A Long Story
S.S. Weyers – Southampton, Bermuda

The Intro:

All the cool titles for articles on the 25th Blackburn had already been taken by Echols, Spies, Ceconi, Carter and Lysobey. I thought of naming it There and Back but then I remembered that one was already used by Tolkien. Mein Kampff is such a strong title but the original author’s actions and ideologies meant that those two words could never be used together in the same sentence again. Ever. In light of what I was paddling on the day Stellar Wars came to mind but then I ran the risk of taking on George Lucas and his Force on the principle of association. So I decided to name this what it was. A long story. If the editor chops it too much then I can simply rename it A Short Story.

In February 2010 we toured through Gloucester and around Cape Ann. It was cold. Probably the eighth or ninth coldest day I’ve ever experienced in my life. I wanted to see the little village where they shot The Perfect Storm and also where the Blackburn Challenge takes place every year in July. By the way, how and why do filmmakers do that? Move things around I mean. This was based on a true story so one would assume you’d keep it real. In the movie the forlorn lover runs from the Crows Nest bar onto the dock. Try that from the real Crows Nest bar and you’ll get run over by a foreigner driving a Dodge Nitro for sure. So this is my story of how I got to do (and did at) the Blackburn.

The Prequel (because any good story must have one):

I’m a South African (Saffa) living in Bermuda. Bermuda is a tiny fish hook shaped island in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean just over 1,000 kilometers to the east of the nearest landfall (North Carolina), with a total landmass of 53 square kilometers (21 square miles) and a tad over 100 kilometers (64 miles) of coastline. Bermuda is a thriving business centre and one of the top international financial centers in the world.

(courtesy: Wikipedia)

It is surrounded by massive stretches of ocean and is the tip of an ancient volcano that rises out of the deep. Strangely Bermuda has almost no breaking surf. In the 3 years that I’ve lived here I had no more than three surf sessions  – every time before a category 2 (or higher) tropical storm or hurricane passes (or hits) us. And then it is mushy closeouts at Elbow beach with a rip that makes Umhlanga main beach look like my kids paddling pool.

So while my surfboard was gathering dust and twigs under the tree in our back garden my surfski was getting more use per wear than Tiger Woods’ 5 iron. My then new and trusty Red7 made the trip from SA and was the first surf ski to hit Bermuda. There are now 8 singles (and 2 doubles) on island with the first of 2 Epic skis rumored to arrive in the next two months so all and all things are looking up in Bermuda. Most of the paddlers here are expats in the form of Saffas and Aussies (and yes those two can coexist in harmony if they have to).

Sing the following to the Neil Diamond tune I am I said… “where palm trees grow and westerlies blow, and the feeling is laid back… the climate is subtropical, the water feels like bathwater, and nowadays I’m lost between two shores…” ok that’s pretty lame but you get the picture? This island is paddling Valhalla. Due to the island’s shape and angle from Northeast to Southwest a downwind is – almost always – a mere logistical nightmare away. You see when you cram 60,000 people into 53 square kilometers (and that’s counting space for 7 full championship golf courses for the uber wealthy) the roads become crowded. The solution – one car per household. So the wives and kiddies drive around in the air-conditioned cars, and husbands commute on scooters and ferries – not the best way to transport a surfski. So you feel like a 10 year old kid all over again having to beg your mom to drop you off/pick you up from the beach. So to appease the better-looking-half-with-the-driver’s-license you up your husbandry duties during the week to secure either a drop off or a pick up for the members of the BSC (Bermuda Surfski Club – a not for profit voluntary association of paddlers), knowing that if you’re the dropper the droppee is doing the same amount of duties to ensure his mom …err wife… collects you. But it’s worth it. Every single time!

(pic taken from our back garden after we just returned from a downwind run from Sinky Bay to Devonshire Bay last winter)

(Sinky Bay on a calm January day. Two surfski’s heading out between the rocks)

I stumbled on the Surfski Racing website and the need to do a race with more than 4 paddlers had me scouring the North East calendar. Up to now I have done the Mayors Cup in NY (one and a half times), Run of the Charles in Boston, and the most recent Blackburn Challenge in Gloucester.  Paddling around Manhattan must count as one of my best paddling experiences and I truly hope that Ray Fusco picks it up again. After that police lady’s brilliantly rendition of the Star Spangled Banner last year I had a lump in my throat and I was all pumped up and ready to go and proud to be American… until I realized I was a Saffa living in Bermuda. So I hummed Nkosi Sikilele instead and off I went.

The Blackburn was exceptionally well organised and I tip my hat to the team that got the 8 batches off on time. If I can offer my $0,10 worth though; a 6 am registration time, 460 paddlers and only two portable toilets at the start!? A special thanks to Bill Kuklinsky for lending me a pfd (that I taped to my ski). In such flat conditions so close to land there is no point of wearing a life vest (and as an aside and from experience a pfd taped to the ski is as useful as udders on a bull).

Getting there is half the fun:

We landed at Logan International on the Friday afternoon in a balmy 102 degrees. I last experienced heat like that traveling between Colesberg and Graaff Reinet (SA equivalent to Death Valley) in a VW Citi Golf in the days when only Mercedes Benzes and BMW’s had a/c. At the rental place I picked up the coolest looking car I’ve ever seen. A Dodge Nitro. In the US this is a ‘small suv’. To a person living on an island the size of Manhattan with roads built to accommodate horse carts and a speed limit of 35 kph (22 mph and half that in the city) that is zealously enforced this was a hybrid off-road-F1 supercar. On leaving the terminal the Garmin lady promptly got us lost and directed me to downtown Boston during peak traffic hour. What rubbish. The car rental company rents you a Garmin at $44.00 and that object becomes your lifeline. You leave the terminal and immediately enter the biggest tunnel system you’ve ever seen, your 7 year old son starts rattling off stats about ‘Boston’s Big Dig’ that he caught on the Discovery channel that makes your blood freeze and then the nice Garmin lady drops the bomb ‘No Reception, No Reception’ and then goes dead quite at a time you need her more than you need oxygen.

Now to those that do not know Boston (or never saw Boston’s Big Dig on the Discovery channel) this is not a tunnel with a beginning and an end like on the Roadrunner Willy Coyote cartoons. It has turns, goes up and down, has exits and the works and there is no light at the end of this tunnel. It’s a maze in there. At this point I tried to imagine what would have happened if great explorers like Da Gama, Columbus and Dora followed the Garmin lady. I could have been speaking Mandarin, and you Americans may have been cattle farmers in Patagonia (btw: coolest shirt ever at a surfski race!!). I need to add at this stage that my wife is opined that I did not follow the Garmin lady’s instructions to begin with. But I digress. Bottom line is my 45 minute drive to Gloucester turned into a 2 hour nerve wrecking fest of driving 55 mph on the I-95 on the wrong side of the road. The golden rules remain ‘turn lefty loosy, righty tighty’. Corny but it works. To the great delight of the back seat drivers (aged 5 and 7) the Garmin lady said ‘Recalculating’ more times in those two hours than I visit this website over a month of weekends.

Concierge surfski services and the Stellar:

At last I met the (up to now) phantom Wesley and his awesome wife Betsy. He waited on the beach for me to arrive and helped me set up the Stellar SE he organized for me to use. I had a spin and everything felt fine – except for a final tweak on the foot peddles. Please know that calling myself a fish and chips mid pack paddler in dad’s army is ambitious, and with my poor technique and bastardised self taught stroke getting a podium finish in the BSC series of ’09 means about as much as my podium finish in the 2009 NY Mayors Cup short course. My opinion on the ski is exactly that – my personal opinion – and is not intended as a review or otherwise.

The Stellar is extremely stable. Granted the ocean at Cape Ann was lake flat but you can’t fall out of that ski if you tried really hard. I leaned it over on the rail but nothing. It just stays there. I would put it up there with the Epic V10sport in stability. And that bothered me. It was very stable and felt slow. The catch is wide as you would have in a Fenn xt. At the ROTC I had a V10sport that took it out of me (but that involved portages). The Stellar felt that stable and this race was longer than the ROTC with less push. I didn’t have my Garmin (not the two timing lying lady but the trusty silent Forerunner) with me for that first paddle so was not aware of the speed I was doing – but it felt (for the lack of a better word) mundane.

I would love to paddle this ski in a decent downwind and in conditions we have over here but now that I have paddled it I would dare stick my neck out and say that the seat could be flattened out a bit and the nose has too much volume. This could amount in it being moved around a bit going into (or sideways into) wind and swell (this is not to be confused with bow-slap that you get from a ski with a flat rocker), and in a downwind the extra volume would mean that it would be too buoyant and try and go over everything in its path which could cause the nose to lift losing its downwind momentum or plough into the wave I front of you. I prefer a ski with a narrow lower volume nose that slices though the wave as opposed to going over it. The lower volume Stellar ski will not have this problem. The growing trend with all manufacturers seems to be for less volume up front which encourages a downward tilt in any form of bump.

Wesley asked me what I thought and not wanting to make a premature statement on the lack of speed I could only comment on the stability and its light weight (that is the lightest performance layup I’ve ever paddled). I found the footplate angle too relaxed for my liking yet extremely sturdy. It felt like stepping onto the sidewalk. I’ve never liked the sliding self adjusting foot peddle system and never will. Wesley helped me reset my peddle angle and warned me that they do slip and the newer models would address this issue. This was the best concierge surfski service ever.

I also met with Barrend Spies who moved to the US some time ago. After set up I exchanged pleasantries in the car park with Wesley and Barend when the evergreen Bob Capellini pitched up. He said he had some tendonitis – a condition you get in your forearms from over training (I never had that). I saw Bob twice on the race day. The first when he came past me about a third into the race and the second after the finish. Reckon I should also try and get that tendonitis they were speaking about.

Blackburn day:

The next morning saw cooler overcast conditions at the Gloucester High School. It was a hive of activity with all sorts out. There were people in real bona fide row boats. Real tough looking guys with forearms like circus tent pegs. It was great to meet up with Marcus Aurelius again (Ceconi got an upgraded Roman name for pulling me around Boston earlier the year). The concierge surfski services dropped my ski off close to the start and it was like picking up the rental car. While taping my post race banana to the deck Barend wanted to know if I’m going to race or have a picnic. Wesley’s race face cracked the tiniest of smiles. It started raining and was quite cool for the start. Someone mentioned that a squall was moving in. From my observing point a squall in Massachusetts means that it rains for 2 minutes whilst the wind exceeds 8 knots over that same 2 minute period.

We had to paddle to the start wish was a nice little warm up. I had my Forerunner fitted and after a few strokes realized I was sitting on about 11 kph without too much effort. Apparently there was a bit of tide assistance following the race course, but at that this time I was heading into it. The Stellar has a glide which it maintains quite easily. The overall feel of the ski (wide catch and fantastic stability) and its speed does not seem to add up as you expect it to be sluggish. It defies everything we’re used to. The old adage of tippy=fast vs. stable=slow has been turned on its head with this one. To be honest it feels like sitting in a beginner ski paddling next to your mate who is on his carbon racing snake. It doesn’t make sense but it works. This Stellar is a fast ski.

I saw two guys paddling up to the start line of the hpk class in k1 looking kayaks with splashies and pointy noses (the kayaks not the paddlers) and being a surfski snob naturally assumed they missed their start in the fast touring class. After the gun went off I realized they (and not me) were at the right place. Don’t know who they were but these guys were flying off the handle with the fast bunch.

My strategy at the start is as always more of a silly notion conceived by a lack of true appreciation of my ability and fitness level at any given point in time rather than a carefully thought out and crafted plan based on cold hard facts and statistics. Try and stick to the fastest paddlers for as long as you can, when you drop off stay with the next etc. etc. until you find a bunch you’re comfortable with. Ok, so I started next to Spies, tried to stay on his wash for as long as I could, then fell back when Wesley came past me, then Glicker’s bunch passed me, and then I was alone and I could breathe again. Then a whole bunch of other people passed me and then I was alone again. I was passed by seven paddlers who wore gloves (frown). This all happened in minutes I suppose. My Garmin clocked a top speed of 14 kph somewhere around the start. The ski and general movement of the water (caused by ebb, wash or whatever) played a big role in that as I cannot obtain and sustain that in flat water.

Just outside the Annisquam river mouth I was eyeing this weird looking funnel out at sea. It may have been a waterspout and was freaky as it moved around. I asked a couple of people about this but no one was worried. About that time Fransisco Urena (the only jovial paddler on the water that day) came past me and we had a jolly good conversation. When I started grunting my responses he tired of his monologue, said his goodbye and was off. I believe he has only been paddling for a year and finished at 2h50. I later heard that he was a Marine and this was probably literally his easiest outing he has had in a long time. Keep an eye on that name at the sharp end of races in the future.

This scenery exceeded my wildest expectations. The rugged beauty is phenomenal. The water felt ice cold (a mix between Clifton and Port Elizabeth) so the breeze kept you cool during the paddle. About one third into the race my left peddle slipped a notch and I had to stab at it with my big toe to get left steering. There were no bumps so proper steering was not required. My left glute and calf cramped a bit closer to the end though. Some oc-6 crews started appearing as well. I was disappointed to see they do not kick up any significant wake – and thanks to my steering problem I would not have been able to stay on their wash no matter how hard I tried (had a tried). But those row boats (Dory’s?) throw a wash and a wake like a battleship – enough said.

The last half of the race was very interesting. The northern point of Cape Ann was strewn with debris. Row boats, shells, kayaks, surfskis, oc 1, 2 and 6’s and lobster pots. Lots and lots of lobster pots. The backwards rowing people work extremely hard to avoid bumping into everything. After every few pulls they sneak a peek over a shoulder, adjust the direction, peek again and carry on. We definitely have the easier of the ocean paddling sports. Robert and I traded pulls over the last 10kms but got separated somewhere.

I was bargaining on a 30 km race. My Garmin hit 30km just on the dog bar and there was still 2 km left. The greasy pole was invisible. So my arms fell off, I lost use of my left lung and my pancreas packed up. I felt like weeping especially as I saw a lady paddler in a V12 hunting me down. I went to that place that is called the long dark teatime of the soul (Douglas Adams S.S. Weyers) and dug as deep as I could but got nothing and hobbling along to the greasy pole. Tom Kerr passed me in the last kilometer and I could do absolutely nothing about that but shout kind words of encouragement to him. It was great catching up with Tom who will hopefully spearhead a Molokai 2012 group campaign. At the greasy pole Wesley waited at the beach for me to arrive (de ja vu) where I had my picnic and graciously accepted Fransisco’s offer to help carry my ski up to the beach. Only pride stopped me from asking him to carry the ski on his own. I finished in 3h06 roughly middle of the hpk field. Satisfied – yes, ashamed – no, will I be back – definitely.

And talking about it afterwards is the other half:

Afterwards they dished out beer from a truck. I asked for Heineken and got a smirk. The ale they served made Hansa Pilsner taste like Sprite and I recalled Jeremy Clarkson’s (of BBC Top Gear fame) analogy of American beer. Glicker assured me that he gave up on his budding canoeing career after the ROTC – I think he mentioned cross training. I had a chat with a few of the guys to try and get a Molokai group going over for next year. There seems to be a bit of interest and maybe a forum should be opened on this site to spread the word. The band was churning out mellow tunes, some people got massages in a tent (at the risk of being labelled soft I resisted the urge).

S.S, Wesley and Barend

Barend and I were joined by another Saffa transplant now living in Boston and we could talk of the upcoming Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and how the All Blacks mauled the Springboks that morning. Stranger than fiction I picked out a Kiwi accent at the starting line. Turns out it was David Joblin’s (hope I got that right) first race in his new yellow star studded Stellar. He now lives in Canada. To pick out a Kiwi just ask them to say ‘fish and chips’ or say stuff like ‘the All Blacks are a bunch of pansies’ (btw David – we’re counting on the All Blacks trend to choke in the quarters).

For the remainder of the afternoon I felt like I was back in South Africa talking about the race, cricket (baseball’s earlier more refined ancestor), rugby (American football’s earlier more refined ancestor without the pads) and politics under a baking hot sun with surfskis lining the beach, kids running around and paddlers comparing blisters and race secrets and the reason why they didn’t do any better. All that was missing was some car guards, Mens Health and Discovery Series stickers on the surfskis and some boerie rolls (South African version of a hotdog) and I would have been back in Port Elizabeth. We went to the Fishermans Brew for a quick bite and I asked for a Heineken. Surprisingly they had none but the brew-master gave me a pretty fine substitute.

We missed the prize giving and my son conned Barend out of his race medal. When I think of doing a race like this (and the 47km NY Mayors Cup race) and not having a lot of time to train with family and work taking priority, I prepare mentally by telling myself that I will finish, and I will tell my grandkids one day that I won it, and unlike in New York, this time I have a medal to prove it.

See you next year and thanks to all for a fantastic experience.