qualms about dinging his boat. If I kept paddling at pace I'd miss his stern by a dozen feet or so. I was prepared to do just this until I got an eyeful of the churning wake that a boat this size throws up at 20 knots. Unwilling to also get a mouthful and earful of that wake just to prove a point, I left off paddling at the last second and braced for impact. Turned out not to be bad at all, although the aerated water immediately behind the yacht made for some mushy recovery strokes. There were people on the deck yelling, but I couldn't tell if they were cheering me, taunting me, or really drunk.
So that was exciting.
As we rounded the island, I saw that Francisco was 3 of 4 boat lengths behind me. The back side of Eagle was calmer than I've ever seen it, but I still threw a couple of half-braces to deal with phantom waves. As we rounded the island to head back, I saw that we'd be paddling blind back to Lynch Park. We were heading into the low lying sun, the glare from which was wiping out all detail on the shore. Mike later told me that I should have paddled 3 degrees to the right of the sun. Forgot my sextant, so this advice probably wouldn't have helped me anyway.
The trip back to shore was one dominated by a growing sense of dread. Five minutes after making the turn around Eagle, I spotted Francisco fifty feet over to the right. I was still ahead by a few lengths, but any delusions about having dropped him evaporated. This was going to hurt. Having lost the first two races of the season to Francisco, I couldn't afford to slip another point behind him in the standings. I pushed hard, trying to concentrate on maintaining good form, but watched helplessly as he continued to creep closer.
As we got closer to shore, I could finally make out navigational landmarks. We needed to turn to the left, which worked in my favor since Francisco was still a good ways right of me. As we corrected our courses and our paths converged, he was less than 2 boat lengths behind. For the last five minutes, the offshore wind had been slackening as we entered more protected waters. With my boat being the faster in flatwater, this worked to my advantage (or rather, decreased my disadvantage, since Francisco continued to gain ground). We sprinted to the beach, where I managed to hold onto my slight lead and take the win.
Although the official time difference between Francisco and I was 2 seconds, I suspect the actual difference was less than that. When I stopped right at the finish line rather than running through it, Francisco barely managed to avoid running through me. I took advantage of being able to breathe once more by gulping in 30 minutes worth of air in 30 seconds.
It was a race of extremely close groupings. Chris soon pulled in the V10 after having overtaken Matt on the upwind leg, with Matt just 20 seconds behind, and Mike 22 seconds behind him. Ken and Kirk battled it out for the next two spots, with Ken ending up 5 seconds ahead. Bill edged out Bruce by 25 seconds. Mary Beth was groupless, but beat her previous time for this course by over ten minutes.
Here are the results for the evening:
On a beautiful night at Lynch Park, we gathered together to race course #1 - a simple out-and-back around Eagle Island. This is the longest of the Salem League courses, totaling 6.2 miles. It can also be one of the toughest since it takes us the furthest out into Salem Sound, with the rocky far side of Eagle serving as the perfect wave reflector. With a mild NW breeze this night, however, conditions were benign. Or so we thought!!! No, wait, they were in fact quite manageable. Or were they!?! Yes, it was fine I tell you.
We had a good crew. Chris made the trip up, leaving work at about 10:30 on Monday morning to beat the traffic. He brought his Nelo up, but paddled Ed's red-tip V10. In addition, we had me, Mary Beth (in a borrowed blue-tip V8), Francisco, Mike, Kirk, Bill, Matt, Ken, and Bruce (also in a borrowed blue-tip V8 while his black-tip is being repaired).
We lined up for a refreshingly short beach run. Ed counted us down and we were underway. As usual, Francisco had a great start and held a 3 or 4 boat length lead once everybody was on the water. Matt also had a solid start, but in addition really kept the power going in his V8. Given Matt's recent trajectory, it's clear that it won't be long before he's challenging for the lead in these races. We've therefore equipped him with an early warning device that will always let us know when he's threatening to overtake. I argued for something more like an invisible fence collar that would prevent him from overtaking, but there was too much paperwork involved. So we stuck with an mp3 player with external speakers.
I sprinted and caught Francisco after a few minutes and settled in behind him to catch my breath. Still struggling to hang with him ten minutes later, I realized that tonight oxygen wasn't a luxury I'd be able to afford. I took one last deep breath that was going to have to last me the next 35 minutes, then made my passing move to the left. The leftwardness of the move was much more pronounced than the passing aspect. Over the next ten minutes I continued to drift further and further left. I think I was also moving ahead of Francisco, but given our distance apart it was getting difficult to tell.
I've gotten some guff about my navigation. Looking at my Garmin track for the night, I'll admit that I veered pretty sharply from a course that would have taken us counterclockwise around Eagle to one that would take us clockwise around Eagle and an imaginary aircraft carrier moored a quarter mile off the east coast of Eagle. In my defense... stop following my course, lemmings!
I saw a large yacht heading towards us from the Beverly shore when it was quite a distance away. With various people milling about on the decks, it seemed like some kind of party boat rather than a private vessel. Based on its motion relative to the land behind, it was was clearly going to pass behind me. Apparently the captain saw the strung out line of paddlers that he would have to pass through and therefore decided to change course in order to run down the lead boats. I can only assume that he figured after cutting off the head of the pack, he could pick off the remaining boats one by one as they fled in panic.
I remember an instance from a couple of years ago in which Kirk stared down the replica fishing schooner Fame as it cut across our course. I suppose figuring that he wouldn't live forever, he cut the crossing close enough to spit on the ship without missing a stroke (but possibly skipping a few heartbeats). I wasn't looking for anyone to remember my name, but I also didn't want to sacrifice my thin lead on Francisco by giving way to this yahoo. Not that I even knew how to get out of his way given his obvious blood lust.
As our paths converged it became evident that the captain had some qualms about dinging his boat. If I kept paddling at pace I'd miss his stern by a dozen feet or so. I was prepared to do just this until I got an eyeful of the churning wake that a boat this size throws up at 20 knots. Unwilling to also get a mouthful and earful of that wake just to prove a point, I left off paddling at the last second and braced for impact. Turned out not to be bad at all, although the aerated water immediately behind the yacht made for some mushy recovery strokes. There were people on the deck yelling, but I couldn't tell if they were cheering me, taunting me, or really drunk.
So that was exciting.
As we rounded the island, I saw that Francisco was 3 of 4 boat lengths behind me. The back side of Eagle was calmer than I've ever seen it, but I still threw a couple of half-braces to deal with phantom waves. As we rounded the island to head back, I saw that we'd be paddling blind back to Lynch Park. We were heading into the low lying sun, the glare from which was wiping out all detail on the shore. Mike later told me that I should have paddled 3 degrees to the right of the sun. Forgot my sextant, so this advice probably wouldn't have helped me anyway.
The trip back to shore was one dominated by a growing sense of dread. Five minutes after making the turn around Eagle, I spotted Francisco fifty feet over to the right. I was still ahead by a few lengths, but any delusions about having dropped him evaporated. This was going to hurt. Having lost the first two races of the season to Francisco, I couldn't afford to slip another point behind him in the standings. I pushed hard, trying to concentrate on maintaining good form, but watched helplessly as he continued to creep closer.
As we got closer to shore, I could finally make out navigational landmarks. We needed to turn to the left, which worked in my favor since Francisco was still a good ways right of me. As we corrected our courses and our paths converged, he was less than 2 boat lengths behind. For the last five minutes, the offshore wind had been slackening as we entered more protected waters. With my boat being the faster in flatwater, this worked to my advantage (or rather, decreased my disadvantage, since Francisco continued to gain ground). We sprinted to the beach, where I managed to hold onto my slight lead and take the win.
Although the official time difference between Francisco and I was 2 seconds, I suspect the actual difference was less than that. When I stopped right at the finish line rather than running through it, Francisco barely managed to avoid running through me. I took advantage of being able to breathe once more by gulping in 30 minutes worth of air in 30 seconds.
It was a race of extremely close groupings. Chris soon pulled in the V10 after having overtaken Matt on the upwind leg, with Matt just 20 seconds behind, and Mike 22 seconds behind him. Ken and Kirk battled it out for the next two spots, with Ken ending up 5 seconds ahead. Bill edged out Bruce by 25 seconds. Mary Beth was groupless, but beat her previous time for this course by over ten minutes.
Here are the results for the evening:
| Greg Lesher | Epic V12 | 0:51:51 | 12 |
| Francisco Urena | Stellar SE | 0:51:53 | 11 |
| Chris Chappell | Epic V10 (New) | 0:54:40 | 10 |
| Matt Drayer | Epic V8 | 0:55:00 | 9 |
| Mike McDonough | Huki S1-X | 0:55:22 | 8 |
| Ken Cooper | Epic V8 | 0:56:20 | 7 |
| Kirk Olsen | Epic V12 | 0:56:25 | 6 |
| Bill Kuklinski | Epic V8 | 0:58:31 | 5 |
| Bruce Deltorchio | Epic V8 | 0:58:56 | 4 |
| Mary Beth Gangloff | Epic V8 | 1:09:30 | 12 |
Did you just refer to Mary Beth as classless?
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