Okay, it's been way to quiet lately. Yesterday was the 22nd annual run of the charles canoe race. This race is held the last sunday in april in Boston. It's an assortment of races all sharing the same finish line. There's a 26 mile professional canoe race, which draws the likes of Serge Corbin from Canada. A 24 mile relay with 5 legs - so this works to about 100 boats each with 10 participants per team - or 1000 participants for this race A 19 mile long race for kayaks and non-profesional canoe racers A 9 mile race A 6 mile race. All but the 6 mile race are primarily downstream races and have a number of portages including an honest half mile carry down the sidewalk (complete with parking meters) in Newton Lower Falls. There's some shallow water for the final 9 miles of all of the point to point races. A friend damaged his boat last year, by hitting a rock which drove his rudder through the hull. His boat had an under hull not a stern mounted rudder. Because of the shallow water I opted for doing the "lazy man's" 6 mile race. I can't comment on the other races as I only did 6. There were several additional classes this year. First off were the outrigger canoes, second to start were the Olympic K1 and "unlimited" K1. I did the race in an "unlimited" K1 so I'm not sure how many boats were in the other classes. There looked to be between 20 and 30 boats in the sprint/unlimited wave. The Washington DC sprint club sent up a team. It was great to see them race. Here in New England we see the occaisional sprint boat, but that's only because one of the manufacturers is here, it's almost unheard of to see one in use. The local manufacturer, Van Dusen, had one of the boats slated to go to the olympics on display. As expected off the start 3 sprint paddlers took off. It was very nice to watch them working together. They set up in a V formation and were regularly rotating who was leading the V. By paddling in a V formation one paddler led and the other two got to wake ride. I managed to stay ahead of 2 sisters paddling sprint K1's for a while but they passed me and I got a nice wake ride for a while, the 2 sprint boats were also alternating who was leading with the second boat riding the side wakes. I found out later that 2 other boats were behind me, making for nice long 4 boat chain. Alas, a sprint coach for Washington team was on one of the Charles river bridges and he told the 2 sisters to sprint, and they did dropping me handily. I had one or two position changes with the guy drafting me when the sprint boats pulled ahead and ended up about 20 seconds ahead of him at the finish. I ended up a full 5 minutes behind the first trio of sprint boats. The winner managed to do 6.375 miles in about 50:18 (with a good bit of shallow water and lots of other race traffic, the race distance is from a gps on one of the other competitors boats. Now I'm tempted, where to find a used sprint boat and how to sneak it into the collection ;-) It sure was nice watching paddlers who were coached and knew what they were doing, versus those of us who are self taught slappers :-} Kirk -- Kirk Olsen kork4_at_cluemail.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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