As I was driving to Gloucester from my home in Ossining I kept peering through the misty windscreen to see how much motion there was in the trees in the woods along Highway 84. In spite of the predictions for stormy conditions Mother Nature’s weather vanes seemed to standing perfectly at ease: fog and misty rain there was but no sign of winds gusting up to 20 knots. I made a slight detour to check out Gloucester Harbor before arriving at the high school, and it seemed about as calm as I have ever seen it. There was some wind from the south, as predicted, but not much sign of an impending “perfect storm.”

Photo by Doug Mogill

After the pre-race briefing I drove my car to a parking lot near the finish beach and had an easy warm-up paddle to the starting line. Things were running pretty much on time with those who had anticipated less punctuality finding themselves starting by themselves between classes. I wondered how accurate their times would be. My class, the fast sea kayaks and the sea kayaks, were off at pretty close to 8:25 and soon 40+ kayaks were strung out along the Annisquam River where it was just past high tide. I took the lead and then promptly failed to make the first angled turn to the right and a group containing Maury Eldridge, Dana Gaines and Ed Leszek nosed ahead of me. I had to push it up to 7.5 mph to get back into line with them, but quickly went into the lead and averaged about 7 mph for the 2+miles up the river into Ipswich Bay.

The fog was quite dense and the Annisquam Light House was sounding its dismal-sounding fog horn, but most of the time you could still just make-out the shore. As a result I probably stayed too close to land and at times had to pull out sharply to avoid reefs and rocks. By this time I was on my own and averaging less than 7 mph but every now and again would catch some swell and happily see the GPS bounce up to 7.5 mph. Soon I was catching the slower sea kayaks and wondering when the High Performance Kayaks would do the same to me. More unnerving, at around 6 miles or so, Dana Gaines caught up with his red and white Epic and from there it was a competition for first place in the class. Around eight miles the surf skis caught up with Pat Hemming closely followed by Eric Borgnes leading a procession that seemed to me to be on an Atlantic crossing line! They soon vanished into the fog and Dana and I continued to dice it out in our less crowded world. He seemed to have a GPS directing him so I followed him as he threaded his way through Straitsmouth. The fog began to clear and it seemed as if a hazy humid sun would finally appear and perhaps the promised 20 knot winds would appear to churn up the languid ocean surface. I don’t like humid heat and with no spray skirt I had an additional reason to pray for continued calm.

The sun changed its mind and winds remained under wraps which made the paddle along the south side of the Cape little more than a gentle rocking in the cradle than the premier open water challenge in the Northeast. Usually I was no more than a kayak length ahead of Dana and it was obviously going to come down to a sprint at the end. Just as we got to the breakwater at the Eastern Point Light, Alex McLain in her surf ski came up and passed me. That was a challenge I could not resist and got in step just behind her for the sprint to the greasy pole. The harbor, which is usually a topsy-turvy cauldron of confused waves, churned up by power boats, was the calmest I have ever seen it. The foggy conditions and promise of a storm had kept the fair weather sailors indoors, and with only a small following sea I was able to really put the hammer down. I soon passed Alex and it was obvious that Dana was not coming with me. I had Tim Dwyer in my sights as the greasy pole materialized out of the haze, but Tim obviously had some sprint left in him and nosed in about 10-15 seconds ahead of me. Like Alex he had started 10 minutes behind me so in reality they were both considerably ahead. Dana ended up second in the Fast Sea Kayak Class about 48 seconds behind me. My GPS registered 19.57 miles for the total distance. ~ Roger