Happy Monday!  Today I’m going to extract the Gear Pod from it’s under water tomb to see how it survived 2 days of total submersion.  The final review will be tomorrow.  However, if you follow along on Facebook you may get a bit of an advance look later in the day when we pull it out.

For today however, I want to share with you a trip report from the recent Washington Island Paddle Marathon Race held in Door County, WI., on June 19th.  Participants paddled a 22 mile course around the island which is located at the very tip of Wisconsin’s famous Door County peninsula. This report was written by Gary Simon of Milwaukee.  I like Gary’s report because it’s not so much about “racing” but about participation and learning which to me is the really important… and fun part of any event.  

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Hi All;

There follows a rather lengthy race report. Basic: rough water, Rick
finished in seventh or eighty in 4:24. Brian eleventh in 4:44, Sue
twelfth 4:45, Gary thirteenth 5:02 and Greg a few minutes later. Also a
bunch attended the symposium and Death’s Door Crossing. Beautiful
island and scenery, the whole way around the island. We will do this
again next year, in fact are already planning a weekend perhaps in
October.

The race was suppose to go counter-clockwise around the island. With
forecast West winds of 15-20 with higher gusts, and 2-3 foot waves, it
was decided to go clockwise so that the beam waves hit us during the
first leg North while we were fresh, then we could surf the West winds
across the top of the island, and then get into the lee away from wind
and waves on the return trip South down the East side of the island.

Good plan…BUT!! Went as planned up the West side on the first leg
North, and across the top of the island. But when we turned South, all
hell broke out with four and five footers (some said five and six, and
one guy said up to eight, but four to five is probably correct.) There
was no calm anywhere and certainly we were not on the leeward side.
Three guys abandoned and two had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. One
was especially skilled, Chris Van Meter’s doubles partner was in the
water for more than an hour after many failed remount attempts. Not the
day to balance a surfski.

I made some really terrible navigation choices at this point of the
race. The water was cold and there were no others, rescue boats or
paddlers, in sight on the south leg. The correct choice is to stay out
about 3/4 mile or more from shore. But when scared, I follow my rule to
stay swim distance from shore. Here, swim distance is about one foot
deep–I thought I would get lucky with deeper water, but this was not
the case. So for most of the south leg I was hung up on rocks, and had
to get out of the boat at least six times to drag it to deeper (two
feet??) water. Basically I tossed in the race towel and just played in
the breaking beam waves. Great fun except for the scratches on the hull.

The Nemo was fantastic and I should have trusted it, and also
trusted my returning rough water skills. For years I sought out the
roughest stuff I could find, but for the past five years or so, once I
started training–who wants to train for racing in rough water can’t
build an aerobic base or work on intervals–I did no rough water
paddling. But I did regain confidence after some time in the rough
stuff, but too late to do anything about it for the race.

Nice folks on the island. Great food, especially fresh fish,
including a local variety known as “Lawyer” fish. So named, according
to locals, because its heart is down around its butt. Those catering to
tourists are nice. For the first time paddlers brought along family
members so Sharon had folks to pal around with during the race. Nice
swag for all paddlers, we got a glass frog sculpture. – Gary Simon

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Thanks to Gary for letting me re-post his report.  You may also enjoy Kevin LeRoy’s report here as well.  Below are the final results.  Congrats to everyone who participated!

* Photo of Gary Simon by Rich Hodgkins and linked from his SmugMug Account

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