goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/blackburn-challenge-on-saturday/
"The Blackburn Challenge, held on July 18 this year, is the premier human-powered open-water event on the East Coast."
The race honors rowing legend Howard Blackburn and is open to all “Swedish steam” (muscle-powered) vessels. The event both celebrates and helps to keep alive the story of Howard Blackburn’s desperate mid-winter 1883 rowing of a small fishing dory from the Burgeo Bank fishing grounds to refuge on the south coast of Newfoundland. Blackburn and his dorymate Thomas Welch had become separated from the Gloucester fishing schooner Grace L. Fears during a sudden squall and found themselves nearly sixty miles from the nearest land. Over the course of the ensuing five-day ordeal, Welch would give up and succumb to a merciful death, whereas Blackburn would allow his bare hands to freeze to the shape of the oars, and row until he reached land. He lost all the fingers on each of his hands to frostbite. He kept a bar for a while in Gloucester, then went back to sea!
Yankeehookele passed under the greasy pole yesterday (I saw several others who post here there, too..Fuzerider, Frosso, etc.). The first ten miles of the course were shrouded in fog offering less than a mile's visibility. One lobster boat not keeping a good lookout could ruin your day.
Submitted by YankeeHookele on Sun, 07/19/2009 - 7:43am
Pics and storys coming up soon on ;
www.surfskiracing.com
and
www.nesurfski.net
#1 Sun, 07/19/2009 - 7:56am
Congrats Fuze on your good showing on the _____ : )
aloha,
pog
#2 Sun, 07/19/2009 - 9:58am
Thanks onnopaddle,
I was in a good spot to watch the goings on as the race unfolded...... pretty fun stuff .
I wrote my take on the event which should be up on :
www.surfskiracing.com
a little later today.
#3 Mon, 07/20/2009 - 12:30am
While Fuzerider is getting his story on line, I thought I'd clip and paste part of our boat's debrief. In an OC-6 you never know all the things that were happening on the boat until days later.
Fog! The first ten miles in very low visibility were a pain. I'm talking to my fellow crew members from this point on...
I can set in the waypoints and will next time. There is however several problems that this invites. To breed steersmen properly they should be crossed with that Indian goddess with the six arms, Kali or perhaps with an octopus. Despite your suspicions, I too am paddling as well as steering. That takes two hands. The GPS shows speed or shows any of the 18 or so waypoints. I need to take one hand and change the display. There is no GPS mount on a Force Five, especially a borrowed Force Five. Every time you touch a button on a GPS it requires use of a hand and risks dismounting the GPS. I can find myself hypnotized by my instruments. Ed always asks for the time at the end of the race. At the start punching a stopwatch is the last thing I have in mind. I'm watching our competitors and praying we don't get capsized in some five boat pile up. Would it be great to have several large dials in front of me showing all sorts of stuff three inches high? I dream of it.
As a steersman I am further tasked with keeping track of all the boats around me. GPS won't tell me if a lobster boat is going to come zipping out the fog. Only radar can do that. We don't have radar. No one can tell you what a lone kayaker will do if he's within 50 feet of an OC-6. It is very easy for a kayaker to get disoriented. I must also be monitoring the five paddlers ahead of me and watch for lobster buoys...if possible. That is a problem because I have five broad backs directly ahead of me. I can see lobster pots to the side, but not dead ahead. Really lobster buoys are not a problems we just go over them. I just try to keep them away from our paddles, if I can. Normally lobster pots are laid out on a LORAN line so they are often liken lane lines in a swimming pool. Just make sure the buoys are all the same color scheme which means they were put down by the same fisherman.
[The other steerman from our club] asked the best way to mount a GPS. I told her with velcro "but be sure to put a safety line on it." I glued the velcro on the spray skirt 12 hours before the race. Did you know spray skirts are impregnated with something to keep them waterproof? That was in the back of my mind.
Fog, fog and more fog. Well about 6 or 7 miles into the race someone yelled out, "Range Marker!"
There are several meanings for range marker. None of them are good. I went into emergency mode.
In a nautical context range markers come in twos. One is mounted high and the other is mounted low some distance away. You sighted them up like gunsites to negotiate a very narrow and dangerous channel. I immediately twisted to look for two range markers. There were none that I could see. Then I twisted some more and knocked the GPS clean off the spray skirt into the drink. A Garmin eTrek runs about a hundred bucks.
The other meaning for range marker is a marker on a firing range. If we had drifted into some sort of coastal firing range that wasn't good either.
I finally asked "Do you mean 'course marker'?" There seemed to be agreement on that.
So my GPS had gone into the drink. Fortunately I listened to my own advice to [the steersman for out teams other boat] and had secured the GPS to a spray skirt rib with parachute line, a safety line. I fished it back aboard, but it was not longer secured to the spray skirt in any way other than gravity. So much for the best laid plans. One day I'm going to design some sort of cloth instrument board...someday.
[I'm talking again] One of my best friends at [my former club] was the son of an Afrika Korps sergeant. You could not get him to hydrate. I think he thought it was a sign of weakness. I guess the first one to drink out of his canteen at Tobruk was considered a sissy or something. In three successive Liberty races he got screwed up and disoriented. The first one he didn't bring water at all and was redfaced and glassy-eyed at teh end. The second he brought water in a bottle that he place in the bottom of the boat and which wandered away to another position. Again redfaced and glassy-eyed.. The third he spilled over the water container at the beginning of the race though it had a tube in it this time. It went down hill from there.
You can not feel yourself winding down, but it is visible from seat #6 or by the signal from the metronome. Dehydration makes you both stupid and depressed. One of the reasons we moved ahead of [two other teams] was, I think, that they got so involved in their duel that they did not properly hydrate. [Team member on our other boat which was one of the dueling boats] was sick after the race. I'm guessing insufficient hydration. Another reason is we felt better than they did and the sudden intense sunlight didn't bother us nearly as much.
By the way, I had a great time. The crew was perfect and worked like clockwork. At [another race] last year it was the pits. Among other problem personalities I had an Australian (my apologies Rambo) serving as communicator in seat #4 who wouldn't communicate. If he relayed something it was totally unintelligible. I'd ask him to repeat what he'd just said and he wouldn't. I think he thought I was making fun of his accent for the crew's entertainment (sigh).I have tinnitus and a hearing loss courtesy of my time visiting various countries for Uncle Sam.
Debrief highlights over.
Now at the end of the Blackburn, you may not realize, you must pass under theGreasy Pole to finish.
To understand the full significance of that historical landmark, you must first
watch this:
There is one guy wearing a hula skirt so this is kinda on topic.
#4 Tue, 07/21/2009 - 2:01am
That was hilarious - looks like some family jewels were lost to the greasy pole but the ending was a surprise!!
#5 Mon, 07/20/2009 - 1:18pm
You got the record Yankee !!!!
for the most hilarious post EVER on OCP!!
#6 Mon, 07/20/2009 - 2:13pm
In the immortal words of fuze, "You people" are crazy.
#7 Mon, 07/20/2009 - 2:48pm
*
#8 Wed, 07/22/2009 - 8:44am
,
#9 Wed, 07/22/2009 - 2:54am
Good job, Fuze. You people may refuse to acknowledge this, but Fuze is one of the top over 50 guys in the world, when you consider his achievements in various paddling disciplines.
#10 Wed, 07/22/2009 - 7:15am
"Anyone can steer the canoe if you don't need to go in a straight line"
#11 Wed, 07/22/2009 - 2:04pm
“Anyone can steer the canoe if you don’t need to go in a straight line”
Actually I not sure even that's true. They still have to keep the boat upright and eventually get it to where the plan was to go. A continually shifting assymetry and the urge to paddle out of guilt rather than necessity undoes many. Then there's the the scarey old saw "A steerman can never win a race, but he can lose one" hanging over the potential steersman's head (not really true if you think about it).
I don't think a mime could steer a canoe for instance.
~~~~~~~~~~
YankeeHo'okele
"Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm" - Syrus Publius
#12 Thu, 07/23/2009 - 2:37pm