SUP Race Report: CGT Superlap Series Race #4

Race: Race #4 in the CGT Winter Time Trial series, aka the "Superlap Series" because of a new race format.

Date it happened: 29 January 2016.

Host: CGT Kayaks and Paddleboards, which you can become a groupie of by joining the CGT Tribe facebook page.

Location: Riverside Park on the Imperial River in downtown Bonita Springs, Florida.

Distance: Approximately 5.3 km / 3.3 miles. The course goes downriver, around a buoy, back upriver to the start, then downriver and back a second time. There's a twist, though: There are two possible turn-around buoys downriver; one further and one closer. You have to do the long route for one lap and the short route for the other lap. It's your choice if you want to do the long or the short lap first, so interesting strategies come into play in competition.

Conditions: It was gray and chilly, about 12 degrees C, with light rain. Mist was beautifully swirling off the surface of the relatively warm river. The tide was quite low, necessitating portage around one of the buoy turns for those with longer fins. The current was about 0.4 kph, based on analysis with my paddling in current calculator.

Participants and Gear: The cold rain, and some other races happening the same day in other parts of Florida, kept most people away. Therefore we had just 5 hardy racers, and about the same number of spectators. Mike Clough raced a Kayak. John Weinberg and Beth Schadd raced 14x25 and 12'6x24 Riviera RP raceboards, respectively. Matt Kearney used his 12'6x24 Hovie Comet ZXC. I paddled one of CGT's for-demo boards: a 14x25 INFLATABLE RedPaddle Co raceboard. (The regular racers have been taking turns paddling the inflatable to get an idea of how its speed compares with traditional boards, on average.)

Results: I finished in 36:20, with Matt just one second behind. John and Beth also finished close with each other in 43:19 and 43:23. Subtract a minute or two from their times because they each overshot the un-marked second turn-around. Mike Clough's Kayak course was a bit longer than ours (two full length laps rather than one full and one short), and he finished in 52:02. Official results will be posted on the CGT Time Trials page.

Here's my GPS track and data from the race. You have to log in to Strava to see the details.


Play by play: For the start, all the SUP racers lined up in one group, and the kayaker started after. I rushed off the line with a really hard sprint. I was applying advice from Mark Athanacio, who says it's easier to gain time in an initial sprint than with an increased effort later when you're too tired to rise above your "set" speed. (We practiced the technique in a workout last week and saw that it worked well.) When I got into the lead I thought, "This is it, I'm going to easily walk away from these guys." But it was not so. Matt stayed on my draft like it was nothing, making it clear that simply trying to outrun him wouldn't work on the inflatable board. I'd have to spend some of the race in HIS draft to save energy. I held my lead until the downriver buoy, knowing that my turn on the 14' inflatable would be a lot slower than Matt's turn on his nimble Hovie. Indeed, Matt got around me easily when my longish fin hit the shallow sand near the buoy and I had to jump off and back on the board to complete the turn. That naturally put me behind in Matt's draft, and I was content to stay there while I caught my breath. The RedPaddle Co inflatable board seemed to catch the draft wake just fine. About half way back upriver I took the lead again. At the upriver buoy Matt gained half a board length by turning tighter than me, putting him in my "side wake". The side wake is a more challenging spot to draft in because there's a tendency to veer into the side of the leader's board. But apparently if you're good at it, which Matt is, it can be even more beneficial than following directly behind. The final turn was funny because there was no buoy for it. We were just on our honor to turn in front of a particular canal. Matt and I both turned at approximately the same time and place, but he turned much tighter. The 14' inflatable is stable when standing in the middle, but towards the narrow tail it gets a bit weird, like standing on a beach ball. Anyway, I was at least a few board lengths behind Matt after my turn, so I had to sprint like crazy for a while to catch up.

Once I got in Matt's draft I was fine, but with only about 1 km left in the race I knew I couldn't wait too long to try to get around him. I mean, we're good buddies, but it's not a race if you just LET the other guy win. So about 500 meters from the finish I left Matt's wake and got beside him, waiting for a good time to pass. When Matt started doing the side-wake thing again I went really close to the mangroves to force him to drop back. Whoopsie! :P That put him behind me, but still right in my tail draft. For the remaining few hundred meters of the race we both just paddled really, really hard knowing the other was doing the same. Although I maintained the one second lead, it could have easily been the other way around. Matt set his personal best time for this race series.

The verdict on the inflatable board is that it is pretty fast and stiff, definitely feels like a raceboard, and can do the usual racing tricks like drafting and buoy turning (though buoy turning is slightly awkward). Based on my times from earlier in this series, the inflatable is 3% - 5% slower than a conventional board of the same length, similar to how much slower a 12'6 is compared to a 14. I.e., I averaged 8.89 kph in this race on the inflatable, whereas in the last race with similar current and water levels I averaged 9.15 kph on my 14x23 Riviera RP. My best ever pace in the series was 9.34 kph, but that was when the water level was higher. I don't know if racing in rougher water would increase or decrease the speed difference between a normal and an inflatable board.

What else is new: Besides our little race today there were two big races- one in Key West and another in Melbourne -both 200ish miles away. I balked at the time and money to go to either of those, but my buddy Devin Turetzkin won the 12'6 class at the Key West race. My next major race may not be until March or April, but there will be another little CGT race in three weeks. Also, I'll probably drive up to Sarasota in February to watch Robert Norman try to break the 24 hour distance paddleboarding record at Nathan Benderson Park.

Rare "big" wave windsurfing day on FL Gulf Coast

Over the weekend a big blast of West wind crossed the Gulf of Mexico, sending unusually large waves towards the normally waveless coast of Southwest Florida. By Monday afternoon some of the waves were over head high, and the wind was pretty strong from the West Northwest. I went windsurfing at Wiggins Pass State Park in Naples and made this video. I was using a 5.5 sail and an 83 liter board. I felt overpowered on the 5.5 sail and would rather have been on something smaller like a 4.7, but the extra power turned out to be really useful for going upwind out through the waves.

Wiggins Big Waves 1-23-17 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Cold Front Windsurfing, New Beginner Board

It has been fairly breezy in Florida this fall and winter, but the breeze has mostly been from the East, meaning the Gulf of Mexico has been more like a flat lake than a wavy ocean. That changed for a while last weekend when a cold front passed through and the wind briefly came from the West and the North, providing pumping winds and bumpy water at my local windsurf spot, Wiggins Pass State Park. I got a good afternoon of sailing with a 4.7 and an 83 liter board, though I felt so rusty that I wasn't able to take full advantage of what the conditions offered.

Wiggins Cold Front 1-7-17 from James Douglass on Vimeo.

The next day the wind gradually clocked back around to it's usually easterly direction, but as it did I still squeezed in a pretty good session with a 6.4 sail and windsup board in the fading wind and waves.

My newest windsurf mission is going to be to teach some of my local paddleboard racing friends how to windsurf, using an excellent beginner/all-around board that I picked up for cheap at the thrift store. The board is a Mistral Prodigy, in nearly-new condition, complete with the sail and the racing fin and daggerboard. I already taught my pal Matt Kearney, and he learned real quick. I figure I'll teach some people for a while, and if somebody gets hooked I'll sell them the board.

SUP Race Report: CGT Superlap Series Race #3

Race: Race #3 in the CGT Winter Time Trial series, aka the "Superlap Series" because of a new race format.

Date it happened: 8 January 2016.

Host: CGT Kayaks and Paddleboards, which you can become a groupie of by joining the CGT Tribe facebook page.

Location: Riverside Park on the Imperial River in downtown Bonita Springs, Florida.

Distance: Approximately 5.3 km / 3.3 miles. The course goes downriver, around a buoy, back upriver to the start, then downriver and back a second time. There's a twist, though: There are two possible turn-around buoys downriver; one further and one closer. You have to do the long route for one lap and the short route for the other lap. It's your choice if you want to do the long or the short lap first, so interesting strategies come into play in competition.

Conditions: It was VERY COLD by Florida standards, about 9 degrees C, with a gusty North-Northeast wind. The wind, in combination with low tide, had pushed the water level extremely low, narrowing the river and exposing various shallow spots and sticks and logs. The current was about 0.3 kph, based on analysis with my paddling in current calculator.

Participants and Gear: The cold kept lots of people away, but we still had the core group of CGT race team folks. Robert "Superman" Norman drove down from Inverness and raced his 17'6x23 Starboard Sprint Unlimited; the same board that he is going to use to challenge the 24 hour sup distance record in Sarasota on February 11th. Devin Turetzkin and I both used 14x23 Riviera RP raceboards and Fins Unlimited 6" Keel fins. I used a Riviera Bump 8.0 paddle and Devin used the Riviera Bump 7.0 paddle. (I have ordered a Bump 7.0 for myself, because I think its smaller blade area may help me go faster without wearing out my muscles.) Matt Kearney used CGT's 14x25 RedPaddle inflatable race sup. I think it's my turn to paddle the inflatable next time; we're all going to paddle it at some point. Mark Athanacio was on his deadly black 14x21.5 Hovie Comet GT. Cindy Gibson paddled a 12'6x26 Hovie Comet ZXC, Donna Catron a 12'6x25 Hovie DelMar, and Justin DiGiorgio a 14x24 Hovie Comet GT. Jared Hamilton paddled a 14x27 Laird Hamilton sup, but just did one lap. At the other end of the board speed spectrum, Larissa Kinne paddled a 10'6x32 Riviera surf style board, but she still finished the whole two-lap distance.

Results: Jared was the first and only one-lap finisher in 25:28. I was the first two-lap finisher in 34:59, followed by Athanacio in 35:32, and Robert Norman in 36:16. Justin DiGiorgio did 38:15, edging out Devin Turetzkin (38:23) by just a few board lengths. Matt Kearney got too close to the edge of the river near the finish line and came to a dead stop on a submerged log just short of the finish line. He would have finished a little under 40 minutes, but ended up a little over 40 minutes after unsticking himself. Race director Nick Paeno had mercy and gave him 39:56 anyway. Cindy Gibson was the first woman with 41:30, followed by Donna in 46:50 and Larissa in 47:56. I thought it was very impressive that Larissa went that fast without a raceboard. Official results will be posted on the CGT Time Trials page.

Here's my GPS track and data from the race. You have to log in to Strava to see the details.


Play by play: None of us were quick to get on the water. We stayed bundled up on shore until peer pressure eventually coaxed us onto the river. I did more warm-up than usual for the simple reason that I literally needed to warm up. For the start, Robert Norman and I agreed to go in the first group, Devin and Justin in the second, and Athanacio in the third. I know I can keep up with Robert when we're both on 14' boards, but I wasn't sure if his 17'6 would give him a big advantage. I decided the safest thing would be to get in his draft, at least until I could see what pace he set. Robert started fast, and after about 100 meters I did get in his draft. It was a tricky to figure out the optimal spot to ride his wake, because his pointy-at-both-ends board didn't make much visible wake. Once the initial sprint phase wore off, I noticed that Robert's pace was NOT faster than his 14' board pace. I continued to draft him for the first 800 meters or so, then when I thought he might be slowing down I passed him. I think that shallow water with lots of turns more-or-less cancels out the speed advantage of an unlimited board. Anyway, Robert stayed pretty close on my tail as we approached the further downriver turn-around; the "Frankenbuoy". The water was so shallow there that we had to jump off our boards and portage (run carrying our boards) around the buoy. I don't think that slowed us down much, but since Robert's board was longer and more awkward I put a little gap on him there that he couldn't make up.

Heading upriver I saw that Athanacio had caught up with Devin and Justin, who had started before him. Matt was further back, doing his best to make the inflatable go fast. The rest of the race for me was just about keeping good form and staying on the gas. I knew that neither the river conditions nor my condition (recovering from a cold and not much paddling over the holidays) were optimal for setting a record time, but in a way that was good because I could just make the most of what there was. In the final 400 meters of the second lap I put in an extra hard effort, and that worked out pretty well for getting me to the finish line with not much energy left. Though my time was 45 seconds slower than last time, I'm OK with that. It was a bonus to finish faster than Athanacio, but not surprising this time since he has been sick and unable to train for ten days or so.

After the race Robert let several of us try his 17'6x23. It was quite tippy, but had a really neat feel. I'd like to try it again in deeper, open water. Given the room to run I definitely think it could be faster than a 14'.

What else is new: Yesterday as the cold front came in I got a great 4.7 sail / 83 liter board windsurfing session, and I plan to try sailing again today. Tomorrow is my first day of teaching for the spring semester at FGCU, so I figure I might as well maximize the watersports fun before I'm super busy again.