Ah, mid-summer, when a young man's fancy turns to the Jamestown Double Beaver - the most technically challenging and innuendo-laden course on the New England ski calendar (although the upstart Ride the Bull race admittedly has potential). Mostly named for the out-and-back crossings past Beavertail Light at the southern-most tip of Conanicut Island, the Double Beaver features the invariably confused waters of Narragansett Bay, which have been known to make grown men cry. Well, at least one man. In my defense, I was pretty terrified.
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| This is why Easter ski hunts never caught on. |
As always, Tim Dwyer and his family hosted the race out from the welcoming grounds of the Jamestown Yacht Club. With a spacious lawn for boat prep, a picnic area with beautiful views of the bay, and onsite trauma counselors available 24-7, it's the perfect venue for the Double Beaver. A lively crowd of paddlers gathered for the festivities, including several spectators who came solely to gawk at the carnage.
Perhaps fearing that the Northeast crew was getting a little complacent (not a single lost paddler this season) (well, not
permanently lost), Tim had doubled-down and changed the course to make it "one bad-elf mother chugger" (he talks like that). After rounding the Beavertail can, we'd continue heading across the bay to Whale Rock instead of keeping to the relative safety of the western shore of Conanicut Island as in the past. This new route would send us through unprotected, tempestuous waters and across a busy channel, virtually guaranteeing that several of us would perish. The change was, of course, met by the participants with universal acclaim.
Last year the calm conditions in the protected harbor deceived me into paddling my V12, even though I had also brought the Huki, a move which I felt fortunate to be able to subsequently regret. Having safely ignored the lessons of 2012, I noticed the calm waters of the harbor and chose my V10, leaving the S1-R on the roof rack again. Given that the V10 is much stabler than the V12 and conditions weren't as beamy as last year, however, I'm happy to report that I'm only half-heartedly haunted by regret. Mary Beth tells me that I've virtually stopped screaming in my sleep.
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| Tim's lecture on post-colonial onion farming in Jamestown was unexpected, but surprisingly moving. |
After a brief captains' meeting that rather ominously included the phrases "next of kin" and "dental records", twenty-one skis and an outrigger lined up for a clean start. Due to the number of paddlers and the necessity of weaving between moored pleasure craft, the leaders divided into two prongs. Borys Markin and Jan Lupinski surged on the left, while Joe Glickman, Flavio Costa, and Eric McNett took an inside line on the right. In between the two, I vacillated beside Rowan Sampson for a few moments before deciding that Jan would probably feel hurt if I didn't once again scramble monkey-like onto his back.
Inexplicably, Borys wasn't rapidly becoming a test of visual acuity, but rather seemed to be hanging with the other leaders. At one point, he even dropped behind me. Could he have snagged the mooring line of a ketch, which he was now towing out to sea? Had some prankster perhaps severed a few tendons in each arm? Then it hit me. He was curious. Like an anthropologist studying the primitive behavior of a remote and uncultivated tribe, Borys wanted to document our primordial attempts at aquatic locomotion. I saw him jot down a few notes before, having collected enough data for the day, he rushed off, leaving us to contemplate the black sorcery that must propel his vessel.
Fresh in his new red-tip V10 (a boat which had earlier this summer been involved in a complicated multi-boat trade that ended up also sending a promising young paddler to the frigid waters of Maine), I expected Jan to push the pace like he had a few weeks earlier in the Blackburn. Within a few minutes, however, I sensed that he was off his game. As we merged with the track of the other lead pack (which had by this time pulled ahead a few lengths), Jan slid back out of view with nary a gurgle. In danger of losing contact with the paddlers ahead, my ego unilaterally scrapped my meticulously crafted race plan (which had nothing in it about field testing a Zone 6 heart rate) and set off in earnest pursuit.
Shortly after passing the House on the Rock, I caught Joe and Flavio. Eric was several lengths ahead. As the waves diffracted around the southeast corner of Conanicut Island, a few significant runners lined up in our direction, packed a lunch for us, and sped us on our way towards Beavertail Light. We'd enjoy smaller rides most of the way out to Whale Rock, but that exhilarating initial send-off left me craving more substantive waves and another ham sandwich. Joe and Eric pulled off on an inside line, while Flavio and I yo-yoed for a few moments further out before he broke free during a walk-the-dog and ran off to join the others. I remained alone outside (flashback to several of my grade school birthday parties), gradually losing ground to the others. By the time we reached Beavertail Light, I was perhaps a dozen lengths back.
After passing outside of the intimidatingly large Beavertail can, the leaders appeared to have trouble spotting the low-lying rock island we were supposed to navigate around before returning home. The 1938 hurricane that stripped Whale Rock of its lighthouse apparently didn't leave much of the island either. Joe, Flavio, and Eric were heading well to the right of what I took to be the rock, so I hedged my bets and charted an intermediate course. My wager paid off handsomely several minutes later when the pack corrected course to the left, allowing me to cut a quarter boat length off their lead.
I found my mind wandering aimlessly as I chased ("chased" may be a little optimistic - let's say "followed") the now on-course paddlers. I wondered, for example, if there had ever been a young lad named "Flavio Glickman". If so, that'd probably be a bar mitzvah you wouldn't want to miss. As I was thinking what might be an appropriate gift for this imagined youth, my daydream was interrupted by the Harbinger of Death. Odd name for a sailboat, I thought, once I had found and dislodged my heart from its hiding place in my gullet. I suspected Mortal Terror and Impending Doom were
likely to bear down on me as well, so I spent the rest of the race
weaving madly in the hopes that they'd choose an easier target. I'm not
saying Kirk Olsen is more deserving of bisection than I am, but I did
hear him once say (out of the blue!) that sailors are dim-wits who smell of low tide.
Ahead of us was a large green buoy, behind which we could see the confused and foaming waters surrounding Whale Rock. Joe and Flavio looked to be planning a counterclockwise rounding of the island, while Eric was heading the other way. I followed the former group, only to be surprised when they abruptly turned on the buoy. Thinking that the fellows had not understood Tim's directions, I stopped and patiently explained to them that they had deviated from the specified course and would be subject to a time penalty, at the least, with a stint in the public stocks if Tim were feeling particularly churlish. They, in turn, reminded me that since the Case of the Missing Swim Platform at Ride the Bull earlier this season, the race committee had granted Borys (who had also turned before Whale Rock) broad leeway in defining courses at his discretion. It's Borys' world, we just paddle in it (at a respectful distance back, naturally). Seemed reasonable to me, so I rounded the buoy and called out to a rapidly receding Eric to do the same.
The change in course became a party game of Telephone shouted to passing paddlers over a cacophony of wind and waves. By the time it got to mid-pack, the original cry of "Turn at the buoy!" had reportedly morphed into "Turnips? Oh boy!" When the message finally reached Mary Beth, it ironically had come full circle to "Go around the rocks!" As the only racer to actually complete the prescribed course, she's now petitioning the ICF and General Motors (just to be safe) to have the rest of the field DQ'ed. To this I say, bring on the Blizzards!
Wary of Tim's pre-race warning that Poseidon frowns on those who approach too close to the Beavertail light, the field showed a healthy respect for his wrath. Tim's, that is. Nobody wanted to be the schmuck who screwed up the Double Beaver by raising the insurance premiums. Eric had caught me quickly after the turn-around and now started to pull away as we headed back. Joe and Flavio were taking an inner line, presumably to escape the outgoing tide. Eric followed their lead, but I decided to stay further out, mostly out of mulishness. If I was going to lose to these guys, I would do it on
my terms - because I made poor navigation decisions, not (just) because they were better paddlers.
The GPS never lies, but does it have to tell hard truths with such malicious glee? I was struggling to keep my velocity in the mid 6's on the long stretch back to the House on the Rock, despite the fact that the surf was heading in my general direction. Just after Mackerel Cove, all semblance of wave structure disappeared, leaving the sea in a state best described as "pointy". I figure the waters closer to shore must be even sharper. Though I was weebling pretty badly, I was closing the gap on Eric. Shortly before the left turn that would lead us by the House on the Rock and on a straight line for the finish, I pulled alongside. I tried to come up with a clever quip that, when combined with my unexpected reappearance at his side and tossed off in a carefree manner, would thoroughly demoralize Eric. I went with a gasping "blaarghhh", which I was pretty pleased with.
Eric's never met a craggy, hull-ripping shoreline he hasn't felt compelled to challenge to hand-to-hand combat. Some people tempt fate. Eric knees it in the groin and steals its wallet. He took a hard left through the rocky shallows around the point. God smiled and he shot through on the kind of unpredictable eddy current that one generally only experiences shortly before blackness, gaining several boat lengths on me in a matter of seconds. While this miracle transpired, I was being tossed around by the standing waves that had formed out where sensible paddlers tread.
For the last quarter hour, it had been clear that we were slowly reeling in Flavio. Heading towards the finish, he took an extreme inside line. Either he was trying to avoid the outgoing tide or, as a racer on his maiden Beaver run, wasn't exactly sure where to find the finish. Eric seemed to be following Flavio, but I decided to take a more direct line to the yacht club. With all the boats moored in the harbor obscuring sight lines, I thought I might be able to slip past Flavio before he perceived any threat. I pushed hard for the next five minutes, only to look over and discover that Eric had spoiled my half-baked plan by revealing a different threat - that of he himself passing Flavio. I figured Flavio would respond to this with an extended sprint to the finish, so I also upped my pace (not that my damnable GPS noticed).
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| Huh. Hawaiian clown tycoons. Probably trending on Twitter about now. |
Although I kept checking compulsively to ensure my oxygen-starved brain wasn't just making mutinous excuses to ease the pace, I seemed to be pulling steadily ahead of Flavio in the final half-mile. Apparently, his tank had run dry and he was coasting into the yacht club on fumes. The top-five finish order was Borys, Joe, Eric, me, and Flavio. Beata Cseke swept in less than a minute after Flavio to take the top woman honors. Twenty-one of the twenty-two starters finished the course and although a few of the paddlers had the shakes, we expect those that didn't start that way will make full recoveries.
The post-race festivities included jamming entire sandwiches into our mouths, trying to snag some Twizzlers before Joe could pocket them all, and exaggerating how hairy the conditions were (I think I heard Bob Capellini say that at one point he could no longer see the sky). Raffled awards provided by Epic and Adventurous Joe Coffee were dispensed liberally. And in what now appears to be a delightful new Rhode Island tradition (no, I'm not talking about chicken shaving), the 2013 Double Beaver champions were dressed in humorous get-ups and made to dance about for our amusement. Take note, Olympic Committee - it really humanizes the elite athletes. Thanks to Tim, Alyce, Finn, and Gaelyn for a wonderful day.
