Casco Bay Challenge: Spring Tide

Eric McNett introduced the Casco Bay Challenge in 2013, welcoming the paddling community into his magnificent backyard playground. There's no denying Maine's beauty. But nobody could have imagined that they would deliberately keep signing up year after year for a 16.5 mile race that arrives at about the point in the season where an extended Saturday nap would be more appropriate. Yet here I stood with Chris Sherwood and Joe Shaw, about to embark on our fifth trip across Casco Bay. Mary Beth, having skipped the inaugural year to give the fog a chance to dissipate, was looking at her fourth voyage. We'd be paddling from Willard Beach in South Portland to Mere Point Boat Launch, a few miles south of Brunswick. You're channeled in more-or-less the right direction by a series of islands, but that doesn't stop you from second-guessing your navigation decisions until your boat's on the car at the finish.

You may not have read the telegram, but Maine recently split from EST/EDT to form their own time zone.

In the days preceding the race, there was some concern that afternoon thunderstorms might put the kibosh on the competition. Given the man in charge, however, any apprehensions on this front were baseless. If an bottomless 500 meter wide whirlpool opened up in the middle of Casco Bay, Eric would simply rename the race the Maelstrom Classic, shoo us off into the vortex, and yell ambiguously that he'd see us on the other side. Fortunately, the forecast lightened as the race approached, ultimately resolving to a beautiful day with partly cloudy skies.

With 9 surfskis, 10 outrigger canoes, and a SUP, the Casco Bay Challenge would be a cozy affair this year. While the race has drawn as many as 25 skis in the past, all that talk about maelstroms has apparently scared off all but the heartiest paddlers. This just goes to show how poorly people evaluate risks. With only three lost paddlers in the first four years of the race, you're more likely to be maimed in a moose-related accident on the way to the race than you are to disappear at sea. So come on up next year and help stem the population explosion that has downtown Portland overrun by antlered menaces.

You don't usually see this kind of fashion sense among paddlers.

Two years ago, a horde of well-mannered Canadians swept down upon the race in an attempt to silence their unruly neighbors. Flatwater specialists Neil Lang and Robert Lang finished fifth and sixth that year, despite my chants of "USA! USA!" from the vaunted seventh position. Robert returned this year, driving down with four-time Blackburn veteran Tim Milligan. Given that Robert will be representing Canada in the 60-64 age group at the Marathon World Championships this fall, he seemed like the man to beat - even in ocean conditions. I also couldn't rule out Joe, for whom 16.5 miles is a light pre-breakfast paddle.

Turning on my GPS after launching my boat, I was startled to find that I was technically dead. Until I realized that I had just forgotten my heart rate strap - an uncharacteristic oversight. Since I rely heavily on heart rate to gauge my effort (I'm likely to answer "10" to any question about perceived effort, even while lounging on the sofa), I'd be paddling blind. Or, at least, paddling dumb.

Tim and Robert ignored my pleas to "do something Canadian" for the photo. Or did they?

After sending the lone SUP out as a sacrificial offering for any bloodthirsty ferry captains on duty, Eric pointed us in the right direction and dispatched us on our way. We were starting an hour after spring tide. As Chris helpfully pointed out beforehand, this meant that as we approached the finish in a couple of hours, we'd be struggling against a massive outgoing current. Although Max Ebb would start pummeling us soon enough, in theory we'd enjoy a tidal boost for the first few miles.

The initial mile was a bit confused from boat wakes, but I was able to work some small runners to hop out to a quick lead. I noticed that quite a few people were angling towards the Diamond Islands, but I stayed out closer to Peaks Island. As we gained protective cover from the open ocean, the Bay flattened out and my speed started to drop. Given that the tide was supposed to be on our side and yet I was operating a few tenths of an mph below my expected flatwater speed, I suspected weeds. I stopped and back-paddled a few strokes. Much like my 11th grade career aptitude test, the results were inconclusive (unless you count "nothing that involves sharp edges" as definitive). This was to be a recurring theme. I had on a larger rudder than usual and there was a fair amount of floating vegetation, but I'm guessing that at least three-quarters of my dozen or so stops were for phantom weeds.

I could see a line of paddlers back a few lengths way to the left, but I could never quite convince myself that they were on a better line. I made a couple of half-hearted efforts to veer in that direction, but since I never committed to a full-out course change, ended up cutting a middle path among the islands. The water was now very calm. With little else to work with, I had to get resourceful in exploiting the occasional boat wakes that came by - timing my deweeding breaks so that I could recycle those waves.

For no apparent reason a following current picked up when I was adjacent to Long Island, along with some glassy swells. With the sun reflecting off the wobbling and glossy surface, concentrating too hard on identifying the crests and troughs was a recipe for nausea, so I had to paddle mostly by feel. My steady-state speed jumped by more than a mile per hour. Within ten minutes or so, however, the helpful current started turning on me. I fought desperately to keep the pace up, my heart pounding hard enough to register a signal on the GPS even without a transmitter. Fish started floating to the surface, stunned by the concussive beat, but the effort was to no avail.

Only five miles into the race, and now the spiteful current was wholly against us. Despite my earlier (and later) speculation that staying left was the better route, I angled closer to Chebeague Island on the right to escape the flow. Nope. And I had to waste more effort swinging wide to avoid the shallows around Division Point. I'd estimate the current at around a mile per hour from mile 7 to 12, stepping up gradually from there. I wasn't going any slower than I would have been paddling into a strong breeze with a neutral tide, but because there was no tangible evidence as to why I was having trouble breaking 6 mph, it felt much more dispiriting. Also, it was hot and I hadn't packed enough water. By mile 13, I was downright listless.

The entrance to Merepoint Bay was guarded by two vast unbroken arcs of seaweed, separated by perhaps a half mile. The Circles of Hell. I had sworn earlier that I'd be damned if I let Robert catch me again, but seemingly this was one of those do/don't invariant scenarios you hear about. I searched anxiously for a breach in the first of these floating barriers, but ultimately had to plow through and immediately deweed. When I got back up to speed (such as it was) and saw the next barricade curving ahead, the last few drops of my morale evaporated. Momentum was the one thing in life I could call my own, and now that too was going to be taken from me. An unrefreshing wave of despair washed over me. Speed bleeding off with each stroke, I made it through the flotsam. After reversing to remove the bountiful harvest from my rudder, I looked around from a stop to get a rough estimate of how many people would be passing me in the final mile. I saw nobody, but that was hardly a relief. It just meant that I'd have to suffer a hard push before being caught unaware by a descending fleet.

As it turns out, none of that happened. The hard push was more of a lethargic drag. And the fleet graciously waited until I had finished to come pouring in. It took me 25 minutes longer than last year, in a time only marginally slower than my fastest Blackburn. Indefatigable Joe was the second ski to finish, with Robert claiming third. On the women's side, Kathleen McNamee won and Mary Beth took the silver. In a year in which almost every other repeat paddler added 15+ minutes to their time, Luke Rhodes topped the OC-1 field by shaving 8 minutes off his 2016 time, taking the second overall position. Mark Lessard and Andy Hall repeated as OC-2 champs, while Mark Preece persevered on his SUP.

Attempts to resuscitate me were met with grumpy refusals.

While professing empathy, I was inwardly delighted to find that many other paddlers had also wallowed miserably on the course. The current, the heat, the weeds, and the mesmerizing stretches of glassiness had taken their toll. Even a sighting of the happy-go-lucky seals on Bustins Ledge elicited only the merest blip of cheer. There was a general consensus that the suffering was less acute along a left course line, but if half the fun of a race is complaining about it afterwards, those foolhardy competitors short-changed themselves. If complaining isn't half the fun, I may need to rethink my life strategy.

Thanks to the McNett family for carrying on the tradition of hosting us for a memorable day in Maine.

On to the next race! Due to climate change, the Jamestown Double Beaver will be blossoming several weeks earlier than usual. You must preregister for the July 8 race through PaddleGuru. Even if you have no plans to race, why not throw a few bucks in the pot so that Tim can upgrade to an open bar at the after-party?

Ride the Bull: The One That Got Away

Back in 2013, Wesley and Tim took advantage of Rhode Island's generous tax incentive program to bring the Ride the Bull race to New England's 6th largest state ("Small in Stature.  Big in Hea... Hey, give me back my lunch money!").  Situated in the tempestuous waters off the southern coast of Conanicut Island, this race is designed with a single goal in mind - to test our ability to follow complicated navigation directions.  No, wait, that can't be right.  Where's that brochure?  Ah... right. To prove our rough water mettle!  It's the Tough Mudder of surfski racing, without quite as many electric shock obstacles.

Despite its reputation as being little more than the wattle of Massachusetts, Rhode Island does have its charms.  (Photo courtesy of Pat Sheehan)

Due to a temporary shortage of area paddlers (note to those lily-dippers who skipped the race due to "family obligations" - no kid ever grew up to say "I wish my father would have been there when I woke up from brain surgery"), we were forced to take drastic measures - shipping in replacement racers from central New York.  John Hair, Todd Furstoss, and Jim Mallory emerged blinking from their crates, having been carefully packaged the previous day.  In an unfortunate delivery blunder, Hawaiian Ed Joy also found himself in the wrong island state.

Twenty years ago, Ed was a regular at the Blackburn Challenge, notching up four wins over a six year period.  Before the race, he confided to me that he would trade all those wins for a more prestigious Ride the Bull crown.  It turns out that was hollow bluster, however.  Efforts to swap my 2016 RTB win for a single Blackburn triumph were rebuffed, even when I sweetened the pot by throwing in a couple of second place finishes at Sakonnet River, a seventh place at Lighthouse-to-Lighthouse, and a hard-earned DNF at the now defunct Kettle Island Run - a real collector's item.  Based on his past East Coast performances and more recent finishes in Hawaii (with Borys ahead, but within a half-dozen coconut throws), Ed was the odds-on favorite on Narragansett Bay.  However, I also anticipated strong performances by Jim, John, Chris Laughlin, and Mike Florio.

Wesley's off-color jokes at the captains meeting fell just four paddlers short of being an unqualified success.

Conditions on race day were mild for the area, but still more challenging than anything we had raced in yet this season.  Last year I had wisely opted for my V10 Sport, and I was seconds away from pulling out of our driveway with the Sport again.  But when an urgent text from Tim informed me that in his 73 years (he looks good, I agree, but based on his grandpappy-level of technological ineptitude, you shouldn't be too surprised), he had never seen water so calm.  Seeing the text over my shoulder, Mary Beth threw herself on my V14 like a sergeant taking a hand grenade for her squad.  I'd have to make her proud in the V10.

In its short four year history, Ride the Bull has included twenty-seven different courses.  This, of course, is due to the race organizers' progressive "pick your own route" policy.  Paddlers were free to wander where whimsy directed them, provided that no more than 15% of their journey was of the spiritual variety.  Times have changed, however.  In an authoritarian effort to stifle originality and drain all the joie clean out of our vivres (without anesthetic, I'll add), Wesley and Tim insisted that all paddlers stick to the designated course.  To ensure that everyone complied, we'd complete two laps in a constrained area where a surveillance boat could more easily monitor us for creative route adjustments.  In an act of futile (but satisfying) rebellion, during the captains meeting we collectively feigned idiocy in failing to comprehend the instructions.  An increasingly frustrated Tim only caught on after the fourth question about whether we should keep buoy G7 to our left, our port, or just round it in a counterclockwise direction.

Was I the only one who wasn't filled with confidence by this?

The course would take us out of West Cove, around a rock inside Mackerel Cove, outside of buoy G7 (huh - none of those options), around buoy G11, and back inside the rocky island at the mouth of West Cove.  We'd then repeat that.  The course would take us out of West Cove, around a rock inside Mackerel Cove, outside of buoy G7 (huh - still none of those options), around buoy G11, and back inside the rocky island at the mouth of West Cove.  We'd break out of this cycle of despair after the second lap and zoom/limp out around G7 (paddlers choice) before returning to the launch area to finish.  Although this path would take us just shy of 9 miles, you'd never be out of narking distance of a fellow paddler should you be tempted to defy authority.

Sixteen paddlers soon assembled in West Cove for a rolling start.  There was some polite jostling as we made an immediate right turn around Start Rock (not yet the official name, but Wesley is calling in a few favors), but no permanent damage was done.  After the turn, Jim, Chris Laughlin, and Andrius Zinkevichus formed one pack on the right, while Tim led his own squad further from shore. Nobody was quite sure what the hell Ed was doing, but he was doing it alone out front.

Despite the extra miles it entailed, Jim, John, and Chris were pleased that they opted for the "Architecture of Jamestown" tour.  (Photo courtesy of Pat Sheehan)

Initially, Ed was on a line that would take him into the shallow bay preceding Mackerel Cove.  After a couple of us yelled "Left!  Left!", he turned nearly 90 degrees in that direction.  As near as I could tell, his new heading would have him exiting Narragansett Bay and making landfall in Cuba by mid-August.  Naturally, a couple of us hollered "Right!" Which brought him shooting back diagonally across the front of the pack.  Was he pranking us?  Incapable of incremental adjustment?  Drunk?  For the safety of all involved, we stopped shouting instructions.

I managed to pull ahead of Jim, Chris, and Andrius as we approached the turn into Mackerel Cove.  I was able to trap Ed between my boat and the shore, which effectively kept him wandering too far off course.  We'd spend the next seven miles within a few boat lengths of one another, trading the lead a half-dozen times.  Although our conversation was mostly one-sided - me providing information on the next way point during the first lap - I feel like we truly bonded during our time together.  Not quite so much that I need to send him a Christmas card, but enough to ensure we have a place to stay the next time we want to spend a couple months in Hawaii.

Ed, me, and the only buoy in Narragansett Bay that we were strictly prohibited from rounding.  I'm pretty sure all that background activity was added in post-production.  (Photo courtesy of Pat Sheehan)

I'm happy to say that while accompanying Ed around the course, I also cracked the mystery of his seemingly erratic behavior after the start.  Lobster in the footwell.  We locals are accustomed to dealing with the vexing crustaceans, but Ed has been away a long time.  I jest, of course.  It's like riding a bike.  With claws.  It turns out that his right-angle turns were only coincidentally related to our shouted directions.  Ed is just 30 degrees more aggressive than most of us when it comes to chasing runners.  And better at catching them.  Him angling out and shooting ahead was a frequent refrain during our travels.

The remainder of the first lap passed uneventfully.  During the stretch from G7 to G11, we got an assist from the incoming tide along with a few pleasant rides.  As we neared the House on the Rock, the hard edges on the water got smoothed out in a disconcerting way.  Flat and glassy... fine.  Lumpy and glassy... unnatural and nausea-inducing.  At the G11 turn, I could see that Chris L, John, and Jim were in pursuit.  During the second lap, I struggled more to keep up with Ed - particularly in the beamy section between Mackerel Cove and G7 - but managed to pull even again as we returned to the House on the Rock.  At the second G11 turn, Jim was now in third, but it seemed like we had widened our lead a bit.

Patches of floating weeds were abundant along the course.  Although you could avoid some by planning ahead, others were too extensive to maneuver around without DQing yourself.  One particularly large mass near Bull Point supported a significant population who were in the process of applying for statehood.  Several paddlers were forced to deweed themselves, none in more dramatic fashion than Mike.  Unable to shake a virulent clump via conventional means, he dismounted to manually remove them, only to have the rudder harness slip off while the boat was inverted.  Without steering, Mike was forced to withdraw.

Through careful analysis of my video, I finally discovered the reason for the power asymmetry in my stroke.  Elbow too low on the right.

My weedless rudder kept its promise, but it provided no protection against a more insidious foe. While passing the pier at Fort Cove on the second lap - about 1.5 miles from the finish - I caught a fluorescent fishing line with my paddle.  I quickly untangled myself, but apparently the mono-filament had also caught on my rudder.  A dozen stroke later, I had taken up the slack in the line, the fisherman on the other end set the hook, and the fight was on.  Although I couldn't see him, I'm guessing this guy was strapped into a fighting chair on the pier, because my attempts to pull him in were futile.  I tried back-paddling to free myself, to no avail.  Unless I got help fast, I'd soon find myself mounted and hanging in a Jamestown bar.  Some of my surfski buddies would show up occasionally to toast my memory ("I'm right here guys!  Just help me down!  Guys!"), but they'd gradually forget me, I'd grow dusty and maybe lose a couple of fingers, and when the bar gets converted into a yoga studio twenty years down the road, I'd end up in a dumpster fending off raccoons.  Fortunately, Ed rescued me from this musty fate, rafting alongside and prying the line free.

With jeers and curses following from the jetty, we eventually moved onward.  Although Jim had drawn within a few lengths during the fishing line delay, I assumed that the lively seas would continue to throw him off his game enough that he wouldn't be a threat.  With Ed slowly pulling ahead in the final out-and-back leg to G7, my concentration was in keeping him close enough to be able to comfortably use the phrases "nipped at the line" or "nosed out" when writing about my inevitable defeat.  Let's say 20 lengths or less.  During the upwind run to G7 I got the peripheral impression that Jim might not be complying with my assumptions, but I couldn't afford to divert my attention from Ed ahead.

Having lost their way, Tim and Chris search frantically for the course.  (Photo courtesy of Pat Sheehan)

By the time I hove around the buoy, Jim was finally within spitting distance.  In retrospect, that effort to demonstrate my scorn at his open-water abilities kind of back-fired.  A highly motivated Jim proceeded to school me during the half-mile downwind back to the finish.  In our matching V10s, he looked more comfortable than I felt.  For a time I worried that by stoking Jim's competitive fire to such a degree I might have actually endangered Ed's lead (which seemed a harsh repayment for his sportsmanship), but the latter held on to snag the victory.  Only twenty seconds after I claimed third place, a hard-charging Chris L pulled in, with John less than a minute behind him.  Mary Beth easily took the top spot among woman.

Despite the mellower-than-usual conditions, the latest course was a success.  Everyone agreed that being able to track the progress of their fellow paddlers along the loop course somehow fostered both competition and esprit de corps (to replace that lost joie).  It's a shame that the bylaws require that a novel route be devised for 2018, but what can you do?  Get involved.  Write your local race organizer.  Change begins with you!  That's not really relevant here.  But stasis also begins with you!

Wesley starts the third lap.  (Photo courtesy of Pat Sheehan)

Thanks to Wesley and Tim for launching us into the summer season with pizzazz.  And to photographer Pat Sheehan, who captured the beautiful on-the-water shots highlighted above (and many more - check them out).

Next up on is Eric McNett's 17 mile pleasure cruise through the magical islands of Maine's Casco Bay. Remember, if you just keep heading northeast, you'll probably end up back on the mainland.  That's June 24.  Register for the Casco Bay Challenge at PaddleGuru.  We then have a weekend off before Tim's Jamestown Double Beaver on July 8.  Guess where to register...  That's right, at participating Taco Bells.  If you can't find one, try PaddleGuru.

Sakonnet River Race: Catch and Release

With Mary Beth away on her annual June pilgrimage to "where you're not", I was desperate to recruit someone to fill my open Goodboy rack for the trip down to Wesley's 10th Annual Sakonnet River Race and Pizza Jamboree.  If I couldn't find a willing passenger, I'd be forced to bring both the V10 and V14.  A regrettable race-time decision would inevitably follow.  I ultimately had to offer $500 and a couple of meal vouchers, but I finally convinced Bruce Deltorchio to join me.  I was looking forward to some lively conversation, but he told me that'd be an extra $250.  When I protested that I was out of cash, he slipped on his noise cancelling headphones and worked on a Sudoku for the entire trip.

Up until a couple of days before the race, it looked like the Rhode Island economy would be suffering a harsh blow.  With nearly two-thirds of its tourist revenues derived from surfski racing, the prospect of only a half-dozen out-of-staters showing up at the Sakonnet had the governor slashing quahog subsidies left and right.  Fortunately, a slew of  (drunken, I'm guessing) late night registrations pushed the state ledgers back into the black. With the top 5 finishers from the Narrow River Race (Mike Dostal, Mike Florio, Jan Lupinski, Chris Quinn, and me) meeting again, the race promised to be challenging.  Especially for those of us dipping our toes into the Grand Fogey class.  Despite the fact that any of those guys might beat me, I was focused on Dostal.

It's tough to say when exactly our sport was taken over by bad-asses, but for those of us who remain stubbornly awkward and self-conscious, it can be a little intimidating.

Heck, these outlaws even got their own walking-towards-the-camera-in-slow motion shot.

OK, now.  I feel like things may be getting a little out of hand.

Dorky, wizened, and virtually lipless.  Now that's a New England surfskier.

I've raced against Mike D ten times previously.  In four of those races, he was in an ICF boat.  And, based on our relative performances, I have to assume that I was in an anchored barge.  In the other six ski-to-ski meetings, however, I emerged victorious.  Granted, that was partly due to teaming up with Ben Pigott to dump Mike in the Annisquam River during last year's Blackburn.  But mostly due to the fact that Mike spends more time standing atop podiums at the National Marathon Championships than he does sitting in a surfski bucket.  Unless conditions picked up considerably (or Ben made a surprise visit), however, my Dostal defeating streak was in real jeopardy.

I was busy taking photographs during the brief captain's meeting, so I didn't really catch many of the details.  There were plenty of wild gestures and dire warnings, of that I'm confident.  I believe the gist was this: From McCorrie Point, paddle 6.25 miles towards the ocean, turn on Mooring Buoy 114 (you gotta try their calamari), then return back to the start to get ready for the 2018 race.  We grabbed our boats and hit the water, eager to show off our comprehension skills.  Unfortunately, Jim Hoffman suffered a pre-race rudder failure on the beach.  As the rest of us arranged ourselves at the starting line, he circled helplessly in the sand like a three-flippered turtle.

While gesticulating during the captains meeting, Wesley inadvertently called in a drone strike.

Wesley soon gave us the one-minute warning, followed by a pair of thirty-second warnings (I might have heard one of those wrong), a ten-second warning, some advice on cleaning cast-iron pans, and the start signal.  Mike D seized the immediate lead, quickly separating himself from pursuers Andrius Zinkevichus and Jan.  Playing it cool (let's say), I hung back to see how the field would develop.  Once I had a pretty good sense of who had better starts than me, I got to work erasing those deficits.  I slowly moved past Chris Q, Mike F, Tim D, Chris Chappell, Joe Shaw, and Chris Laughlin to get to open water behind the three leaders.  Although I didn't realize it at the time, the entire field behind me was cutting shoreward as I successfully pursued and passed Andrius.

Mike and Jan seemed to have established a wary truce at 6 or 8 lengths apart, with Jan perhaps 10 lengths ahead of me on a wide line.  Having now caught a glimpse of a train of skis I guessed was being led by Mike F or Chris Q on an inner line, I decided to split their paths.  When we reached Black Point, 3.5 miles into the race, we'd all necessarily be forced together to follow the shore towards the Third Beach turn-around.

I caught Jan and eased alongside just before Black Point.  We didn't speak, but simply exchanged somber nods.  We knew what it would take to catch Mike.  We'd be plumbing the depths of our courage and resolve, but in the end, we could take pride in knowing that we gave our everything to the chase.  We would no longer be able to physically hold our heads high by the time we completed the race, but perhaps someone could prop us upright and jury-rig some type of neck braces.  I knew they'd also draw obscene pictures on our faces, but hoped they'd spare our eyeballs.  I took the first pull.

By the time we caught Mike just after mile 6, Jan had provided me with a veritable stroke clinic.  My own private one-on-one lesson.  And, thoughtful an instructor as Mr. Lupinski is, he positioned himself so that 100% of his tutorial was recorded on my backward-facing GoPro for later review.  Unfortunately, the accompanying audio track was pretty much ruined by an off-camera ventriloquist griping about "good-for-nothing freeloaders".

After the race, impressed with my ability to maintain a wildly inefficient rate of 106 strokes per minute, Jan told me I had the heart and paddling technique of a horse.

A lot of you scoffed when I had those guys from MIT install a laser interferometer in the bow of my boat.  Although more generally used for quality control during microchip fabrication or for detecting minuscule shifts associated with gravity waves, I figured its nanometer-scale accuracy would come in handy when inching up on competitors.  Mike remained stubbornly fixed ahead at 51.2063283 meters for several minutes before the distance finally started to tick down.  51.2063282, 51.2063281, 8.8888888 (saltwater and delicate electronic equipment - a bad combination), 51.2063280.  You get the idea.  51.2063279.  I needed to step it up a notch if I wanted to catch him before the sun ran out of fuel.

Eventually, some of Jan's peripheral instruction must have taken hold, because we began to close on the leader at a rate that a mobility-impaired slug would have found respectable.  During this phase I made sure to stay hydrated - leaving that mucus trail really depletes your liquids.  To his credit, Mike contributed his fair share to our gains.  He insisted on taking lines that angled him away from the direct path along the shore, periodically missing a stroke to look over his shoulder for the pursuit team's approval of his route.  My mouth offered steadfast support ("Looking good!  Might want to bear a little more away from land!") but my body language ("I'm paddling in a different direction than you!") apparently spoke louder.  Picking up on these non-verbal cues, Mike would temporarily adjust his course.  His saw-tooth track helped us to ratchet closer, however.

After a particularly long stay at 6.2601148 meters back - apparently stuck on the first harmonic of Mike's wake - I finally eased onto his wash.  Jan, his lesson plan complete, slid from my side draft to a stern draft.  He lingered there for a few moments, but the slime made it difficult for him to maintain a grip and he slipped off.  I was only able to enjoy few hundred meters resting behind Mike before I suffered the same fate.  As we swung around the turn buoy in less-than-graceful arcs, he managed to accelerate away from me.  I was chasing again, but this time without Jan's reassuring presence.  I held steady at a couple lengths back for perhaps a half-mile, but was soon falling further and further back.  The interferometer reading was eventually increasing at such a fast rate I felt compelled to periodically douse it with water lest it melt down.

The trip back to McCorrie Point was frustrating.  Although a mild incoming tide should have been helping us, attempts to exploit this flow were met with wind resistance.  After tapping my GPS to ensure the needle wasn't stuck, I determined that a better strategy would be to tuck out of the wind.  I quickly discovered how difficult it is to paddle while curled into a streamlined fetal position, so instead cut left to let the shore break the wind.  During this process, I noticed the dark silhouette of Jan's boat gliding smoothly on an even further inside line, back a dozen lengths or so.  Jan himself was nowhere to be seen, which gives you some idea of just how effective a paddler he is.

Mike continued to surge ahead on a more central line.  Now that I was no longer directly behind him, I had to use seat-of-the-pants estimates of how fast his lead was increasing.  Only by applying some creative trigonometry during these assessments did I manage to maintain a splinter of morale.  When Mike passed McCorrie Point, however, I suspected that it would be difficult to make up a 400 meter deficit in the 200 meters left in Mike's race (barring a fortuitous spearfishing incident up ahead, of course).  I attempted to ramp up to the necessary 24 miles per hour, but fell just shy of the mark - practically handing Mike his first surfski victory.  And me my 6th consecutive second place finish at the Sakonnet.

Mike explains the finer points of bait-and-switch racing - get their hopes up in the first half by paddling out front at 70% effort, then crush their spirit by ramping up to 75% for the return leg.

After finishing, I looked over my shoulder to see how close Jan was, only to be surprised by Mike F. charging across the line to take third.  Nearly two minutes behind at the turn, he made up all but 25 seconds of that in the return leg.  Jan and Chris Q filled out the top five spots.  Leslie Chappell took the women's crown, with Olga Sydorenko close behind.  In an ultra-competitive doubles race, Mark Ceconi nosed across the line slightly ahead of Sean Milano - that despite the latter's last-minute attempt to clamber over the mid-deck into the lead.

As we enjoyed pizza and cookies, we compared our notes on the race.  Despite mellow conditions and a favorable slack tide, it was not a particularly fast year.  Everyone was in agreement that they, individually, had taken the worst line.  Not being one to rock the boat (at least, not intentionally), I joined the chorus in singing the deficiencies of my route.  My heart wasn't in it though.  I couldn't be too unhappy with my performance given the result.  Thanks to Wesley and Betsy for hosting another successful race on their backyard waterway.

If Mark and Sean don't make you smile, there's something wrong with you.  Or perhaps you just know too much about their dark past in the koala fighting rings of  Perth.

It's time to separate the wheat from the chaff.  On June 17, we'll toss a bunch of skis into the turbulent waters of the Ride the Bull course and see who floats to the top.  I'm hoping for that sweet spot - just rough enough to throw the Mikes off their games, but not chaotic enough to launch Tim D or Jim H onto the podium.  Wesley and Tim ask kindly that you sign up beforehand at PaddleGuru.  It's free.  If you fail to pre-register, you'll only be allowed to race if you bring me a sleeve of  Fig Newtons, something made out of jade, and five Susan B. Anthony dollars.  Why me?  Why those items?  Who can say.  But I'll remind you that this blog has always maintained, at best, a tenuous relation with reality.