Surfski Knowledge Base

Paul Reavley
Jan 26 #25932

The resurrected Seattle Race Series held its first event yesterday at the Aqua Verde Paddle Club in Seattle. A large contingent of B'ham paddlers (particular OC1s) showed up and throwed down.

There was a mass start after a little confusion on the count down to start warnings (5 minute?, 1 minute? - which seemed more like 20 - 30 seconds in reality before the start horn blew). The most numerous division was the SUPs. I was not aware of the sizable wake that some SUPs can generate. I had a weird moment at the start where I briefly felt like I was really surfing a wave going in the right direction that I assumed was generated by my fellow racers. Some of the SUPers also seem to tend to wander sideways a fair amount. Kim R. and Julie V. in an OC2 apparently had a problem with one SUP whose board temporarily wound up under their ama? Time to steer clear….

We were given a number of pre-race instructions about where to go under the bridges and avoid interference with channel boat traffic. My impression is those went out the window with the first two bridges (6 total) - possibly because folks saw little boat traffic to worry about and just decided to take the shorter path.

After trading follows and leads with a small train of SUPers early on, my race settled into a process of very slowly reeling in a few racers in front of me who I just managed to catch or almost catch by the end of the race. Water and weather conditions were pretty benign, so my race settled into the myopia of a hard workout. I guess I paced myself reasonably well in my catch up effort, or at least the folks I was chasing had no more gas left at the finish (8.35 miles by my app) than me, or I snuck up on them and got to the finish before they were able to respond. Lance R. told me about having just enough gas to catch someone in front of him during the race, then not enough to hang on to them, arrrgh.

Kevin O. and Ana S. in a double ski crossed the finish line first overall followed by a rowing 4 who diced with K&A for a portion of the race earlier. Aaron S. came in first in solo SSki followed by Wilson R. Next came three of our Bellingham OCers who stayed together most or all of the race and probably wore each other out. Along with one other SSki (Steve G.) they all finished within 11.1 seconds of each other. Congratulations to Beau. W, Dan M., and Peter M. Just about everybody I talked to had a good time and/or got a good workout with their race. And the post race tamales were excellent.

Thanks to Rob Casey and Aqua Verde for getting this race together. Rob has 2 more of these races scheduled for late February and late March and is apparently intending to make it a monthly race year around. Winter seems to work particularly well because of the small number of races this time of year, and what seems like very limited boat traffic. How busy does the channel get during the rest of the year?

Anyway - good work to all of the racers. Results here

PR

Kevin Olney
Jan 28 #25937

There was a blurb in the Seattle Times with appearances by a few familiar faces:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/paddling-rowing-and-chasing-through-seattle/

lori & beau whitehead

Jan 28 #25938

Link:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/paddling-rowing-and-chasing-through-seattle/

njcooksey@ymail.com
Jan 29 #25939

I imagine Rob will reiterate those channel rules. I know when the new years challenge race was going, it was made very clear by the RD that if Seattle harbor police saw us on the wrong side of the ship canal, there would be no more races.

The Montlake cut is a full on washing machine on warm summer days with tour boats, mega yachts and pleasure boats. Lots of wakes to surf but the oncoming and reflected wakes make for a good challenge. You can also safely assume most of the drivers are on their third or fourth beer.

The Fremont canal is much mellower but still pretty full of boats. There is actually a small stern wheeler that runs on Sundays that puts up a decent wave. Nothing like the Gorge boat but still fun.
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-Nick Cooksey