The start of the Essex River Race is 2.74 miles from our front door – close enough that the acrid stench of a defeat there would prevent us from opening any windows for the next month. So it was with an increasing sense of panic that I surveyed the formidable field assembling at the Essex boat launch. In addition to perennial thorns Jan Lupinski and Eric Costanzo, we were joined by Sean Brennan (unbeatable), Hugh Pritchard (inscrutable), Eric McNett (immortal), Mike Dostal (unknown), and Ben Pigott (ill-clothed). I was intimately familiar with the 6 mile course around Cross Island and had been training hard, but could I avoid being skunked by these guys? Maybe not, but at least I could take solace in crackerjack parking spot I had secured the night before.
Giving Bill a megaphone is like giving a bear a moped – you hope for the best but still prepare to dive for cover.
Impishly designed with an immediate sharp left after the start, the Essex River course is perfect for the kind of carnage that jaded spectators now demand. However, the starter effectively sabotaged the carefully planned chaos by surprising some with a short countdown. The net result was that the twenty-some skis started in tiers rather than all abreast, meaning that the progression around the turn was unsatisfyingly orderly. I’m told that many in the crowd on shore demanded their money back, despite Sean’s sacrificial effort to entertain them with an impromptu workshop on rudder line repair.
Even at low tide, the channel of the Essex River is sufficiently deep for large motor craft to navigate out the winding estuary to the open ocean. This implies that – paddling in a rather high tide – we could have chosen a course through waters more than 15 feet deep. Perhaps with disorienting flashbacks of the Narrow River Race clouding our collective judgement, we eschewed that option. Instead, we cut every corner of the winding river in search of the shallowest suck water possible. The mud caked on my paddle blade and the sea grass still wedged between my teeth are testaments to just how successful we were.
For the determined paddler, there are no obstacles.
After clearing the first turn, a pack of a dozen or so leaders settled into a chemically stable drafting matrix. The horde remained in this attack formation for a unnaturally long period, with only slight perturbations in configuration. Some have speculated that the shallow water made drafting easier, while others suggested that it was a misguided case of giddy esprit de corps. Even a chain reaction of collisions caused by an unexplained swerve somewhere up ahead couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for solidarity.
Entropy, however, is implacable. Jan and Hugh were the first to leave the union, their article of secession citing irreconcilable differences in target speed and in tariff policies. Once the surface tension of our once tight-knit band had been violated, the resulting flood of deserters was inevitable. Mike popped his K-1 into a new gear to try his luck alone, the entire Eric contingent splintered off to test the waters to the far right, and I made a move to hunt down Hugh.
Jan had managed to shake Hugh from his wake, and the latter now looked vulnerable. Over the course of the next 5 minutes, I cut his 100 meter lead to a couple of boat lengths. Perhaps he got wind of my pursuit (only a third of the way through the race, but I was already pretty ripe) because it took me another 5 minutes to close the remaining distance and finally settle onto his draft. As we rounded the back of Cross Island to head back towards Essex, I gauged Jan’s lead to be at least a dozen lengths. In his black shirt and dark kayak, Mike was well-camouflaged for the overcast day. I suspect he was at least that far again ahead of Jan.
Paddler X took advantage of his anonymity to taunt Ben and Eric with impunity. Evaporation, however, would prove his eventual downfall.
I don’t know Hugh very well. I’ve met (and been soundly beaten by) him at a few previous races, but this was his first time competing in a ski (Stellar SES) rather than a racing kayak. As such, he now merits further scrutiny. Hugh is a quiet, reserved gentleman in person, so I had to resort to the Internet to unearth his squalid personal details. Turns out he’s the 73 year-old head of Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology at the Royal Botanic Gardens outside of London. He’s also a 21 year-old junior at Kansas State majoring in psychology and “partying down”. And, finally, a 32 year-old dog-walker in Sacramento whose hobbies include macrame and collecting fluorescent minerals (ask him about his clinohydrite). He looks great for 73, but, quite frankly, gone a bit to seed for the other ages. Regardless of his true provenance (based on his accent, perhaps China?), Hugh was 90% likely to beat me if I stayed behind him.
With a couple of miles to go, I centered myself, took a deep breath, and hurtled myself to Hugh’s right. I had hoped to shake him, but he locked onto my port side and held fast. Apparently irritated by all the shallows and reeds, Jan had decided to take out his frustration on straight lines. Weaving like a drunken toddler (perhaps in search of deeper water, but who can be sure?), he left the door open to those of us who still cling to Archimedes’ tired old cliche about the shortest distance between two points. We had been blasting through the shallows on the most direct route until then, I’d be damned if anything shy of an extended uphill slog was going to change my strategy. We were closing the gap to Jan, but unless he helped us a little more (perhaps with some gentle loops), the course was going to run out before we caught him.
Over the past five minutes or so, Hugh and I had established an unspoken contract. I won’t bore you with all the undecipherable legalese, but the gist of it was “We agree that since we’re both at 100% effort, there’s no reason to push any harder”. Since I was in the lead at the time at which this sacred covenant was tacitly invoked, it stood to reason that this admirable status quo would be maintained through the finish line.
With a mile to go, Hugh wantonly breached our contract by accelerating ahead of me. Whether he had misrepresented his previous level of effort or had managed to burst the shackles of mathematical limits (by 4 or 5 percentage points, I’d estimate) – that’s a question for future generations of legal scholars. Although confident that any subsequent result would be overturned on appeal, I slipped over to his wash in pursuit. I’ll deny it under oath, but I suppose I can admit in this forum that I had also maintained some off-the-books reserve.
With 3 bends of the river left before the finish, I started to think about passing Hugh. That was such a pleasant thought, I savored it through another couple of turns. With the final bend approaching, I made my move. Some kind of tightly-calibrated laser measurement device might have been able to detect my progress, but it would have been impossible to see any advance with the naked eye. Hugh slid over to provide enough room for me to pass on the inside of the curve. While one might interpret this as a gallant gesture, I maintain that Hugh’s confidence that he had nothing to fear from me in a sprint tends to undermine any (so-called) noble intent. I did what I could with the opening he cynically provided, but I had to settle for the feeble moral victory of finishing with a sliver of overlap between our boats.
Giving Hugh a ski is like giving Bill a megaphone – you’d rather just see the bear on a moped.
Mike won the race handily in his K-1, leading to a cutthroat bidding war to lock him into a ski for future races. Although we had managed to close the gap to Jan in the final couple of miles, he still ended up a half-dozen boat lengths ahead of Hugh and me. With his third consecutive surfski win, Lupinski’s reign of terror threatens to drain all joy from the world. Don’t be deceived by his mischievous smile, sunny demeanor and colorful tales – we will come to rue his dynasty.
In an ironic twist, a fully-covered Eric (McNett) edged out a shirtless Ben to take the 5th HPK spot. Behind them, Eric Costanzo, Bruce Deltorchio, Andrius Zinkevichus, and Tim Hudyncia secured the next 5 positions. Bob Capellini won the SS20Plus division in convincing style, while Mary Beth took the women’s HPK title. I don’t usually comment on out-of-class competitors (it just encourages them), but rowers Patrick Riordan and Joshua Crosby piloted their sliding seat double to an astonishing 40:05 – the fastest time ever recorded on the Essex River. Since Pat and I both train on Chebacco Lake, I claim a fair share of credit for their performance.
After the race, Hugh expressed some concerns about appearing in this blog. I trust he has learned his lesson and won’t make a habit of it in the future.
Having exhausted the inland waterways of New England, we’re moving on to the open(ish) ocean. The Sakonnet beckons.
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