Narrow River II: Stuck in a Groove

It was inevitable that Tim Dwyer would exploit the name recognition of his lucrative spring-time Narrow River Race enterprise by launching a fall version.  With a lock on both ends of the season, he would wield almost unfathomable power over the New England surfski community.  Although the first couple of fall celebrations carried the bitter taste of crass commercialization, Tim announced that starting with the 2023 race, all proceeds would be donated to the Elderly Paddlers' Support Association.  A savvy PR move, although I have yet to receive my cut from EPSA.

A healthy crew of 23 competitors showed up in Kingston, Rhode Island to find the Narrow River bulging at the seams - the victim of a powerful spring tide.  Nobody could remember seeing the water levels this high.  Less experienced paddlers were excited that they wouldn't have to deal with the notorious shallows of the waterway, but I knew better.  The high water would tempt us to plot courses impossible at normal levels - cutting corners and passing over shoals instead of around.  The mischievous river had given us some slack, with confidence that we'd tighten the noose around our own necks.

Just when you think everyone has forgotten they're being filmed...

Tim concluded the captains meeting with a brief pep talk to rile us up.  I'm not entirely confident that he knows what "grabbing a bull by the horns" means though.

Over the years, my fuddy-duddy buddy Bill Kuklinski has been a favorite target for playful digs and harmless gibes.  His recent attempts to inoculate himself from this "actionable harassment" (as his attorney's cease-and-desist letter recently called it) have included partnering in a tandem with Mary Beth, who, as my soulmate (and, incidentally, editor), enjoys blanket immunity to even the gentlest mockery.  Nice try, buddy, but even MB's aura of invincibility can't protect you.  To avoid ferrying Bill down to the race from his burrow near our home, we told him that our rear seats were still damp from a recent Simonizing, leaving Kirk Olsen to Tesla him to Rhode Island.  Kirk reports that Bill was generally well-behaved in the state-of-the-art vehicle, but kept repeatedly exclaiming "What will they think of next?!?"  In reference to the passenger-side floormat, of course.

I wouldn't say there was a favorite to win, because that implies at least a modicum of uncertainty about the outcome.  Mike Florio was there to win a 6th consecutive race on his home course.  The rest of us attended to witness and then spread his gospel.  I hoped to stand on his righthand side afterwards, but to merit this exalted position I'd have to fend off worthy congregants like Chris Chappell and Jerry Madore.  In the women's competition, Loukia Lila (in an ICF boat) would be up against Leslie Chappell.  Mary Beth & Bill would be facing Patty White & Chris Sherwood in the doubles' race.  In addition to the kayakers, we had 5 outriggers, a couple of SUPs, an ocean rowing shell, and a hulking Banks Dory (that weighed nearly as much as all of the other boats combined).

Chris doesn't use his broad-reaching authority as Chief Compliance Officer often, but even Mr. SurfskiRacing.com himself isn't exempt from random banishment.

A side note.  People have asked if I've tried getting ChatGPT to help write race reports.  I did some research and found that "generative AI has a tendency to produce distorted versions of the truth embedded in whimsical near-gibberish, assuming that it's not 'hallucinating' outright confabulations."  Uh-oh.  That's pretty much my thing.  Rather than being cast into the dustbin of history, I've decided to take the fight to the Cloud.  If AI can do what I can, the inverse must be true.  I'm therefore boning up on "limericks about racquetball in the style of Dr. Seuss" and "recipes that use basil, bok choy, and bear kidneys".  Be on the lookout for GregChat 1.0 - just in time for the holiday season.

I've gotten slightly better on my race starts, but guess I better work on writing about them, because darned if we're not already a minute into the affair.  We join the race with me just slipping on to Mike's stern draft after weathering the early sprints of Chris, Jerry, Tim, and Loukia.  Or is it just slipping off of Mike's draft?  We'd need a high-speed camera and a team of philosophers to solve that metaphysical conundrum.  Let's just say it was all part of a single continuous motion.  Jerry lasted hundreds of times longer on my draft, but I managed to drop him after another 30 seconds or so.

I made a game of seeing how long I could remain on Mike's successive wakes.  I first did some calculations to gauge my expectations.  I've found that an immediate stern draft is worth about 0.15 mph of effort for me.  Let's say that when you fall back to the next wake, you're getting 2/3 as much help as on the preceding wake.  So 0.10 mph for the second wake, 0.067 for the third wake, etc.  Given that I couldn't stay on his first wake for very long, I'd say that Mike was natively about 0.25 mph faster than me.  So if I were getting no help from the wake, he'd be putting an extra boat length between us every 54.5 seconds.  On the first wake, it'd take him 136.4 seconds.  On the second, 90.9 seconds.  Using this line of reasoning, I was able to calculate that I'd finish roughly 1,273.6 feet behind Mike.  I'll admit that my in-the-moment computations were slightly fuzzier than this - more along the lines of "I'm losing ground mighty fast!", but the fact that I ultimately finished 17 inches closer than estimated means that I actually exceeded my true potential.

At the upstream turn, I was on Mike's 16th wake (reveling in that 0.00022 mph boost, baby!) - roughly 30 seconds back.  Chris was somewhat more than that behind me (felt like maybe the 27th wake), with Jerry just behind and Tim in stones-throw pursuit.  I continued a backward wake progression, until the wind mercifully disturbed the water enough to erase any visual indication of my reversal.  Although the outgoing tide was now providing some help, I eventually found the thigh-deep suck-water necessary to offset that advantage.  Passing under the final downstream bridge, Mike enjoyed a 1.5 minute lead.

Another side note.  When they stopped at a gas station to grab some coffee on the way down, Kirk said that he returned with the drinks to find Bill trying to stretch the gas pump hose across the parking lot to the Tesla.  It'd be funny, instead of sad, if Bill hadn't just recently retired from a tech job.  Vacuum tube design, if I'm not mistaken.

Around 11:30, local powerboat enthusiasts finally conceded that the summer-like weather was not in fact a prank designed to lure them out into the open, only to be subjected to a sudden sleet-ridden squall.  Scrambling to their vehicles like reverse storm-chasers, they raced to area boat launches for the year's last opportunity to satisfy their paddler kill quota.  Since the Narrow River races are held in early spring and late fall (the "crotch side" of the so-called "shoulder seasons"), we're used to having the waterway to ourselves.  On this day, however, more than one paddler (I assume) found themselves screaming obscenities at malevolent boaters.  "Florio, you #$@!% idiot!  I paid you to take out @#$!%& Florio!"... and the like.  Despite my best efforts, Mike continued far ahead as we neared the final turn.

Don't worry.  We made Kirk go back and clean up all the paddle slicks he left.

When you're watching artfully filmed fly-fishing, as in A River Runs Through It, it's impossible not to gaze in mesmerized wonder at the graceful, undulating arc of the line reflecting the sun as the master fishermen lasso their prey.  That's how it works, right?  In any event, it turns out the whole spectacle is not so enthralling from the water-level perspective of the trout.  Approaching the downstream turn, I entered a gauntlet of wader-clad assassins.  Only a perfectly triangulated course between them would protect me from their gossamer snares.  I watched Mike emerge unscathed from the trial-by-angler, his iridescent, mottled skin glistening as we crossed paths.  I similarly managed to thread the needle, although the barbed laughter that accompanied my clumsy 180 degree turn did hurt my feelings.

I spent the final mile back to the finish pondering the enigma that has troubled mariners since early man first climbed aboard the floating carcass of a dead whale and started paddling it: If the downstream current is X, how can the upstream current be 2X?  I know... for idiots tooling around on boats of rotting blubber, they were surprisingly advanced in symbolic mathematics.  Mike must have received some kind of special dispensation on this leg, since he was obviously in more of a 1.5X situation.  He finished 2 minutes ahead of me at 1:06:05, with Jerry coming in 3.5 minutes later to claim bronze.  Mary Beth & Bill had a strong showing to take the double's crown at 1:12:36.  Loukia was the women's champion in 1:17:02.

You wouldn't know it to look at them, but these kids are celebrating their 12th Narrow River Race together.  Not in the same boat, mind you.  That'd be a one-and-done situation followed by a bitter custody battle over the Subaru.

It's been a kind of lousy surfski season, with paradoxically more cancellations than there were scheduled races.  But rather than letting things end on a high note with a spectacular fall day on the Narrow River (thanks, Tim!), Kuklinski has to have the last word.  The Bridges of Essex County (named with a finger on the fading pulse of Boomers) will close out the racing calendar on Sunday, November 5, in Danvers, Massachusetts.  Bill can't promise 30 degree temperatures, a bone-chilling rain, or gale-force winds, but he'll do his best to make this 6 mile flatwater paddle a fitting close to the season.  Please preregister at PaddleGuru.