The wind and waves that could’ve been wasn’t, and so we prepared for a long slog that morning. The start was not that fast and at mile 1, we were probably a group of 15 skis, all too close together, weaving in and out of buoys and slower boats that started in earlier waves. There were too many boat hits and paddle smacks to have called it a comfortable group. At one point, Patrick bolted off the front to get away from the madness. I think the cause was that some skis were positioned in between normal drafting positions, which made for “weirdness” in the group, i.e. you normally ride the bow wake alongside another ski, making darn certain that your bow never gets in the way of that paddler’s blade exit, or you ride directly astern of another ski. If you ride in most other positions, you’ll prevent other skis from “fitting” into usual drafting spots, and so you end up setting up clashing paddles and boats.

Photo by Doug Mogill

In any event, the madness was starting to settle down when we left the Annisquam river and turned out onto the Atlantic at mile 3. Our group was now about 8 paddlers and now only 2 or 3 abreast. At about mile 4, I was getting a bit squeezed inbetween the paddler to my left and an outcropping of rock, heretofore known as “Hilburn’s rock”. You don’t want to have a rock named after you. I slid over the outer margin of the pool table size rock, as the waves rolled up and over it. I actually didn’t really see that it was a potential hazard until I was over it and smacked my right paddle blade on it. Because I was using a 3″ long nub of a rudder in my paranoia of catching weeds, I passed right over without hitting. Poor Jeff Hilburn was on my stern. I’m thinking that the water must have run out another inch by the time he went over it, or else he went slightly inside of my line. In any case, the sound that I heard was horrible. The sound of gelcoat scraping followed almost immediately by the solid knock of a glass/epoxy rudder, kevlar/epoxy crunching and then the sound of hexagon core material popping and crushing all in rapid succession. It was like someone threw a huge handful of those snap pops onto the ground in one throw. Clearly, his race ended at that point which was unfortunate. Shortly afterwards, I looked around and saw Joe the Glickman, Ed Joy in his homemade ski – held together by scotch tape, paper mache’, and lots of hopes and prayers, Corey Lancaster in his millenium, and Don and Patrick in front of the group. So, now we were down to 6, though I might have missed any other(s) just off the back of our group. The next time I looked around, I only saw Patrick, Don, Corey, and that was probably about at mile 7 or so.

Four of us started across the large bay at the NE end of Cape Ann island, and only one came out. . . Don, Patrick and I soon dropped Cory, and then picked off slower paddlers ahead of us in the thickening fog. The lead group way ahead was an OC2 and 2 OC1’s who told us that they were on the right course to the gap at Straitsmouth – and they were. Because we didn’t want to slow down and follow them, we went on ahead and soon found it very disorienting with variable wind and swell. After about 10 minutes of this, I remember hearing a foghorn ahead and to the left, and reacted by aiming in that direction, Don and Patrick on my bow wake at the time. My reaction was that the foghorn must have marked where the strait was, but the foghorn actually marks the outer margin of the island, not the strait. Logical now, but then . . . But, in my defense, Don didn’t say anything and he probably knew the area better than I did – so it’s OUR mess-up. So, we saw land, heard the foghorn, and followed the shore, rounded the island, and knew that something wasn’t right. Just a few minutes later, we saw all the other boats coming through the strait to our right, including the fast skis. Thinking that we just lost the race for the win, I put my head down and went into time trial mode to try to get back up to the front. Our speed was good and I pulled for about the next 30 minutes. The water then was wobbly and I was having a difficult time with boat tracking and balance at times because of my 3 inch rudder – which I now agree is pretty useless unless it’s pretty much “K1 flat”. 1 ft swell coming over our left stern. We caught lots of very short rides. Sometime in here, Don dropped off and went wide. Apparently, he had some severe butt pain from his borrowed padded-seat V12, but he was probably searching for more current, too.

Patrick and I then ran into traffic as an OC6 was passing us to our right, we were coming up to Cory and Ed who were about 100 yds ahead, and the Gloucester harbor wall was about 1 mile to go. To avoid riding the OC6’s wake, Patrick and I had to change course, or so I thought. I went around behind it to get on its right, while Patrick stayed to the outside. The OC6 sped up and went past us, then slowed relative to us, and we then found ourselves flanking the OC6. The problem now was that the shore was coming in from the right, Cory was just ahead of me, and Patrick was to the outside of the OC6, so the OC6 was effectively penned in – and I was getting squeezed along the rocks. About then, the OC6 steersman understood what was happening and he slowed and went around back of Patrick, which let Cory and I get out from the shore rocks. By then, we were arriving at the harbor wall, Patrick was 30 yds ahead, and Ed was alongside of me. We rounded the harbor wall with the four of us pretty close together. The last 1.9 miles upwind into the current, I just could not close the 30 yd gap up to Patrick and finished 11 seconds back. Don managed to catch and pass both Cory and Ed, and finished 3rd, 1 min 9 sec behind me. ~ Erik