The Start

The sky had changed. “This guy at the boat ramp told me there’s a squall in Boston and it’s headed our way!” said Bill as we stood looking at the ominous sky.The weather had changed in the short time we were inside for the captains meeting. Bill, me and Kinley had walked outside the meeting ahead of the crowd. The temp had dropped and the cloud cover was now a surreal Van Gogh gray and white scalloped cloud painting. Can’t recall a sky quite like it.After Bill and I had launched it started to rain. Well spaced moderately sized raindrops plunked the water surface. Water started pooling in my cockpit as I waited near the starting line.“Let’s get this race started.” Said a woman in a 1x slider, to no one in particular.“Yea, I don’t mind rowing in the rain, but waiting in it gets annoying!” I commiserated.I was looking at a woman in a Eurodiffussion 1x sliding single, a European “coastal rowing shell.” One of those boats you can row in the European open water races. None of the common open water racing shells built in North America qualifies for European races. We are more accommodating here. Give us your poor, your tired, and your coastal rowing shells.

I lined up behind Dan Gorriaran and Tim Willsallen, knowing that after three strokes they would out of my way and leave a clear path. I would follow in the slipstream.“You’re the first group that is 100% there!” exclaimed one of the starters.  We replied with cheerful exuberance. My GPS was set to follow the course, my new watch/ heart rate monitor/ timer was started, and, I thought, my speed coach was ready to start timing as soon as I started rowing. Two out of three ain’t bad.  The speed coach still gave me stroke rate and speed. I had the watch monitor to use for time and heart rate.

We’re off! Someone told me after the race that his favorite strokes are the first few and the last few. It’s quite a feeling starting out. No pain, just adrenaline. Almost as surreal as that sky. Around here I forget whether it was still raining. I’ve heard it said that it doesn’t rain while you are rowing. Meaning you don’t notice.Dan, Tim and a couple others disappeared quickly from my field of concern. Clever plan was mine. Start out slower than the speedsters and then steadily work my way further  back from anyone named  Dan, Tim, Rich and a half dozen others. Fortunately others followed my plan. I had company. I kept the first concrete green channel marker on my starboard. Rich K had said the tide would be running out fast, “…so stay in the channel where the current is fastest.”

Obstacle Course

Going out the Annisquam you have to navigate around moored boats, mooring buoys, lobster pot buoys, channel markers, bridges, moving power boats, docks, rocks and other competitors. Lots and lots of competitors.  How tame seems the flat water head race after this.Bill and Kinley were off to my port, a little behind. We were all busy looking for the “Northwest Passage”, the secret best line through aforementioned obstacles. It was all the moving obstacles that were hardest to keep track off. So it seemed until– whack– my starboard blade had a jarring encounter with a smallish white mooring buoy.I tipped to port and quickly back to starboard. My starboard blade crabbed, diving three feet into the water.  I tipped way over to port thinking, I can’t flip this thing, I never have before. I twisted my blade counterclockwise to pop it up. Bad idea, wrong way. I twisted clockwise. My blade popped to the surface and back into my control. Back in business!Bill had gained. I was losing track of Kinley. Bill and I both had high visibility green shirts on. Easy to spot us.Try to row well, not just hard I’m thinking. A good catch, a proper leg drive done before your back and arms finish the stroke relaxes the body. Gives you more speed with less nervous energy expended. In the twenty mile Blackburn you want to use your ergs, joules, watts and all your favorite units of energy to send you in the direction of the finish. Some things you love to do you wish would go on longer. The Blackburn is on the shorter the better list.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

I feel certain she was being courteous to the racers and showed obvious concern for safety. Still the Lory B was a big boat, 45- 50 feet maybe. They may have been just trying to get out fishing or maybe they were actually observing the race. Now comes Heisenberg. You can’t observe an event without changing it. If you can determine where an electron is, you will have changed its position.I was the electron. That was a pretty big observer to have off my stern. I move to starboard, likely a better path anyway. They pull slowly ahead, the wake was not huge. But I am with it quite a while. Sometimes a wake can give you a boost. I would have chosen not to have a booster. By the few breaths when I noticed fumes, they had those engines running cleanly. Glad it wasn’t stinky diesel exhaust. I was tired, but I didn’t get too exhausted.

Out The River Like Lightning

About three miles or the race is sheltered Annisquam river water. The next mile to Annisquam Light is gradually less sheltered. It was somewhere after those three miles a disconcerting rumble caught my attention. – There it was again. I looked at the dark sky behind me. Being a rower, that was easy. You kayakers, don’t you ever wonder what’s behind you?It was electric. A long yellow spark split the dark clouds. No turning back, I’m not rowing towards that sky. I was being chased, not just by racers. Time to row like lightning, by thunder!I found a good line on the starboard side of a moored boat. I noticed Bill off to port. I had the better line. With the course advantage and sparked by lightning, I started pulling ahead of Bill.Two weeks before, back in Norwalk, I had gone out fishing in my Boston Whaler. Bill went rowing.  I noticed Bill tangle with a new 5 mph marker can at the end of the harbor. They put a bunch of new “Slow, 5 mph” cans out recently. Bill went overboard. I came over while he scrambled into the boat. He’s been complaining of back and leg issues since.Well, I had the ruptured appendix in the spring. Put me on the bench for eight weeks.  We both had something for the excuse list.

Goodbye Annisquam

Getting to the end of the river, the water roughed up a little. Forward progress took more effort. By Annisquam light I was wishing I had put the pontoons on my boat. Someone remind me next year!When the rowing gets tough, the Kinley gets rowing. I’ve seen it before. Kinley comes alive in the waves. She snuck by in her stealth blue shirt. Kinley didn’t seem to have anything on the excuse list.You might think that going around Cape Ann you would have following seas on one leg, head seas on one, and beam seas on the others. Somehow it seems like there were following seas in three different parts of the course. It gets confused in the memory as the wave patterns were confused with the swells, the backwash waves from the swells, the wind waves, the boat wakes and the currents.No one called it rough, but there was some annoying chop. I heard of one Alden double ejecting its rowers for a cool down swim. An Echo rower smashed into a green can, fracturing the bow enough to take on some water by the finish. A SUP guy fell in after turning around when he heard Bill passing him. There’s lots’ going on out there in a Blackburn!I recall catching up to another rower by end of the river who was dealing with a serious over hydration problem. Personally, I couldn’t pee until three hours after the race and when I had had one beer and copious amounts of water and sports drink.I didn’t stop until more than an hour into the race. The plan had been for forty minutes.  I kept an eye on Bill. After the hour I had a pretty good lead. Good to hydrate. Thirty minutes to the halfway at Straitsmouth. Long swells on the beam here, yes- swell rowing. Around here two sharp looking yellow and black surfskiis cut through the water, goin’ on by.“Heh Wayne” I heard from Wesley Echols. I know I was working hard that race- I didn’t feel like talking much to anybody.  I will say it now-“Nice job Wes”-(better late than never).Straitsmouth had a mini tide rip rushing through it. I didn’t stop until a few minutes out of the straight. The second half of the race is where lack of fluids are an issue. I stopped more frequently to hydrate, all the while keeping an eye on the green shirts creeping closer.I would tire, stop, hydrate, and start off again slowly. Then pick up the pace when the water and calories were kicking in. It’s a long four mile leg to the lighthouse before the harbor jetty. But you get there. Like every year, there were OC-6’s passing me here. They hugged the wall, catching a current from the wave backwash. A littoral drift current.It helps getting the shouts of encouragement from spectators on the breakwater and those hovering in kayaks at the end of the jetty.“Which ways the beer?” I joked.“Better hurry, we hear there’s just one keg left.” I hear I get around the jetty and stop for a good drink. (Not the beer kind yet). Some minor cramping had started. I was doing much better in that department than the last couple years. Bill was coming around the corner. Less than two miles to go. He ain’t catching me here I am thinking. I got in a rhythm, keeping up with the women’s OC-6 next to me.At a mile to go I did a last hydration stop. I kept an eye, or a mirror, on the boats ahead of me. Yup, the finish is on the other side of the greasy pole this year.  It’s always nice to pick up the pace for the finish. Like the guy told me after the race, the first and the last strokes are the best.The cramping waited until after the finish. I say that was a good hydration plan. Just enough fluids to get me to the finish!

Après Race

I love the race party. There were serious decisions to be made though. I decided- beer line first, food second, and massage latter! Great band. Love the sax and horn players. Kinley had two ribbons around her neck. Third place Blackburn, plus one for the North American Open Water Championship, which was the Blackburn this year.“Very efficient, two medals, one race!” said Kinley“You could skip the next race now.” I said.“We’re moving up in the world since the JCR when we talked about starting a DFL Club!” joked Kinley.“I see more friends and people I know here than just about anywhere.” I was telling someone.“Hi, I’m the guy in your story that shouted out to you!” said John Greenly.“You mean the one who was inspired by my “Bill Story” to race, and then beat me?”“That’s me!”And he beat me again this year! Once again I use the line “…proving my pen is mightier than my oar.”

Dan G met his goal of breaking 2 ½ hours and the 1x course record. I was also impressed with the Stand Up Paddleboard guy that broke the four hour mark. Then there was the first woman to row a traditional Bank’s Dory. Rich K said once “You don’t want to mess with the dory guys” Better include dory women in that statement now.The Achilles group had a good showing. Like those team t shirts- and the new Achilles truck! I talked to paddler Dick Tram for a while.“…and we saw one boat that looked like they already had one leg in the grave!” Dick wisecracked.Be warned, if you have the privilege of talking to Dick, he has a sneaky wit!

The Glory

This was my first race since I turned sixty. And my first without an appendix! (The kind on your intestine, not the back of a book)  I had written a little poem before my birthday, titled “The Glory”. Something I thought would go on the birthday party invite. A hallmark poem.  After “The Rupture” I didn’t feel glorious. Poem didn’t make the cut, though the appendix did! But here it is anyway-

Gone Youth

A Fond Memory

 

Gone Middle Age

Like a Summer Breeze

 

And Now

And Now Comes

 

The Glory

The Glory of My Sixtieth Year!

 

Always said I would use sixty as an excuse. (An excuse for not staying up with the all the young’uns.) I will throw the “Rupture” into the excuse ring. (You know I only missed the “Rapture” that guy predicted by just one letter! Next time I’m a shoe- in!) I’ll save the sixty excuse for another day.I did the 25th Blackburn. There is glory enough in that!

Long Live Open Water!