Lighthouse to Lighthouse: Sin of Omission

Under the stewardship of Gary Williams, the multi-craft Lighthouse to Lighthouse race has served double-duty as the East Coast Surfski Championship since 2014.  Gary is held in such high esteem for his untiring efforts on the L2L that some of us true believers have erected shrines to him in our homes, where we make ritual sacrifices to celebrate his benevolence (and, perhaps, curry favor in case of disputed rule interpretation).  The 2017 installment of the race promised to be a humdinger, reuniting many of the contenders in this year's Blackburn, while sprinkling in locals who missed that race out at The Gorge.  Toss in a couple of wildcards from Michigan and a rising star from down south, and you have the most anticipated race of the New England season.

Here's a little known fact.  The amount of black pipe wrap tape Mary Beth and I use on our skis technically qualifies us as licensed plumbers under Massachusetts Department of Health and Public Safety regulation 104-CR-833.

Within hours of completing this year's L2L, I was hustled into the back door of a black SUV by a group of masked hooligans.  As the chloroform and/or day's fatigue took its toll, I slipped into a deep slumber to the sound of roaring engines.  Confused and disoriented, the next morning I awoke to find myself on a family vacation in Scotland.

I had hoped to be able to find time to write this report while on the road, but I failed to take into account the fact that I'd spend the majority of my time abroad unconscious.  My skull now bears the historical imprints of neolithic tomb ceilings, medieval castle lintels, Renaissance arches, and post-modern skylight cut-outs.  And the corresponding secondary floor strikes, of course (including a splendid impression of Roman tile-work).  Whiskey may have been involved in some incidents.  I don't have many photos of the trip, but once the bandages have been removed, I'd be happy to provide interested parties with a phrenological tour of my Scotland experience.

Back to the race...

Like buzzards to the fly-covered corpse of an antelope, the sharks of the Great Lakes region have stampeded to Long Island Sound.  In addition to L2L veterans Rob Hartman, Erik Borgnes, and Denny Paull, we were joined by fellow Gregs Greene and Hintze.  In chatting with the midwest guys before the race, one of them asked me how I thought the race might play out.  I speculated that Rob and youngster Nate Humberston would duel for the win, added that predicting third place might be a trickier proposition, and then, in comically self-defeating fashion, failed to shut up.  As curator of the SurfskiAmerica database, a spreadsheet junkie, and a quasi-lovable loser with few outside interests, it’s safe to say that nobody is more obsessive about the relative performance of North American paddlers.  I haven’t been in a race in the past five years for which I haven’t tabulated a top-to-bottom predicted finish order.  And, sadly, I don’t just mean in my head.

Given that they had to rescue a stranger from a burning car on their way home from the race, it was a real stroke of luck that Dave and Andrius decided to debut their superhero costumes at the L2L.

So naturally I couldn’t resist a chance to vomit out my musings when offered a chance.  I retained enough sense to obscure the order, but I predicted that Erik, Craig Impens, Jan Lupinski, and myself might contend for third.  Obviously I had miscalculated on Erik, who easily out-paced everyone else.  And had left Paul Facteau off the list, mostly because I'd never even heard of him.  But the big mistake was omitting Denny Paull, who was standing four feet from me at the time.  Giving the guy you edged out the previous year that little extra motivation to settle the score… that’s a recipe for sweet, sweet comeuppance.  To make matter worse, the man arrived with two first names and an extra L.  So you know he means business...

The course would be the same as preceding years.  We'd start offshore from Shady Beach, proceed outside an initial turn buoy, Sprite Island, Peck Ledge Light, Goose Island, Copps Island, and Sheffield Island before rounding Greens Ledge Light and returning the way we came.  The forecast was for minimal wind and flat conditions, but race veterans weren't falling for that meteorological ruse.

I can only hope that Jim and Steve were focusing on Gary.

After a captains meeting in which Gary emphasized sportsmanship, safety, and stoicism in the face of a malign universe (the Three S's, as he called them), 57 skis launched into the becalmed waters.  Coming into the race, I had been feeling optimistic.  Several excellent training sessions in the last few weeks and a season-best performance at the Great Stone Dam Classic the weekend before had led to raised expectations and pride-goeth-before-a-fall levels of self-confidence (see above).  At the starting line, however, anxiety and doubt flooded my system.  Stomach pounding and heart churning, I desperately tried to remember Gary's centering exercises.  No good.  I'd have no choice but to abandon all the S's.

Despite my nerves, I’d rate the start as my best ever in a big race.  Which is to say, I didn’t spend the first five minutes brining in the collective paddle spray of half the field.  Within a hundred meters, I had established a place in the top dozen skis.  As expected, Nate and Rob seized the early lead.  I was alarmed to see that Jan had matched their initial sprint to latch onto their wash, but forced myself to concentrate on hanging with the chase group.  Erik, Paul, Tom Murn, Steve Rankinen, and myself made the first buoy turn together, but by the time we reached Sprite Island, Erik was threatening to declare his independence from our once tight-knit coalition.  Tom and Steve fell off the pace a bit, but Paul and I managed to prevent a clean secession by latching on Erik's draft.  At some later point Denny petitioned to join our federation, and - against my strong dissenting vote - was granted provisional membership.

Although Jan had held with Rob and Nate up front for the first mile or so, by the Peck Ledge Light he had fallen off their draft and was pursuing an outside path on his own.  Although we'd briefly merge rounding Goose Island, he declined to join our train.  He drifted off to our left and eventually started to fall back.  I heard hushed rumors afterwards of a dodgy rudder and severe chafing problems - pretty much the standard hurricane of confusion and innuendo that whirls around Jan.  Meanwhile, it was taking everything I had to stay with Erik.  To keep him ignorant of my hanging-on-by-a-thread status, I'd occasionally yawn loudly to suggest that his pace was barely sufficient to keep me awake.

The last known picture of Jan with nipples.

It was at about mile 2.5 that I realized that while somebody might challenge Erik for bronze, it wasn’t going to be me.  This came as a great relief.  I could now abandon that gnawing sense of guilt that came from freeloading on the wash of a peer for so long, and replace it with a glowing sense of pride that I was hanging on the wash of a superior for so long.  From tactical weenie to strategic genius, just like that.

I couldn't allow myself the luxury of looking behind me too often since I'd inevitably lose a couple of feet on Erik and would have to scramble frantically to get back in yawning position.  To help me out, Denny made the occasional bold foray outside of the wash to alert me to his continued presence.  I couldn't be positive, but it seemed that we might have misplaced Paul somewhere along the way, as one sometimes does.

I continued to concentrate on Erik's stern as the miles ticked by.  The fact that my exertion was at hour-long race level in a contest that was nearly twice that duration was of some concern, but I hoped that the Borgnes boost would provide me with enough of a head start to hold off predators looking to take advantage of my weakened state.  As we cleared the end of Sheffield Island, the sea became slightly more agitated.  Combined with my growing fatigue, this was enough to finally provide Erik his sovereignty.  I wasn't too keen on being newly autonomous, but Denny made sure that I would stay that way by pulling cleanly around me as we neared the light at Greens Ledge.

Although Erik had achieved escape velocity and would soon be invisible to the naked eye, perhaps I could keep Denny in my orbital range.  He was a couple lengths ahead as we began to round Greens Ledge Light, but due to a fortuitous (and completely unplanned, unrehearsed, and uncompensated) turn of fate happened to hit the only tight turn of the race just behind the double ski manned by my dear friends, Sean Milano and Mark Ceconi.  Not only would Denny have to maneuver around the tandem, he'd have to do so while fending off Sean's enthusiastic attempts to engage him in good-natured chit-chat.  During this struggle, I managed to briefly catch Denny, only to have him slip away again while I myself was engrossed in a delightful conversation about Parmesan cheese.

We began to retrace our strokes back towards the start, now paddling into wind and waves that had kicked up unexpectedly during our 30 second rounding of Greens Ledge.  Figuring that the low-lying islands would provide very little wind protection, I chose an outside line to take advantage of a mostly hypothetical outgoing tide.  While watching Denny widen his lead on a more moderate line, Paul reappeared and also started pulling ahead.  Not today, good fellow.  I vowed to stick with my new nemesis no matter what.  The power of that conviction lasted nearly 5 minutes, but in the end, I figured it'd be simpler to get a new new nemesis.  Or, better, eliminate the hassle of cultivating a fresh rivalry and just renew the time-honored struggle against a tried-and-true antagonist.  I looked over my shoulder to see if Jan was available, but no such luck.

Paul moved ahead, but didn't have the common decency to put himself out of conceivable reach.  For the next few miles, I watched as he slowly closed the gap on Denny, the two of them perhaps 20 lengths ahead.  Rounding Goose Island, I decided it was finally time to make a token effort at catching these guys.  Doubtless it'd become apparent after a couple of minutes that I had no hope of overtaking them, at which point I could shut it down and coast into a sixth place finish with a few arteries still unburst.  To my cardiologist's dismay, however, my final push bore some fruit.  I was making up some ground.

Based on some cockamamie theory that my under-oxygenated brain had concocted regarding the curvature of space-time, I became convinced that the shortest path from Peck Ledge Light back to Sprite Island was a graceful arc of significant radius.  I watched in scoffing contempt as Denny and Paul opted instead for straight lines - unquestioningly following the rigid constraints of Euclidean geometry.  I imagined their looks of awe and wonder when they found themselves inexplicably behind me... victims of my superior inter-dimensional navigation skills.  While basking in the warm glow of this delusion, I happened to notice another conformist on the "direct" route, some lengths back.

No.  Not him...  The black boat.  The fierce visage.  The impeccable musculature.  Craig was coming for me in his dark ski of doom.  I had been scrupulously checking for signs of the fiend since the turn-around at Greens Ledge, but he's notoriously wily.  With a mile left in the race, he was coming for me with Terminator-like implacability.  Eyes bugging out due to witless panic (with an assist going to off-the-charts blood pressure), I threw myself into catching Paul on the off chance that Craig would be satisfied with an alternative victim.

Unbeknownst to me, both Paul and Denny were doing what they could to help me improve my position.  Paul had been cramping since the last lighthouse and Denny had driven his rudder through his hull on the rocks off Sprite Island.  Denny had a little too much of a lead for his sportsmanlike gesture to pay off (I appreciate the effort, nonetheless), but by the final buoy turn I had closed to within a half-dozen lengths of Paul.  Trying to disguise my lurking presence in the final straight-away, I positioned myself on the far side of an outrigger we were overtaking.  If nothing else, it prevented him from glancing over, seeing how close I was to expiring, and digging just a little deeper to deliver the coup de grâce.

Having pulled even with Paul, I let one last wave of Craig-induced terror propel me through the final hundred meters to squeeze into fifth place.  Denny, Paul, me, and Craig had finished within a span of 41 seconds.  Given Craig's rate of closure over the final few minutes, the order surely would have been different had the race been much longer.  Up ahead of our group, Rob had powered to a convincing win, while Nate held on against a hard-charging Erik to take silver.  Behind us, Eric Costanzo finished just ahead of Matt Drayer for eighth, with Jan rounding out the top ten.  In the women's race, the podium spots went to Pam Boteler, Fiona Cousins, and Leslie Chappell.  Entering his fourth decade of dominating the SS20+ class, Bill Kuklinski took home yet another win.  Retirement, along with a healthy dose of what I can only assume are equine-caliber steroids, agree with him.  Finally, Joe Shaw and Doug Howard won the doubles category with the fourth fastest overall time.

As part of our hazing ritual, first-time racer Ryan was subjected to probing questions about his favorite Mocke, Rice, and Chalupsky brothers.

Thanks to all the volunteers and sponsors for continuing to make the L2L the preeminent East Coast surfski race (with special acknowledgement to Stellar Kayaks and FastPaddler.com for providing prize money).  I'm already looking forward to next year's festival weekend, in which a dedicated doubles race will debut on Sunday.  Gary, remind me again... chicken entrails or goat blood?

Erik, Rob, and Nate (with Stellar Kayak's Dave Thomas)