Wavechaser, February 17, 2008:
I paddled my first miserable, pathetic, OC1 race, wondering what prompted me to think that I was capable of even a novice race when I’d been on a solo canoe very few times. I flipped over right at the start, and wanted to run away forever with my tail between my legs, but my teammates were standing on the shore CHEERING ME ON. I got back onto boat, lamely, shoes floating away, and struggled out the cove and north toward the Yellow Bluff. I finished the race, swearing mightily!

This was something so far out of my experience that I had no language for it.

Wavechaser, February 19, 2012:
Likewise Sunday, in OC2 with Kate, going out the Gate and northwest in the Bonita Channel, I was well beyond the limits of my experience and knowledge. This was the first time I’ve had both a profound desire to do something, and equally profound fear.

Once past the bridge, Kate said to call the changes strategically. i quickly found myself calling changes when we were over the top of a wave, as that was the only time i could see anything. Later learned better to call when we had bottomed out. Made some mistakes, as in, oh no, we’re still going up and there’s ANOTHER wave. A few times i waited too long to call–hoping for something a little flatter.

Sharks! No–dolphins–yes surely they are dolphins. Never mind! Look ahead. Grab the water.
[Later looked up the difference between dolphins and porpoises. Perhaps they were porpoises.]

Water is astonishing. There must have been 10 different kinds of water out there. But for the most part, each segment was fairly orderly–no sneakers. But then mostly i wasn’t looking around, just ahead enough to anticipate when would be a good time to switch sides.

When I did look around, sometimes I saw waves like small mountains. Ah, now I get what I’ve read about climbing the wave. Once I looked up and saw a boat about 25 yards away, and what seemed like 20 feet above us. And then there was the spot where we were at the top of a CLIFF OF WAVE. Reading other accounts, I realize that I was concentrating very hard on what was in front of me, and for the most part, did not notice all the big stuff that others wrote about.

i was terrified the whole time, but managed to stay focused and paddle through the fear. I never knew whether i could do something like that.

i’m still blissed out.

A Race Report from the back – the very back.

Current trumps all.(CTA).
Dont even think the S-word.
Totally awesome !
Mike McNulty’s predictions come mostly true.
Time flies when your having fun.
A first time for everything – absolutely the last boat under the Golden Gate.
One of the top 5 paddles ever.
Even a consolation prize !

Current Trumps all (CTA).
The last two Wavechaser events seem to have been all about reading current and being in the right place. In the Sausalito race I managed to be in the right place – this one went a little differently.
The start sprint was distinguished by the beautiful and stylish paddling of Kristen and Kenny in the Epic double. I would have liked to watch them for a while but they quickly pulled away on a direct course for the Golden Gate bridge where the fun would start. By heading more left than the front pack I got into the ebb a little sooner and went under the Bridge right on the back of the front back. I have never gone under the Golden Gate when some thing weird isn’t going on – even when it is flat every where else. And it was not flat. Right under the Gate there was a line of haystacks right on the eddy line. Just across the other side of eddy line a oil slick like area of flat water – Where do you want to paddle? Catching one of those weird rebounding waves that the Bay loves to produce I shot on to the “Slick”. Pretty quickly I realized that the front pack was rapidly pulling away. When I finally manned up and pulled back across the eddy line to the Haystacks it was easy to see why – my speed on the “slick”; 5.5 mph – on the ebb; 8 +mph. Bye-bye back of the front pack; hello OC pack . Current trumps all. And there I stayed all the way out through the chaos of Point Bonita to Sea Buoy – which was seriously making tracks through the water. Eddy turns anyone ?

Dont even think the S-word.
Around Point Bonita I saw the first fin coming at me – just a fin. Just a porpoise – right? Dont even think the word shark. From then on they were everywhere in ones , two and threes, sometimes less than a boat length away; and clearly Porpoise as they summersaulted along looking like sections of inner-tubes with a fin attached. Good company.

Totally awesome !
The sea state was awesome* ! Paddling north was paddling into the waves and wind. And, there was a lot going on ! Along with the wind driven waves and the waves rebounding waves off the headland there were some really big swells coming through – dont take my word for it Dave Jensen said they were big. And, it was an odd sensation to be getting a boost from a rebounding wave while going up a large swell coming from the opposite direction. In spite of the size of every thing it was easier to paddle in than the rapid random action that the Bays tide rips produce. Although the big swells look spooky they are easy to rationalize; As long as the top is not breaking you know you are just on an elivator to the top. The really odd illusion was watching other boats around me as they were apparently being swept right and left by the swells. Still I have to say the whole thing looked like a commercial for OC’s. They just stoically paddled into the wind and waves and looking very cool with it all. Off to the west some of the biggest swells were collapsing in big piles of foam – dont want to go that far over. Soon a red navigational buoy was visible and the old menomic of Right, Red, Returning, came to mind. Returning to the Bay you would keep the red bouy on your right – the edge of the infamous Potato patch was right there where the swells were jacking up. Very cool. Through all this I am looking for Mike in the Whaler but really hoping I am not going to see him to soon I want to get as far up this as I can so I can get the most runs I can going back. Pretty soon Dave Jensen comes down wind on the face of a huge swell right by me. Looking good Dave. There are a few boats close behind him and the Epic Double right on the edge of where the Potato Patch is really jacking up the swells. I have to look up to look at it. But I dont look too long because I suddenly wonder just how much directional control these guys shooting down wind and swell really have. I dont fancy getting speared out here. Soon enough the second red can is getting close and Mike in the Whaler is coming down wind and having everyone turn back. Turning proves uneventful (thankfully) and it is time to catch some runs. These prove elusive. Despite the size of everything it is more like chasing runners than put the paddle down and rest surfing. I only get swamped a couple of time so I figure I am not doing to badly. Its interesting and challenging but not as fast as I had hoped ( a Max speed of the day was 11.4 mph ). Still the Navigation Buoy comes up fast. I can see that a couple of boats have taken the direct rout for the point but I think we are supposed to go around it so head more that way. As I approach I hear hooting and hollering on my right. Looking UP there is a OC2 on the top of a massive swell the front half point in the air and the back half buried in foam. Awesome but I am glad its them not me. The next moment I am looking down below my feet at the TOP of the navigation buoy where a cluster of OC-1′s are hanging out like they are anchored there, after making the turn into the ebb.

Mike McNulty’s predictions come mostly true.
From the way the OC’s were hanging out it looked as if you needed a boost in the form of some runners to make progress against the ebb. So as I rounded the buoy I grabbed some, connected some and grabbed some more. It didn’t feel fast but it was into the ebb after all. After a few more runners I look up from my bow and find that I am still headed away from the Point and towards center channel. Not good ! Guess I didn’t turn enough. Before the race start I had ask Mike McNulty if you could surf fast enough to out pace the negative effects of the Ebb. His response was that you would feel fast but you would be stuck on a tread mill. The only part that turned out NOT to be true was that I would feel fast. I felt really slow!

Time flies when your having Fun !
Or maybe not. It seemed like I was stuck off that Point for an hour !! Every so often the escort boat would come by and someone would point dramatically towards the shore – I know OK – I’m trying! Every time I would try to ferry over towards the shore my speed would drop to 1 mph – no joking – and for all the progress I was making it might have been 1 mph out to the Farallones. Plus I was repeatedly swamped by waves coming over the side – something new. And of course as I got closer to the Point I was getting back into the random haystacks there – not the most efficient water for me to paddle in. After a while – and a few more visits from the escort boat ; thanks guys I really was glad you kept checking – I realized that the blistering 3 – 3.5 mph I could make chasing runners in the center of the channel was a least getting me somewhere – 1 mph just was not cutting it. So thats what I did, dropping back to that amazing 1 mph in between runs and hoping that a freighter was not going to try to come in against the ebb behind me. Once I was well inside the Point I started edging over towards the north shore. At which point the last of the paddlers in front of me were almost invisible. When I finally crossed the eddy line it was easy to see why. As I crept over to the shore my speed had gradually crept up to around 5.5 mph but on crossing the eddy line it short up too 8.8 mph. Dang now we are going places (CTA). So how long was I really stuck out there ? Well Steve Casper and I rounded the Sea Buoy at the same time. Steve Kaspar , almost unrecognizable with out his hat having lost it – can you imagine Steve with out his hat – I told you it was awesome out there. And he came in around 17 mins ahead of me. I have to say it felt like I was out there a lot longer than a fat quarter of an hour. The Mathematicians among you can work out your own time relationships.

A first – absolutely the last boat under the Bridge.
So now I feel home free – the waters flat and all I have to do is shoot ebb around the points – good fun. As I come around each point I can see that there is a cluster of boats padding against the ebb on the next point – again that illusion that they are tethered to the point, until they disappear around it. At each point I am a little closer to them. On one of the points I come close to being sent back to the Farallones when a steeper wave than I am expecting comes foaming around the point, just as I hit the full ebb, and picks me up – its the power brace of the day – on a 2 ft wave !
I suck up against the concrete of the Golden Gates base and turn hard into the ebb blasting out of the bay and almost run into my point hanging buddies battling the ebb. Fortunately a few small waves wrap around and give us enough of a boost to escape. There we are really home free. But no there is one more hitch – as we enter Fort Backer the yells of fisherman impinge on us and after several double takes I realize that Joel and Issac, in the traditional double, have hooked a couple of fishing lines – and we are as far from the fishing pier as you can get and still paddle into Fort Baker. A quick stop while I unhook the lines and the final sprint for the Finish. O.K. Helen and Judy you are done now, thanks for waiting for us.

One of my top 5 paddles ever – what else can I say. Thank you Wavechaser – this is what we come for !

Even a consolation prize.
At the raffle I scored big time – first by having my lucky ticket puller ( She pulled my name for my Wavechaser sweat shirt over a year ago) pull my ticket and second by scoring David Mocke’s new Book, donated by Patrick Hemmens of Ocean Sports……… Clearly I need to study it carefully. It looks like a nice book. Really good Photos and nice graphics.
Awesome Day – totally awesome !

* awesome – adjective: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.
-Informal – extremely good, excellent.

Well I think that covers all the aspects of the day !

It would be terribly unlikely that any of the racers or Wave Chaser crew will ever forget yesterday’s contest! How epic were the conditions? Umm, when Dave Jensen says dryly – “it was pretty big”, that should get everyone’s attention. At the start there was a raging ebb right down the center of the isthmus, under the Golden Gate, with wild swirling eddies banging all around. When we got out toward Point Bonita the swells began to rise like surreal green hillsides charging us. Crossing the “potato patch” (a shelf area infamous for tumultuous water) was totally wicked. At Point Bonita Buoy we turned north into really big NW swells complicated by crossing waves resounding off the cliffs of the Marin cliffsides. How big were the NW swells? 12-15 ft sounds about right. Throw in the cross chop from the coast, the strong ebb tide, a bit of wind wave, and just try to not pee in your wetsuit?
All I could think was “keep paddling, don’t think about the swells rushing in from Japan, just look at the water close by”. It didn’t work though, I still peed. On the return trip to Point Bonita the waves were moving so fast and were so complex that long runs were just not to be had. The short runs were way fast though. Inside of Point Bonita the fun came back and staying in near the cliffs they paid off with fast rides in the eddies that were generated by the raging ebb. True to form, the race threw in a bit fat curveball at the last turn, into Baker Cove, where the ebb tide generated super fast current and big standing waves that nearly succeeded in sending a few racers back out to the Pacific.
I know I’ve been banging on this drum for a while, but here it is again. Wavechaser races are so worth your support. These are world class races held on a truly world class course. If the long course does not sound like your “cup ‘o tea” there is always a short course that provides adequate challenge and gets ya a ticket to the party! Ski rentals are available from Epic, Fenn, and Huki – at modest cost.
C’mon do it. Let’s go! Enrich your paddling life. Paddle with the best crew ever. Yeah, the big time. Wavechaser rocks!!!
Special thanks to: Helen Workman, Mike Martinez, Dave Jensen, Kenny Howell, Patrick Hemmens, all the racers, and volunteers that make racing in the Bay Area so damn much fun!
Mike.

Cheers,

Jd

Here is my brief race report from the Wavechaser Long Course last Saturday, 1/21/12.

You know you’re dedicated to the cause when you don’t back down from a day of racing like this. A rainbow-enhanced Short Course saw about a dozen SUPS line up in lashing rain squalls and bitterly cold wind, with a few surfskis and OCs ready to break trail. How the SUPers can make any headway in 25-30 knot winds is a great scientific mystery. The only plausible explanation is mind over matter. The feeling a SUP gets upon turning downwind must the same for a mad dog when he finally breaks loose from his leash to chase down a cat.

The more challenging the conditions get, the more fun we seem to have out there! Due to severe weather and potentially life-threatening hazardous seas outside the Golden Gate, an alternative Long Course was devised inside the Bay. All but a couple of the mentally ill competitors were relieved by the route change; however, this course was anything but straightforward, and proved as diverse as the ethnicity of San Francisco. It started with downwind, turning to side wind, through the tide rip at Yellow Bluff, turn around the chase boat inside Lime Point (between a cliff and a breaking wave!), up the counter-current back into Richardson Bay, then a upstream ferry-angle to Belvedere, throw in Victory At Sea conditions off Peninsula Point (2 bad-asses came off their skis there), capped by a brute-force, Crime-Against-Humanity siege against wind, current, and rafts of eel grass back to the finish at Schoonmaker Beach. Burned chili and Irish Coffee at the after-party has never tasted sweeter.

One of the most intriguing spectacles of the day was seeing the lead pack take a ill-advised detour onto a 2-mile treadmill from Yellow Bluff to Belvedere. What were they thinking? Follow Carter Johnson? Never! I was thankfully pulled along the shore out of the current by a strong and smart OC-2 team. We flew up the eddy at 7 mph. Via this route, we caught the lead pack at Belvedere! The waterproof ghetto-blaster on the canoe helped keep the stroke rates high. Nick & Joe – you rock the boat! (These guys paddled their OC2 from Crissy Field on the SF side of the Bay before the race start, then back after the race. Bet you a six-pack they slept good that night!)

Choosing the fastest route from Belvedere to the finish into a 25-knot breeze was a roll of the dice. Those that headed directly for the Sausalito shore, thus escaping the Wrath of God wind, seemed to do better than those (including yours truly) that dreamed of a more gradual angle to the finish via Cone Rock – a trusty navigational marker inside Richardson Bay. My average speed for the last 2 miles of the race ranged from banana slug to stop-motion animation.

Tactics, guile, and luck: That’s how I stole a 3rd-place finish in the Evergreen class. Congrats to all the finishers – you earned this one. Mike McNulty, I will drop you next time! And thanks to all those precious Wavechaser volunteers who gave us another great day at the races.

Take another look at the results here for both races here:
http://wavechaser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Sausalito-Sea-Trek-January-21-20122.pdf

Can’t wait for the Wavechaser Championship race on Feb. 19. Support your local paddle series. Go Wavechaser!

See you all there.

-Kenny Howell

Aloha,

Nick