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New Year's Challenge 2010
Paddling Dynamics Race
lori & beau whitehead
01/02/10 #7616
Great race today. Mostly a downwinder, with only about a mile of quartering head wind. Not sure how many total OC's, surf skis, 6-man OC's there were. There were about a dozen SUP's and one Dragon Boat.
Heading up the last 3 miles there were great knee high rollers and a stiff tailwind, great rides, except when I could feel the rudder of my 18' SUP coming completely out of the water. I managed to fall-in twice, wearing wet-suit pants and just lycra on top, it was refreshing to say the least. No CG needed however (-: The majority of the race was an easy swim to shore.
At one point I was paddling along and not really looking ahead too far, when suddenly I saw several people swimming nearby. I thought it might be a “polar bear swim” at first, but realized it was all the occupants of the Dragon Boat! The boat was completely submerged, all 2000 lbs of it. The paddlers were making their way to shore, some wearing wets suits & some wearing what appeared to be cotton sweat suits. Maybe it's a new water proof kind of cotton that I'm not familiar with. Brrrr. I paused long enough to make sure everyone was going to make it in, before continuing on.
There were several other Hamsters there including Paul Clement and one of the Larry's.
Super fun race, and well organized considering it was only thought up 45 days ago.
Beau Whitehead
http://paddlesurfnorthwest.blogspot.com/
Larry <lbussing@…>
01/04/10 #7638
I gave this race a try as I haven't been able to do many this year because of…stuff; you know how that gets in the way. I had the typical race within a race. Watched Eric Moles disappear but was able to keep a surfskier from Vancouver in sight. He was slowly inching away. But I was having a good times slowly pulling away from 3-4 OC2's. Enjoyed battling with Pete Wells, who is making a paddling comeback in an OC2, and his partner Mike. When we got to the Lake Washington down wind run I started having a blast. Rolling two footers. The surfskier from Vancouver was having a hard time with his new UNO and I was able to close before we turned a corner out of the wind and he took off in the flat water. I was drafting a double OC2 by then; it may have been Jeff Briggs and partner, but was too tired to actually look. It was fun to blow some of the carbon out of the lungs.
Larry B
