Blackburn Challenge: Odyssey

When you've been paddling competitively for a certain number of years, the races tend to run together.  But the Blackburn Challenge always stands out in your memory.  And among those races, certain Blackburns are seared into our collective consciousness, universally referenced by simple monikers.  The Rough One.  The Hot One.  The One I Shouldn't Have Eaten a Huge Breakfast Burrito Right Before.  Nobody doubts that the 2024 Blackburn will be added to this pantheon.  I spent the better part of a day workshopping names involving cool terms like "atmospheric condensate" and "compromised visibility", but in the end, I settled for the lowest common denominator.  The Foggy One.

I've been on the Blackburn podium several times, but the top step has eluded me.  Every year I hope for the stars to align in my favor, but since the Cape Ann Rowing Club has repeatedly rejected my requests for veto power over registrants, I'm doomed to compete instead under the black cloud of misfortune.  This year I counted no less than 5 paddlers who would almost surely finish ahead of me.  This list contained 3 previous Blackburn winners - South African Ian Black (2019), Rob Jehn (2021, 2023), and Ed Joy (1996, 1998, 1999, 2001).  Other contenders for the crown included Rob Foley and Matt Drayer, both of whom have been force-feeding me humble pie this season.  I had also heard frightening things about young sprinter Sam Rhodes, although this would be his first ocean race.

At the captain's meeting, we reviewed the basics.  Racers would circumnavigate Cape Ann in a clockwise direction, starting in the Annisquam River and ending 19.5 miles later in Gloucester Harbor.  The skies were overcast, with 10-15 mph winds blowing from the southwest.  On a playful closing note, we were notified of a great white sighting along the course the previous day.  Opportunistic vendors at the launch made a killing on shark repellent, tourniquet kits, and blindfolds.  Once a dozen earlier waves had been launched down the Annisquam - including one with 7 double skis - the 24 singles lined up for our start.  After a lot of confusion about whether racer #45 was present (turns out I was), the starter sent us off.

I doubted that I could keep up with the leaders even for a few seconds, and that proved to be the case.  Ian, Ed, and Rob J made an early break, with Rob F in pursuit.  After a few minutes of jostling, Nick Robison, Sam, and I settled into the next chase group.  This was Nick's first ever race, and he had started paddling less than a year ago, but fortunately I wouldn't become aware of those demoralizing facts until afterwards.  I might also have felt a little guilty taking advantage of his generosity in pulling me (and Sam) for the first 10 minutes of the race.  Nope... that sounds nothing like me.  As we lined up for the final bend in the Annisquam, I swung left and moved past Nick and Sam.  Sam followed on my wash, but Nick took a different line and started to drop back.

The lead trio split into a duo, with Rob J chasing.  Sam and I were closing on Rob F, but we wouldn't catch him until leaving the river and passing the Annisquam light.  He hung with us for a while, but dropped off after a few moments - marshaling his resources for the long race, I imagined.  I had no such long-term strategy.  Which is probably why, for the next six miles, I did the majority of the pulling.  Sam's turns in the lead were noticeably faster than mine, but also much smarter (by which I mean: shorter).

With little wind on the north side of Cape Ann, I was getting a little toasty.  Relief was right around Halibut Point, however, as we started heading southeast across Sandy Bay towards the halfway point, a cool breeze now in our face.  Reaching the safety boat at Straitsmouth, we yelled out our numbers (actually, I yelled out Rob J's, hoping to get him DQed under the broad "Unspecified shenanigans" clause).  In return, we were met with frantic arm-waving and shouts that I couldn't quite make out.  Maybe "Your dog is dead!", which was technically true, but 40-odd years too late to be breaking news.

If they added a few intermediate postures, Sam and I could be the end points on one of those "Evolution of Man" diagrams.  (Photo courtesy of Phil Sachs)

Shortly thereafter, Sam warned me that Rob was catching us and that "there's also some creep lurking further back in a black boat".  That had all the earmarks of Matt.  Rob soon joined us.  With 12 miles under our belt, I still felt relatively fresh.  That is, until I realized that the difference between my 57 years and the combined lifetimes of Sam and Rob left enough extra time to produce a bottle of 12 year old scotch, some well-marbled blue cheese, and several seasons of a brooding Norwegian detective show.  I suspected that those spirited moppets might finish with slightly more vigor than I could muster.  After gamely hanging with them for the next mile or so, I watched the youngsters move ahead and dissolve into misty obscurity.  Given my advanced age, I wasn't particularly surprised at developing cataracts, but the sudden onset over the course of just a few minutes was slightly alarming.

It took me a moment (as would be expected in my dotage) to reconcile the warning shouted from the safety boat at Straitsmouth with my incipient blindness.  "Fog ahead!"  Both mental and physical, it seems.  I was soon enveloped in an otherworldly mist.  Unfortunately, the arrival of the fog coincided with the leg that required we navigate a 3 mile open stretch during which a straight-line path would leave us at least a half-mile from shore.  With shifting visibility in the 100 to 500 feet range, there'd be no landmarks for navigation.

We've had a number of fog-bound races in New England over the past decade, but those have been modest affairs where the loss of, say, ten percent of the field wouldn't raise a public outcry (particularly if one were to select those 1.7 missing paddlers carefully).  Should 20 people go AWOL, however, you can bet the Gloucester Times would have a field day with the debacle.  Some of the more prepared competitors had GPS waypoints or compasses to guide them.  Others wisely decided to hug the shoreline, knowingly adding nearly a mile to their circumnavigation in exchange for not being featured in the full-color In Memoriam insert.  And then there was the "How hard can it be?" crowd, who figured they could dead reckon a straight line through the limbo.

It should go without saying that I was an enthusiastic member of the know-nothing camp.  Fortunately, the misguided confidence in my navigational skills initially worked in my favor.  I missed the "turn off" at Lands End that would send me into open water, inadvertently following the shore for an extra 3/4 of a mile before heading out to sea.  This shifted the crossing closer to shore, which allowed me to use the distant sound of crashing breakers to my right as a guide.  And by keeping the incoming swell (from the southeast) on my left, I hoped to maintain a consistent southwest bearing.

Something they don't tell you about paddling in the fog (probably because they assume that the one thing they do tell you - don't - should be enough) is the amount of second guessing you'll experience.  Usually I decide on a course of action and then ride that decision to its inevitably disastrous outcome.  But now I would repeatedly say to myself (aloud, mind you, to help break the eeriness) "You've got the line now!", only to be convinced moments later that I'd be making landfall on a different continent.  Perhaps one that doesn't even exist in our normal space-time continuum.  This uncertainty also impacts motivation.  It's difficult to maintain a competitive drive when you're 90% sure you're paddling in the wrong direction.  Also, when you're already in purgatory, hard work and clean living are no longer going to earn you any credit.  Which helps explains all the swearing and boozing.

Like they always say, the camera adds 100 feet of visibility.  It felt even foggier than this.

I paddled alone through the void, no sign of fellow man.  Time was now without meaning, but at some "future" point the Back Shore of Gloucester loomed colorlessly into view.  I'd discover later that my open water path had been more EKG-like than you'd prefer, but in broad strokes you could describe it as linear.  I could now feel my way along the coast, making frequent course corrections to avoid a rocky end to the race.  I finally started to encounter other racers and/or spectral manifestations, materializing from the haze ahead.  I was tempted to test their corporeality by passing straight through one of them, but then remembered how difficult it is to remove ectoplasm from neoprene.

After turning one corner (maybe... who can tell?), I was surprised to see Sam and Rob emerge from the gloom.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt as to their physical reality, I assumed that they had squandered some of their zest in taking a longer open water path.  This hypothesis was bolstered by the fact that when I first saw them, the two paddlers were literally heading at right angles to one another.  I wondered for a moment if a lost child had been reported in the area - splitting up for such a search seemed the most likely explanation for such behavior.  Since Rob seemed to be paddling directly for shore (which was, granted, invisible) I decided to follow Sam.  With any luck, I'd be out of earshot by the time Rob met his doom.

Sam would have surely melted into the fog had he not been pathfinding - zigging right to find the shore, then zagging back to avoid the same.  A half-dozen lengths back, I could just make out his wandering silhouette, allowing me to average his deviations to an approximation of a straight line.  After an interminable span tailing Sam in this manner, the Dog Bar breakwater eventually appeared - an unmistakable milestone that would guide us to the entrance of Gloucester Harbor.  Without navigational challenges to slow him down, Sam started to pull away.

I was clinging onto fifth place entering the harbor, but was almost immediately knocked another notch down by Rob, who apparently had managed to avoid being shipwrecked.  With nearly two miles of open water separating the Dog Bar from the Greasy Pole, many racers once again had their heads in the (surface-level) clouds with no concrete target.  As Matt's GPS track later revealed, a few minutes later he would do a full loop within the harbor - disoriented and seasick.  I was fortunate to have a fading string of boats ahead.  Assuming that somewhere sufficiently further up the procession, someone could actually see the finish, our well-spaced fleet would also arrive there safely.  Of course, like a game of telephone, a few distortions were inevitable as the bearings were relayed visually down the line.  My track was vaguely sinusoidal, but got me safely to a 6th place finish without excessive meandering.

Ian had finished first, clocking in at 2:49:54.  Of course, as an aquatic demigod, he has celestial seafaring resources (no, not GPS - the mystical kind) unavailable to the rest of us.  Despite taking a longer coastal route, Ed and Rob finished only 6 and 7.5 minutes behind Ian, respectively, to claim the other podium spots.  Jean Kostelich defended her SS20+ women's title, with Emerson Yang taking the men's award in that category.  In their first ocean race, seasoned flatwater team Joel Pekosz & Chris Weaver destroyed the course, putting in the fastest time of the day at 2:45:23.  In the SS20+ double's race, Bernie Romanowski & Andrew Metz won as the fifth overall surfski.

Five-sixths of the SS20+ doubles podium.  Apprehensive about blowing his witness relocation cover, Igor opted to make himself scarce.

Of course, a race report wouldn't be complete without a well-composed photo of the winner.  That's Ian on the far left with the expressive eyes.

The typical post-Blackburn discussion topics - bad boat choices, funny hats worn by racers, the proletariat's role in post-industrial societies, etc. - were swept away by fog tales.  In the topsy-turvy world, competitors compared distances rather than times, with bragging rights secured by those with the longest trips.  The minority of well-prepared paddlers with GPS guidance were shunned by the clueless daredevils.  These sad pariahs stood mutely by as the rest of us swapped tales of staggering navigational incompetence and giggled over the outrageous tracks shared on our phones.  The median distance was probably in the 20.6 mile range (a mile and change longer than usual), but some intrepid explorers logged well over 22 miles.  Legendary waterman Dana Gaines, with 30+ Blackburns under his belt, showed off his skills by writing messages (in Greek, no less) with his GPS track.  Eli pioneered a new overland route via the sandy causeway linking Salt Island to the mainland - possibly setting himself up for a more extended portage from Good Harbor Beach to Gloucester Inner Harbor in 2025.  We were each Odysseus, searching endlessly for home.

OK, there was also some talk about Ed's ridiculous hat.

The inaugural Bay State Games Paddling Competition is up next this Sunday (July 21) at Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA, but if you haven't already registered you're gonna have to settle for spectating.  Or, more likely, sleeping in.  However, you can still get in on the New England Paddlesports Championship (register at PaddleGuru) on Sunday, July 28.  This 12 mile course on the Connecticut River in Hinsdale, NH promises to be not only fun, but dangerously close to the excellent pubs across the river in Brattleboro.