Marathon Canoe guru Brian Boatman and OCpaddler.com legend Alan Goto combined for a decisive come from behind win of the Round Bowen relay this past weekend. The 32km endurance race, pimiarly geared at sea kayaks and surfskis, drew 20+ outrigger relay teams to sleepy Bowen Island, west of Vancouver BC.
Paddlers contended with shifting wind and cool conditions, and there was much debate and strategy involving which paddler should complete which leg.
"the first leg was defintely the tougher of the two" said James "Jim" Clapp, who soloed the course and came a respectable 6th place against the relay teams "I was glad to get around the confused water at Cape Roger Curtis and into the channel",
the OC-1 division was led by local Oc-1 specialists Steve "Lotsy" Budjos and Paul McNamara, who held a commanding 4 minute lead over Boatman and Goto at the relay point. Goto then used the 18km second leg to catch and eventually overtake McNamara.
Paul was way up front, and I had to work hard to catch him" said Goto. "Once I caught him I was going so hard I wasn;t sure I could keep up the pace...Paul kept catching waves and shooting out in front of me"
the unexpected upwind finish was where Goto made his move, carving out a 2.5 minute lead to win the men's division in 2:57:32.
Other highlights of the day included ex Mooloolaba paddler Cheryl Skibe combined with Canadian Olympian Kamini Jain to rock it with the boys and win the womens divsion in 3:15:06, and a lone SUP paddler who completed the course in just over 6 hours!
full results at http://roundbowenchallenge.com/results.html
Ross Creasy
Open Ocean Outriggers
www.outrigger.ca
Posted by keizo on Tue, 06/10/2008 - 10:04pm
awesome write up! What a race - must have been beautiful as well - any pics from the race?
#1 Wed, 06/11/2008 - 12:04am
A tough race, fer sure! One thing I noticed is that the tide dropped about 5 or six feet while we were paddling. Lots of water moving around out there. There were some fun little bumps on the west side of the island. Mahalo to all who helped make this fun race possible! The salty barbecued bread after was ono-licious!! Oh, Canada...
#2 Wed, 06/11/2008 - 6:04am
I just looked at the rsults -definitely some interesting categories - what is "high perf" and "fast" ? I suppose these are types of boat specs?
#3 Wed, 06/11/2008 - 8:25am
It originally started as a sea kayak race so in addition to outriggers it also has a variety of kayak divisions based on the theoretical performance of the kayak.
HPK - High Performance Kayaks (aka Surfskis)
FSK - Fast Sea Kayak
SK - Sea Kayak
D - double
M/W/X - men / women / mixed
I'm not quite sure how they got 34km as the total distance. My GPS showed a little over 31km. Probably a little longer for the outriggers as they had to go into Tunstall Bay for the relay change.
#4 Wed, 06/11/2008 - 11:55am
I plotted the course on Google Earth and came up w/ about the same reading as Big Shane, about 19.5 miles for us non-metric folks.
#5 Wed, 06/11/2008 - 6:28pm
no pics, but a fun video from Bowen Island TV
http://www.bowenislandtv.com/pages/new-videos.php
#6 Tue, 06/17/2008 - 7:39am