Snow Row: Trial by Ice

The Snow Row inaugurates the New England racing season - a frigid baptism of sorts.  Originally scheduled for two weeks earlier, the event had been rescheduled due to a profound shortage of sled dogs in the Boston area.  A cold snap (colloquially known as "winter") had rendered the waters of Boston Harbor somewhat more solid than you'd prefer for a boat race.  A quick audit of the course on race day revealed a still impressive portfolio of non-liquid assets.  I suspect that the race committee had decided that hulking rowing craft with a half-dozen 12 foot long oars each didn't pose enough of a threat to those of us paddling gossamer slips of wafer-thin fiberglass, and had towed in some additional Titanic-class chunks of ice to augment our peril.

Calls of "Ramming speed!!!" echoed over the snowy waters during pre-race kayak attack drills.

The Snow Row course takes one on a 3.8 mile triangular tour of Hingham Bay, with vertices at the Windmill Point Boathouse in Hull, Sheep Island, and the Peddocks Island day marker.  Vortices are less predictably positioned, but the tidal current surging through Hull Gut has been known to swirl up some doozies.  Just ask me a couple of years ago.

A small but versatile cast of surfski characters showed up for the race.  We had Tim Dwyer (at his dapper best), Wesley (who sleeps in his PFD - just in case a race breaks out in the middle of the night), Bob Wright (resplendent in his new V10 Sport), Tim Hudyncia (snapping at the heels of this race like a crazed doberman), Matt Drayer (rubberized for our protection), Sean Milano (hands down the best conversationalist on the water), and new-guy Hank Thorburn (let's just say for now that he seems like a nice guy).  Then of course there was me (uh, allergic to pecans) and Mary Beth (remember to write something nice here), although MB was slumming it in a kayak.

I'm not sure exactly what was going on here, but I was fortunate enough to capture it on film.

After a quick captain's meeting, I grabbed my ski and headed out to see if I still remembered which end of the paddle to use.  More or less.  Temperatures hovered around freezing, with a light snow muffling the sounds of hurried last-minute preparations from the beach - positioning of heavier craft for their shore-launch starts, coxswains reviewing race strategy, and the fettering of counter-twisted oarlocks (I'm assuming).  The surfskis and other small boats bobbed off to the side as the first three waves stormed from the beach.  We lined up for our turn and were soon hurried off by the starter.

Wesley took the early lead, with Tim H on a starboard draft.  Since none of us had yet had the opportunity to tune his engines for racing this season, a typical slow start didn't put me at as much a disadvantage as usual.  I quickly caught up to Wesley and got on a stern draft, with Tim providing additional pulling help ahead on my right.  Knowing that if I got too comfortable in this cozy position, I'd grow complacent and never amount to anything (thereby fulfilling my parents' prophecy), I forced myself to swing wide to port to overtake Wesley.

I see this all the time, unfortunately.  People fail to safeguard their GoPros and ninjas make off with them.

I hadn't anticipated the additional navigational burdens that I'd be placed under as the ski leader.  Although the morning had started with fair visibility, Sheep Island was now shrouded in haze.  And once away from the shore, hard-to-spot patches of ice were becoming more prevalent.  I tried to stay close to  larger boats as I passed, figuring that the coxswains would use their higher vantage points to steer clear of obstacles (but not figuring that with their robust construction, they only had to avoid the largest of the ice sheets).  I managed to pick my way through the minefields with only one boat-shuddering collision, although I did have to execute a couple of speed-sucking Crazy Ivans.

A shallow bar extends from the south end of Sheep Island.  One of the larger boats had made unanticipated landfall a hundred feet ahead, and was convulsing hither-and-fro to free itself.  I aimed for her center thwart (as one does), in the assumption that the crew was competent enough to get her afloat before I arrived.  Given that this was almost certainly the same crew that had stranded themselves in the first place, I perhaps shouldn't have been so optimistic.  However, it worked out, as things always do (or never do - it's always one or the other).  With my shallow draft, I skipped easily over the bar and rounded Sheep Island.

Although I could see the day marker a mile or so in the distance, nobody seemed to be heading directly there.  Instead the boats ahead were strung out in a long curve that swung from right to left.  I ticked through the possible explanations.  Tidal flow?  Wrong direction.  Coriolis effect?  Also wrong direction.  I was pondering the likelihood of "magnetic anomaly" when it hit me.  Or, rather, I almost hit it.  A vast ice floe blocking our rhumb line.

I could see that stretches of open water had opened up within the frigid shelf.  In their ponderous boats, the rowers had no choice but to circumnavigate the obstacle, but in my more nimble vessel might I chart a path through the jagged labyrinth?  Doubtless the skis behind would follow.  I had haunting visions of leading my cohorts into a Shackletonian nightmare - trapped in the crushing ice pack, forced to survive on a diet of seals and/or fellow paddlers.  Ultimately, I decided to skirt the floe.  Those guys are just too stringy.

I arrived at the day marker in the company of the 4-person sliding seat boat that I had been sparring with for most of the race.  Back at Sheep Island I had decided that beating those gophers (rule #1, dehumanize the enemy) was paramount.  Evidently they had been more judicious in their energy expenditure, however, because after the turn they scurried ahead while I had to catch a quick nap.  When I awoke from my hibernation, they were practically out of sight.  Reasoning that "paramount" may have been overstating things, I concentrated instead on catching the slower craft ahead of me.

My arms were growing increasingly leaden.  At the turn, I had caught a glimpse of Wesley about a minute behind me.  Doubtless he was feeling fresh and helium armed, closing the distance between us with every stroke.  Fortunately, I was able to hopscotch forward through the ranks of bulky rowboats - gaining the briefest spark of energy from each imagined little victory.  If, in this process, I also managed to demoralize some rowers - to even the smallest degree - then I feel it was all worth it.

Nobody regales like Tim, but this day he had trouble wining over a dour Matt.

In this manner, I clawed my way to the finish, first in the ski division.  Wesley, Tim D, and Tim H all came in within the next couple of minutes, followed by Bob, Hank, and Sean.  Matt had unwisely elected to paddle in a thick wetsuit.  He spent the day in a violent struggle against the elasticity of the neoprene and, although he did battle through to finish the race, he clearly lost the war.  Afterwards we amused ourselves by moving his inert limbs to various positions and watching them snap back to wherever the wetsuit wanted them.  He was mostly unconscious anyway.

So, one race under our belts.  One exceptionally short race.  The Snow Row would barely constitute a warm-up for the upcoming Narrow River Race (on April 4).  Our sentence in that race will be 10 miles of hard labor, with a good segment of that through the shallowest water imaginable (seriously, it's more of  a thin film than a river).  If that sounds like fun, you deserve what's coming to you.

These are really going to help bulk up our trophy midden!

Check out this great drone footage of the race.