Wesley and Tim introduced the Ride the Bull race to the New England surfski circuit in 2013, filling a gaping mid-June hole in our calendar. Positioned early enough in the season so that we don’t yet have our sea legs, but requiring that we paddle almost exclusively through pathologically disturbed waters, it quickly became the race that many of us love to hate. Or just plain hate, as Chris Chappell so eloquently conveyed in the epic curse-poem he debuted mid-race last year. Everyone can agree, however, that once you weather 9+ miles on the Bull, your lifelong fear of cattle will have proven itself warranted. Creepy. Something about those billiard-ball eyes. And dewlaps? Ugh.
Ignoring the fact that some of us had spent the better part of the preceding week trying to memorize the twists and turns of the standard course (buoy, rock, buoy, rock, flip, buoy, flip, rock, buoy, buoy, death by sailboat), Wesley and Tim decided to mix things up for 2016. Rather than bouncing repeatedly between Mackerel Cove and Hull Cove, we’d instead get the required bouncing skimming close by Short Point, Lion Head, and Beavertail Point on our way to the Beavertail floaty ringing thing. After Tim’s bulging-eyed rant about using the proper terminology for this particular navigational aid (during the captains meeting), I figured I’d just stick with a safe, descriptive phrase. The rest of the course would remain mostly the same as last year – we’d return the way we came, pass the start, turn on the bobbing green metal doodad near the House on the Rock, then finish in the cove where we launched.
Eric and I fight for the early lead. I know – putting this photo so early disrupts the narrative flow. If it wasn’t first, however, when creating a link to this report in Facebook, I’d end up with the picture of Bill as the thumbnail. And then who knows what sort of people would be clicking through… (Photo courtesy of Chun Yang)
Against my worse judgement, I decided to bring my V10 Sport. Last year, Big Jim Hoffman had danced through the confused waters with balletic grace for the win, while I staggered drunkenly behind, occasional dunking my head (and attached parts) in a fruitless attempt to sober up. I initially considered filling my platypus with coffee this year (you don’t even want to know what that’s an Australian euphemism for), but ultimately decided that a more stable boat might be a better way to avoid another PWI. Seemed like a sound plan. Now I found myself gazing out at a sea so still that I couldn’t tell where the water stopped and my impending slow-boat defeat started.
Ride the Bull attendance ebbs and flows as paddlers lapse in and out of instituationalization from the trauma of the previous year’s race. For 2016, we had a slighter larger field than in 2015 since a few of the 2014 participants had finally managed to get their meds properly balanced. Federal privacy laws prohibit me from disclosing specific patients or treatments, but I’ll just remind you that Bob Capellini, Jan Lupinski and Eric Costanzo spent last year “at another race”… All looked well this day, although Eric did seem a little glassy-eyed.
If you ever find yourself thinking “Gee, maybe I’ll give Bill Kuklinski a ride to the race”, just remember that he’s got a lot of stories from his time in prison.
Misinterpreting the saying that one should never try anything new in a race, defending champ Jim figured he should try everything new. I think he would have been fine if he had just stuck to a new boat, paddle, and PFD, but changing mustache wax… that’s just craziness. Eric likewise was violating the maxim, paddling in his new V10 GT. From Rochester, New York, John Hair mixed it up a bit – figuring he’d try racing in the ocean for the first time. I’m disappointed to relate that none of these game-day change-ups resulted in any humorous anecdotes involving the Coast Guard, allergic reactions, or amputated limbs.
Wesley has conducted us in quite a few rolling starts, with varying degrees of success. Our previous rehearsals had been ragged, but in the protected waters of West Cove, everyone hit their mark. The Fenns, Epics, Stellars, Thinks, and Nelos all came in together – a glorious symphony of paddles whirling in perfect synchrony. Alas, things went to hell after the opening few bars, as everyone starting improvising to his/her own tempo. As usual, I hammered out a primitive beat on the side of my ski, but my attempts to restore order fell on deaf ears. When Tim Hudyncia started scat singing, I knew it was every man for himself.
I had positioned myself on the far right side of the starting line, inadvertently setting myself up nicely for the turn coming out of the cove. With this geometric advantage over the rest of the field, I found myself unexpectedly in third place shortly after the start. Eric had powered out to a clean lead, with Andrius Zinkevichus in pursuit.
In the next few minutes I passed Andrius and settled alongside Eric, thinking we might hobnob a while together. Instead, I got the silent treatment. Treating me like the guy who sits right next to you on the otherwise empty subway car, smelling of rancid cheese (it’s a medical condition), Eric studiously ignored me even as I stared continuously at his right ear from two feet away. After a couple minutes of this, I took the hint and (muttering incoherently to myself to maintain the analogy) paddled ahead to sulk on my own.
Jan must have similarly received the cold shoulder from Eric, because I soon noticed that he had pulled into second. Having quickly grown accustomed to solitude, I concentrated on catching every little runner I could as we approached the entrance to Mackerel Cove. Jan was taking an extremely wide line coming around Southwest Point. Presumably he had studied up on orbital mechanics and was planning on leveraging his centrifugal momentum to slingshot himself into the lead. He must have miscalculated his entry angle, however, because I was able to reach the turn rock first.
Heading across Mackerel Cove we were bucking a mild headwind in fairly calm conditions. That seemed like a recipe for losing ground to Jan – with his bulldog upwind tenacity and sleeker boat (the stylish black-and-gray color scheme alone adds a quarter knot). Sure enough, by the time we reached the far side of the cove, Jan had drawn even well off to my left. Once we hit Short Point, however, conditions started to pick up as the ocean swell, wind-driven waves, and boat wakes refracted off the rocky shore. About then I started apologizing for all the terrible things I had been saying about my boat choice.
I’m kind of enthralled by how the evolving ocean surface consists of the superposition of waves of different directions, periods, and amplitudes. If you listened to a Bach fugue and a Chopin etude at the same time, it might sound like a couple of cats walking across a piano keyboard. But if you knew exactly which notes to selectively pay attention to, you’d start wondering which of those feline prodigies you should be booking on the Ed Sullivan Show. I forgot to mention that this was all happening in 1962. And that you were wearing ridiculous plaid pants. In the unlikely event that I have a point, it may be this – even in the slop, if you can focus on the right wave train, you might be able to find something you can hum along to.
I’m obviously no expert on reading the water (for concrete evidence of this, see about half of my blog posts), but it’s a lot easier to pick out the tune when you’re not struggling to stay upright. In the Sport, I was able to find small rides in the overlapping waves while maintaining some semblance of an actual stroke. In the two miles from Short Point to the turn-around, I was able to open up perhaps a minute-and-a-half gap on Jan. Passing him going the other way, however, I had to admit that he still looked way cooler in that boat. Eric was perhaps another 90 seconds behind Jan, with a solid lead on the next couple of paddlers (perhaps Jim and Tim Dwyer, looking pretty blurry from their effort?).
That thing we were talking about earlier.
After the turn, the tide and swell were in our favor. The ocean wasn’t giving out free rides, but once you got up a head of steam you could occasionally jump the turnstile and catch a breather until the next station. I kept to the outside on the way back, hoping for a tidal boost and trying to keep out of the worst of the refractory chop. Jan told me later he closed during this span, so I’m not sure the added distance was worth it. After turning on the rock in Mackerel Cove and rounding Southwest Point (scattering a skittish flock of sea kayakers in the process), I headed to the final turn near the House on the Rock.
With a helpful current, I moved along nicely on this penultimate stretch despite starting to hear various non-essential body systems shutting down (it’s kind of a dying whir, with the occasional chucka-chucka-clunk). I refused to give the finish line the satisfaction of a glance as I passed by the first time. Of course, I did mutter a short hex and spit to both sides of my boat in the hopes that Wesley and Tim would suffer hideous boils for tacking on this last couple of miles. In response, a boat wake raised up, slapped my GoPro to the deck, and flooded my cockpit. Perhaps the Sea Gods aren’t so much fans of the spitting.
When passing sea kayakers, for their own good it’s important to sprint at 100% until you’re out of sight. Otherwise, they’ll never learn.
I made the final turn around something that looked an awful like what someone (other than me) might refer to as a “green can”. Heading home, it seemed like Jan had a lock on second place, but Eric’s grasp on third was threatened by a furious attack from Jim and Tim (who showed no signs of affliction yet, but these things take time). I was pretty upset at now having to fight against the tide and wind to get (back) to the finish, but remembering my earlier lesson, spit into the boat this time. IRS audit, maybe?
Eventually I arrived back in the scuba-infested waters of Cove to the West of West Cove to take first. Jan came in shortly after. Eric nosed around the corner next, managing to barely hold off Jim and Tim – the three finishing within 10 seconds of one another. Mary Beth, in a Capellini-branded V8, took the women’s title.
Jan demonstrates why we put up with all the races in Rhode Island. (Photo courtesy of Chun Yang)
Last year’s winner Jim was generous in his congratulations, saying that I looked “relaxed” and “like a magnificent stallion.” And also that I “needed to learn what quotation marks mean.” Point “taken”. After swapping tales of the 9.25 mile race, pretty much everyone broke down weeping at the realization that we had only paddled 47% of a Blackburn. For those you who have managed to repress the date of that event for the sake of your mental health… it’s July 16. A few of us retired to Spinnakers in Jamestown to drown our anxiety with well-deserved beer-and-milkshake refreshments. I’ve found that nothing clears up an ice cream headache faster than a generous application of hops.
Thanks to Tim and Wesley for putting together a race that’s always fun and challenging. Sorry about the voodoo, but you’ll have to admit that between this and the Narrow River, you had it coming.
“I remember once, back in Sing Sing, when I shivved a guy for talking smack about my PFD…”
Our normally tight-knit gang of paddlers will be ripped asunder this coming weekend, as Eric Costanzo and Eric McNett offer competing downwind races in New Jersey and Maine. Check the forecasts and choose your poison at PaddleGuru – the Seas It Downwinder or the Casco Bay Challenge. For those with a paddling addiction that you should really get help for, there’s also the Nashua River Race on Sunday.
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