Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage

Are you known as, "that ______ guy" or "that ______ lady? If so, you have surely been gifted a book, or ten, about that ______ thing, for better or worse. As a standup paddleboarding (SUP) dabbler since 2007 and SUP race enthusiast since 2014 I'm actually surprised that I wasn't given a SUP book until recently. Library and bookstore shelves aren't exactly overflowing with SUP offerings- maybe that's why it took a while. You see, SUP is like tofu- it's very wholesome but (I assume) most people would rather die than read a book about it. I did a cursory search just now and there are literally more books about tofu than there are about SUP. (How to know your ______ is boring AF: there are more books about tofu than ______.)

I'm not a professional writer (my wife is) but I gather that there are a few tricks for turning a boring topic into something more palatable, much as a gifted chef can make tofu nearly edible. 1. Combine it with something totally unrelated and much more interesting. The small town bookstore owner also solves murders. 2. Raise the stakes. It not just a long paddle; it's a very dangerous solo ocean crossing. 3. Twine it into deeply personal or philosophical musings. 4. Use it as a vehicle to explore and opine on interesting aspects of culture, history, science, etc.

Dan Rubenstein's "Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage," which my mom gave me for Christmas, uses a bit of techniques 2 and 3, but mostly technique 4. Rubenstein is a Canadian journalist who seems to be a thoughtful, responsible, good-hearted person very concerned with environmental conservation, social and economic justice, and other important things now subject to anti-woke backlash in the US. Dan's long, inland paddleboard journey; a circuit on rivers, lakes, and canals from the Great Lakes region to New York City and back, is an impressive logistical and endurance feat. He often paddled ~50 km (30 miles) per day day on a 14' inflatable BadFish sup loaded with camping gear, and he had to deal with strong headwinds, wrong-way river currents, ocean-type waves on the Great Lakes, and "Deliverance" type peril in some run-down urban and rural areas. But he never frames the story in a macho, proving-his-greatness kind of way. He's humble and self-deprecating with dorky dad energy that I resemble and appreciate as a sane antidote to the toxic energy of the egomaniac males like Hegseth and Musk who dominate the news these days.

Picture from a nice TotalSUP article about Dan's Journey

Part of Rubenstein's responsibility is that he's working his ass off doing journalist stuff the entire time he's paddling. Almost every day he has a meeting arranged with some local-to-that-part-of-the-waterway environmental activist, scientist, historian, barge operator, quaint inn proprietor, urban youth outreacher, or other person who is deeply involved in honoring and improving their part of the world. It's inspiring to get a view of all these people in all these places rallying around green and "blue spaces" for ecological restoration, economic revitalization, equitable access, etc. We need that kind of water stewardship everywhere to reverse the harmful effects of pollution, privatization, shoreline "hardening," etc. At the same time, it's exhausting to read through so many sequential accounts of those do-gooders and the similar challenges they're facing, so I found myself reading the book in kind of small doses at a time. Dan also has random encounters with kind, quirky, and occasionally creepy people along the way, which adds some fun and keeps things down to earth.

The most awkward, painful-reflection aspect of reading this book was Rubenstein's constant, critical interrogation of his own privilege as an educated, middle-class, straight white male in a nation that (like the US) gained its riches through exploitation of nature, indigenous people, poor workers, etc. But as awkward as attempts of privileged people to be politically correct / woke always seem to be, I think it's still important that we keep awkwardly working to be better, more humble, more real human beings. The alternative is deepening the harmful divisions in society that prevent human progress and could lead to our destruction, and that's no good.

Anyway, cheers to Dan. Water Borne isn't going to sell like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but it's an honest and intelligent book about the hope and challenge of healing our waterways and healing the social-environmental fabric of our world. Two thumbs up from this _______ guy.

Went to the new MOTE Aquarium in Sarasota

I'm on an advisory council for something called the "Seagrass Restoration Technology Development Initiative." The initiative is funded by the state of Florida and administered through a private organization called Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium. Periodically the group gets together and all the scientists funded by the initiative update the organizers and advisory council on their research activities and findings. Yesterday there was one of those get-togethers at Mote SEA - the organization's fancy new public aquarium at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota. It was neat for lots of reasons:

1. Nathan Benderson Park is a unique and impressive venue for competitive rowing and paddling. I'd been there to compete in "Sup 'n Run" races in 2016 and 2017 and to cheer Robert Norman's 24 hour SUP distance record attempt. I was nostalgic to see the place again.

2. The Mote SEA aquarium wasn't built yet when I did those sup things, but I'd seen the crazy building under construction from the freeway, so I was curious what it was like inside. Here are some pictures-

3. The seagrass science aspect of the meeting was even more interesting (to me) than the public aquarium. I brought my grad student along so she could absorb the latest info on how to characterize genetic diversity and stress-adaptations within seagrass plants. The hope is to use that knowledge to improve seagrass conservation and restoration success. Of course the other, even-more-important part of successful seagrass conservation and restoration is reducing the man-made environmental stressors that have been killing seagrass: nutrient pollution, climate change, coastal hardening and dredge/fill operations, etc. So let's not forget about that.

Red Tide is back in SW Florida

My title is a bit misleading. Florida red tide (blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate alga Karenia brevis) has actually been skulking around west and southwest Florida since last summer. But because of the wind and current patterns it has mostly stayed to our north and offshore... until now.

Karenia brevis blooms are tricky to understand and predict because they usually start far offshore, fueled by nutrients from deep water currents that brush along the "continental shelf" of west Florida. But when winds and currents bring the blooms closer to shore, they interact with nutrient sources from the land; the flow from polluted rivers and runoff. There is a growing scientific consensus that while Florida's red tides may not be *initiated* by pollution, they are definitely worsened by pollution.

As paddleboarding marine biologist I'm out in the water a lot, so I get a lot of reminders of what's at stake; what we have to lose if we don't get our pollution under control and tamp down these red tides. For example, last week when paddleboarding around Lover's Key the water was relatively clear and I saw a cute little bonnethead shark swimming along over the sand. Today, paddling the same route with a friend, there were dead fish floating everywhere and a stench was in the air; a mix of rotting fish and the aerosolized "brevitoxins" of the red tide bloom. When we paddled over the same patch of sand where I'd seen the baby shark last week, there it was again, or another one about the same size, freshly dead.

Bluesky account, SUPdate, and new GPS watch

Well, gee. It has been a while since I've made a blog post. Blogs are so "old internet" now. Gears are churning in my mind, though, and I'm thinking that maybe old internet has some advantages over the extremely algorithm-driven, addictive, doom-scrolling-for-profit, orchestrated-and-manipulated-by-oligarchs-aligned-with-fascists disaster that is "new internet." 

Towards that end I've created an account on supposedly-less-worse-than-facebook-and-twitter/X social media platform "bluesky" - https://bsky.app/profile/jamesgdouglass.bsky.social

Bluesky doesn't allow posts more than 300 words, but that could kind of work out if I put long rants and picture-filled posts here on my blog, and just link to them on bluesky. Unlike facebook, I think bluesky doesn't deprioritize posts linking to outside websites. 

As for personal news, I've been working a lot trying to keep up with my teaching and research responsibilities at FGCU and I haven't been able to do as much watersports as I would like. I am still paddleboarding at least once a week, though, and I've changed paddleboards. Unlike the pre-hurricane-Ian days when I lived in a house with a shed and could store lots of toys, I am now limited to what I can store permanently in my 2009 Chrysler Town & Country mini-van, and one 14' SUP board that I store on top of the kitchen cabinets with a little rack system that probably voids the security deposit on the one-bedroom apartment I live in with Rhonda. 

The 14' SUP I originally had on top of the cabinets was a 23" wide Riviera RP raceboard from 2017. It was really beat up and many-times repaired from injuries sustained even prior to 2022's Hurricane Ian. Anyway, I finally decided to give it away after getting frustrated with how much trouble I had staying on it in the rough water 2024 Key West Classic race. After all, I still had a slower but more seaworthy 14'x27.25" Fanatic Falcon 2014 raceboard collecting dust in my buddy Serge's backyard shipping container storage unit. So the Riviera went away and I'm now exclusively using the big red Fanatic, which is also windsurfable, by the way, because of the mast track I installed in it a long time ago. 

My favorite paddle route is circumnavigating Lover's Key. It's an annoyingly long, trafficky drive from where I live now to Lover's Key, but I know I can always get a dirt parking spot there, and it's free. There's a closer place where I can get in the water (the Estero River), but flat water paddling is comparatively boring, and paddling the wide Fanatic in flat water is kind of sad because it's significantly slower than the narrow Riviera was. If I'm in bumpy water or waves I don't notice that.

Anyway, in December I gave myself a little present to help me motivate and track my watersports and other exercise. It's a "Garmin Instinct Solar" GPS watch. The GPS isn't on all the time- just when you turn it on to track an activity, but it has motion sensors and a heart rate sensor that ARE on all the time, so if I want to see what my heart rate was when I was asleep, or something, I can look at that data via a bluetooth wireless connection between the watch and my smartphone. (Kind of creepy, but whatever.) The heart rate monitor in the watch gets what I think is accurate data when I'm jogging, based on what I know my maximum heart rate is from prior monitoring with chest band HR monitors. However, the HR monitor in the watch gives total garbage data during standup paddling. I don't know if it's because of the different wrist motion, or water conductivity, or what. 

I have yet to try using the watch for "intervals" type workouts of the sort I used to use my "SUP Speedcoach" GPS for, but the watch beeps and buzzes every time I complete a mile, so I can glance at my wrist and see how my pace was for each mile paddled or jogged. If anyone else has some tips for getting the most out of this type of wrist GPS for SUP training, I would love to hear those. 

Florida sandwich: SUP race between two hurricanes

Fall 2024 schedule:

1. Research and teaching at Florida Gulf Coast University
2. Hurricane Helene
3. Key West Classic paddle race
4. Hurricane Milton
5. Back to research and teaching

Life in Florida is *a lot* sometimes, in both good and bad ways. Rhonda and I have adjusted to the "downsizing" that Hurricane Ian forced on us in fall 2022, moving from a flooded then sold from under us rental house in Bonita Springs to a tiny but cute bedroom apartment in Estero. Positives include:

1. Bicycling a short distance to work and never having to worry about gas or finding a parking place.
2. Power-couple working from home vibes with two desks set up in a single room that is home office, living room, kitchen, and dining room.
3. Easy to walk the dogs within the apartment complex, nice neighbors, and a swimming pool.
4. Being at 5 meters elevation (as opposed to 2 meters) and therefore not having to worry about storm surge or freshwater flooding.
5. Rhonda discovered that there is just enough room over the kitchen cabinets to store my 14' race paddleboard, and we developed an efficient system now for getting it down and out the door, so I can paddle almost as much as I used to again.

There are some negatives, like it's a longer drive to the beach, we have no room for guests and no storage space for hobby stuff, and we can't make our own decisions about the landscaping. We're living well overall, though, and able to progress on some of our life achievement / enjoyment goals. For example, Rhonda is kicking butt with her writing and editing career, going on Disney World trips with her sister and nephew, and I am pursuing some semblance of chaotic balance of research, teaching, environmental activism, and watersports / fitness pursuits. The last month has been a particularly dramatic one, and that is the subject of this post.

It started out fairly normal: teaching and research. Fieldwork for the research has been fun. My colleague Melissa May and I are part of a team working with the Gulf Shellfish Institute to restore hard clams, aka Southern Quahog (Mercenaria campechiensis) by combining seagrass and clam restoration projects. Hard clams used to be ubiquitous in SW Florida, but they were massively overharvested in the 1960s and have been slow to recover, possibly due to loss of spawning stock. We've been diving in shallow waters and scoping out sites that currently have low amounts of clams and seagrass but could potentially be restored. In the picture below some Gulf Shellfish Institute researchers are hamming it up with a few clams we found during a site survey using the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation's research vessel.

The bad stuff started with Hurricane Helene, which we were worried could be a reprisal of Hurricane Ian's devastating effects on our area. Helene was devastating for the "Big Bend" region of Florida between Tampa and Tallahasee, and almost apocalyptic as a "1000 year" freshwater flood event where my parents live in Asheville, NC.

The scariest thing for me about Helene was not being able to get in touch with my parents for days while watching apocalyptic footage of Asheville flooding, and imaginging them swept away in a mudslide somewhere. It turns out they were OK, and were able to evacuate to their beach rental house in South Carolina; an interesting reversal of the usual "head for the hills" thing you're expected to do in a hurricane.

Helene wasn't that bad for us in SW Florida, but it still managed to flood FGCU's Vester Marine Field Station enough that they had to remove drywall from where they had JUST fixed it post-Ian. The surges of Helene (and later Milton) show up well in this log from a water quality sensor deployed at the marine station by FGCU scientists.

Also, Helene flooded my paddle friends Justin and Bill's houses on the Imperial River and derailed their plans to attend the last ever Key West Classic paddleboard race. And it majorly resculpted the beaches and "sanded over" beach parking lots. I feel bad for whoever's cars and trucks these were that didn't get moved out of the Bonita Beach parking lots before the storm.

Some of the old Bonita Springs paddle racing crew were unaffected enough by Helene that we were still able to attend the Key West Classic. I drove down with Cindy Gibson and we met Meg Bosi and John Weinberg there, along with a bunch of other paddle racers from around Florida who we've gotten to know over the years.

Hawaiian style blessing before the 2024 Key West Classic.

For the race I'd been thinking about bringing my WIDE 14x27.25" Fanatic Falcon, but I didn't have the wherewithall to get it out of post-Ian storage at my buddy's house before the mess of Helene. So I ended up going with the beat up 14x23" Riviera RP that lives on top of my cabinets. The narrow Riviera board was perfect for the north side of Key West, where the water was flat in the lee of the south wind, but it was almost impossible to balance on the board on the wickedly choppy south side of Key West, where a residual wind and swell from Helene was bouncing off the cement seawalls. I especially suffered in in the final segment of the race where I kept falling and falling and was eventually passed by my most closely matched competitor Travis Kindt. Almost everyone else was also having balance issues, though, and many stand up paddleboarders ended up sitting down or kneeling on their boards to finish the race. Once the "sitters" were disqualified I actually ended up in third place, after Jake Portwood and Travis Kindt. My time was 3 hours 11 minutes, which is about 45 minutes longer than my best time from years past. Cindy won first place in the 12'6 board class and first place overall for the women, rounding in front of a bunch of younger women on 14' boards.

Jake Portwood first SUP finisher.

Me limping over the finish line.

Cindy Gibson finishing strong.

Meg Bosi.

After the race we ate good food and did a bunch of touristy stuff in Key West. Ernest Hemmingway's house was worth the money and the Key West graveyard, with all kinds of history, flowers and feral chickens and iguanas running amok was neat.

We didn't get much rest after Helene and Key West before the next hurricane loomed: Milton. With a more southerly track than Helene, it looked like it could be extremely bad for us, and maybe a "worst ever" scenario for Tampa Bay. As it was, the track kind of "threaded the needle," coming ashore just south of Tampa Bay and not causing much storm surge there, while being far enough north of my area that our storm surge was only a little bit higher than Helene's was. There were scary tornadoes across the whole state as Milton was approaching, though, for which Rhonda and I had to hide in the bathroom with our dogs. It also flooded FGCU Vester station ABOVE the line where the soggy new drywall had just been removed after Helene. Ugh. Bill and Justin's river houses also flooded again, significantly more so than in Helene, so they are in hell still. Areas north of me but south of Tampa Bay, like Venice and Sarasota, got it worst, with major surge, wind damage, and basically total devastation of the barrier islands and low lying areas.

I know I shouldn't get in the water after hurricanes, since it's like, 90% sewage and toxic waste, but yesterday Cindy and I carefully paddled through the backwaters from Bonita Beach road to Wiggins Pass State Park to check out the scene there. Interestingly, all the ingredients of nature: trees, sand, shells birds, fish, etc. are still there, just in significantly different arrangements. The parking lots of the state park are totally obscured under new sand dunes, and what once were forests are now roots and tree stumps awash in the Gulf of Mexico.

People keep talking about "build back bigger and stronger" but I think we need to be a little careful about how we approach that. In my opinion, we really shouldn't be building stuff that's supposed to last a long time on beaches and barrier islands. These areas move and shift around a lot, even when sea level isn't rising, and sea level IS rising (about 3.57 mm/yr in Fort Myers according to the NOAA gauges there). Besides the upward creep of sea level rise, another thing making us more vulnerable is the increasing temperature and "oceanic heat content" of the Gulf of Mexico, which is like rocket fuel for hurricanes. The gulf has been record hot for the last few years, and was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer than normal for these last two storms, contributing massively to their convective winds and precipitation. Big, destructive hurricanes won't be hitting us EVERY year, but they're definitely going to be hitting harder and causing more surge and flooding than they did in decades past.

Between Helen and Milton my geology / meteorology colleague Dr. Joanne Muller gave a killer talk about hurricanes and her efforts to account for their changing impacts over time. Proud to be part of a scientific community that is looking at the science and economic impacts of storms with clear eyes.

Dirt roads, parks with hiking / biking trails, simple beach access areas, maybe some campgrounds; those are the only kind of human use things that I think really make sense for beach front and barrier islands of the Gulf.

Windsurf sail mounted to 14x23 SUP Raceboard

I tried mounting an 8.0 windsurfing sail on my 14'x23" Rivera RP SUP raceboard today. I had to do a lot of fiddling to get the universal joint attached to the carry handle on the SUP, but once I was actually on the water it was a lot of fun. I filmed some video of sailing it with my version 1.0 universal joint attachment, which was pretty wobbly, but worked. The location is the north end of Lovers Key in Bonita Springs, Florida, where there is a bridge over Big Carlos Pass, which connects the Gulf of Mexico to Estero Bay. There's some red tide beginning to affect the area again, and beachgoers including myself were coughing a bit.



After filming I redid the mast base attachment and went out for a second round of sailing. The new attachment felt a lot more secure, and emboldened me to circumnavigate Lovers Key on the craft (see GPS track). Under sail power the board felt light and sleek, and had a smooth transition from gliding to planing. It went upwind OK considering that it didn't have a daggerboard.

Race Report: Key West Classic 2019

Surfski finishers on the podium-


More photos on their facebook page- I haven't bothered to put them in my blog post. https://www.facebook.com/pg/KeyWestClassic/photos/?ref=page_internal

Race: The Key West Paddle Classic, organized by the Lazy Dog, sanctioned by the WPA, and benefiting the Monroe County Special Olympics.


Date it happened: 4 May 2019

Location: Higgs Beach, Key West, Florida.

Distance: 20.67 km (12.84 miles); around the entire perimeter of Key West. This was about two km longer than usual because the Fleming Key bridge was damaged by a boat collision and we had to paddle all the way north around Fleming Key instead of just around Dredgers Key. In addition to the full rounding, there was the option to do it as a relay in three legs, so some of the racers were doing that.



Conditions: It was breezy and choppy, but not to the extreme extent that it has sometimes been in the past. The wind was from the SE at 10-15 knots. The meant that the first 2.8 km of the course was roughly downwind, but everything else was side-wind or upwind. The tide was coming in the whole time, which gave us a boost going through the broad channel on the west side of the island, but slowed us down through Cow Key Cut on the east side of the island. The biggest nuisance part of the conditions this year was large amounts of floating Sargassum seaweed, which seemed to be getting stuck even on supposedly weed-shedding fins and rudders. This seaweed occurs naturally in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean, but it has been occurring in unprecedentedly large and increasing amounts since 2010. Scientists suspect that climate change and increasing amounts of man-made nutrients entering the ocean are stimulating these blooms.

Participants: 147 people completed the race, including 129 who did it not as a relay. Of the 129 there were: 52 14' SUPs, 24 12'6 SUPs, 8 non-race SUPs, 15 prone paddleboards, 15 one-person outrigger canoes, 4 two-person outrigger canoes, 1 three-person outrigger canoe, 5 surfski kayaks, 3 sea kayaks, 6 regular kayaks, 1 special rowboat for someone who used a wheelchair.

Results and Gear: The top six finishers overall were-
1:51:01 South African Kevin McLellan on a Fenn Elite S surfski with an over-stern rudder
1:54:31 Tahitian Tetauira "T" Putoa on a rudderless Va'a outrigger canoe
2:00:00 Darian Hildreth on a standard outrigger canoe
2:04:40 Garrett Fletcher on a standard outrigger canoe
2:05:01 James Douglass (ME!) on a 610x46 cm Stellar SEI surfski with an 18 cm "weedless" rudder
2:07:00 Mark Athanacio on a Puakea Kahele outrigger canoe with a small rudder

The top six SUP finishers were-
2:18:39 Brazilian Eri Tenorio on a 14x22 Flying Fish
2:20:43 Steve Miller on a 14x22 Flying Fish
2:28:15 Tim Warner on a 14x22 Flying Fish
2:32:16 Zach Rounsaville on a 14x?? Infinity Blackfish
2:32:23 Kimberly Barnes on a 14x22 Flying Fish (first female SUP)
2:32:35 John Batson on a Starboard?

Other notable finishes included-
2:12:54 Floridian William Miller, first non-surfksi kayak by a large margin
2:13:04 Floridian Bill Mussenden, outrigger canoe, a buddy of mine who is getting pretty darn fast
2:16:25 Floridian Matt Kearney, outrigger canoe, a good buddy who I carpooled and camped with
2:24:29 South African Murray Hunkin, my surfski mentor who is usually much faster than me but had capsizing issues
2:52:34 Floridian Cindy Gibson, first 12'6 SUP, a frequent training buddy
3:06:41 Floridian Meg Bosi, 14' SUP, a big promoter of paddling in SW Florida

Play by play: This was the third time I've done the Key West Classic, but it was a "first" in multiple ways. 1) First time doing it on a surfski kayak instead of a SUP. The race is horribly long and brutal on a standup paddleboard, especially in the upwind sections, but it's not that bad on a fast, sit-down watercraft. 2) First time camping. Matt Kearney and I stayed Friday and Saturday night at Boyd's Campground on Key West, which was economical and convenient. Since we weren't rushing in and out, we did a nice snorkel outing on the way down Friday, and another on the way back Sunday. Friday we paddled out to moor and snorkel at Cheeca Rocks off Islamorada, and Sunday we snorkeled from shore off Bahia Honda State Park in the lower keys. 3) First time getting a "podium" result in my division, though that's mainly due to the field not being so deep in surfski as it is in SUP.

The last two times I've done the race I've gotten screwed at the start, which is disorganized and spread out. This time I made sure I was ready early, and I stalked the starter boat to be sure I was ready to go the moment they dropped the flag. I had a lot of adrenaline at the start, increased by the excitement of having a lot of wind swells to ride. The angle of the wind and swell was about 45 degrees off from true downwind, but it was close enough to still take advantage of the ocean's energy, and I actually made it to the western corner of the island in first place. Woo hoo!

Shortly after turning north along the western side of the island, I saw eventual winner Kevin McLellan appear between me and the shoreline. I tried to keep pace with him and inch over to maybe get in his draft, but he was simply too much faster than me, so I gave up on that by the time we reached the cool shadow of a moored cruise ship on the western side of the island. I was dimly aware that various other paddlers might be creeping up on me, but I didn't see any sign of them until I got near the tip of Fleming Key, at which point I was caught by a drafting pair outrigger canoes: Tetauira Putoa and Darian Hildreth. They had better speed than me, especially as I began to feel the drag of a shallow water section, and even more so when we turned east and into the wind. Heading through the upwind sections they pulled away, especially Tetauria. Kevin had become just a dot in the distance, too. Approaching Dredger's Key, Garrett Fletcher got ahead of me, and I watched as he caught up to Darian.

After a brief respite from the wind in the lee of Dredgers Key was the worst grind of the race, straight upwind, up-current, and through shallow water towards Cow Key Cut. I realized that these flat water, high-resistance sections were my weakest spot, where the paddlers who were stronger and had better technique were kicking my butt. I need to work on efficient surfki paddle technique so that I'm properly using whatever muscle I have, and I probably also need to work on developing more strength through weight training. Equipment-wise, it might help for me to get a narrower, lighter surfski, but don't tell my wife I'm thinking about that. Can't afford it right now, anyway.

The flat and somewhat wind-sheltered waters of Cow Key Cut were still a grind because of the tidal current and shallow water. To avoid the current I hugged the edge of the channel as much as possible, but this was also where there were huge wracks of floating Sargassum. It's quite likely that I acquired some Sargassum at this stage, but I can't be certain how much of my slow-down was due to the current, how much was due to my fatigue, and how much was the weeds.

I looked forward to emerging from Cow Key Cut into the open Atlantic, and hopefully having a great final downwind leg, maybe even stealing back a place or two. Unfortunately, the angle was significantly worse on the final ocean leg than it was on the initial ocean leg. Almost directly sidewind with bad shallow water and reflected seawall chop and horrendous Sargassum. I did manage to catch up to Garrett Fletcher, but only because he was having to stop periodically to shed weeds from his rudder. I stopped once to shed weeds, too, but I think I regained them in 10 seconds. It was frustratingly hard to catch bumps that I thought I'd be able to catch, and frustrating to still seem speed-limited even when surfing down a bump, so I'm pretty sure I did have weeds on the rudder. Anyway, Garrett powered harder than me through that last unpleasant stretch and finished a few seconds ahead.

When I got out of the boat at the shallow, weedy water of the finish line I was so unsteady on my feet that I needed to hold one of the race organizers' hands to walk out of the water. But I was still super stoked to have finished 5th overall and 2nd in the surfski class. My goal for next year is to try to finish in less than 2 hours.

There was plenty to eat and drink and good vibes and pageantry after the race. This is one of those races that is a major achievement to finish even if you don't finish it fast, especially for the SUP paddlers. The organization and adminstration of the race is also top-notch. I highly recommend it.

Race Report: Imperial River Challenge 2018

Our team: The Smurfs.


Race: The 2018 Imperial River Challenge

Date it happened: 3 November 2018

Host: CGT Kayaks and Paddleboards, which you can become a groupie of by joining the CGT Tribe facebook page. This particular race was also sponsored by the Imperial River Conservancy, and raised money for water quality monitoring and other environmental stewardship of the river.

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

Course / Distance: The course went downriver to the US 41 bridge and back (6.5 km).

Conditions: It was relatively cool and breezy, warming up by the end of the race. The water level was high and the river current was unusually slack, so wind played more of a role than current.

Participants, Results and Gear: This race was different than most because it was based on TEAMS of four people, with at least one woman in each team. There were three complete SUP teams, one incomplete SUP team of 3 women, and one team of two tandem kayaks. One of the kayakers was a dog. My team was recruited by Robert Norman and included Matt Kearney, me and Cindy Gibson, who is the fastest woman in our town. Robert then cancelled, ironically, but we replaced him with a great local paddler, Bill Mussenden. Our team name was the Smurfs. While we were proud of team we put together, local badass athletic coach Mark Athanacio was putting together an ultra-fast team with members of the East Coast's "Flying Fish Paddle Sports" crew. The fastest guy on that crew is pro-level Brazilian paddler Eri Tenorio. Only one notch slower than Eri were the next two guys, Steve Miller and Tim Warner, who are the top men's amateur paddlers in the state. The other fast men from the flying fish crew were Reid Hyle (former pro-level kayak racer and current fisheries biologist), and Steven Bernstein, a serious amateur racer who is usually close to my speed. The fastest women on the flying fish crew are Kim Barnes and Maddie Miller (who is Steve Miller's teenage daughter). Those two are probably the 2nd and 3rd fastest women in Florida, with only professional Seychelle being faster. Also racing SUPs were Nessa Brunton, Jen Hayes, and Donna Catron. Here are the results

1st Place Team B, total time 2:42:45
Eri Tenorio, 14x22 Flying Fish sup, 0:37:54 (new course record)
Mark Athanacio, 14x23 custom sup, 0:41:34
Steven Bernstein, 14x23 Flying Fish sup, 0:41:38
Kim Barnes, 14x22 Flying Fish sup, 0:41:39 (new women's course record)

2nd Place Team C, total time 2:43:01
Tim Warner, 14x23 Flying Fish sup, 0:39:12
Steven Miller, 14x22 Flying Fish sup, 0:39:13
Reid Hyle, 14x24 Flying Fish sup, 0:41:42
Maddie Miller, 14x21 Flying Fish sup, 0:42:54

3rd Place Team A, total time 2:56:40
James Douglass, 14x23 Riviera sup, 0:42:22
Matt Kearney, 14x24 Naish sup, 0:42:24
Bill Mussenden, 14x24 custom sup, 0:45:49
Cindy Gibson, 14x23 custom sup, 0:46:05

Tandem Kayak team, total time 4:04:52
Patrick Scheele and Kona the dog, 1:01:07
Meg Bosi and Kat Luchesi, 1:01:19

Incomplete team, total time n/a
Nessa Brunton, 14x23 Flying Fish sup, 0:52:27
Jen Hayes, 12'6x22 Hovie sup, 0:55:54
Donna Catron, 14x24 Flying Fish sup, 1:00:22

Play by play: When my team heard about the crack teams that Mark Athanacio had rallied together we knew we were out-gunned, but we still wanted to do our best. The night before the race we met at Upriver Ceramics (Matt Kearney's pottery studio on the river) to coordinate boards and strategy. Working as a team is not something that we often practice as sup racers, so it required a change of mindset, and some changes in gear. Cindy usually paddles a 12'6 board, but 14' boards are faster, so she tested some and decided to borrow one of Mark Athanacio's older boards. Matt Kearney also used a different board than his own, because his 25.5" wide board is a great in rough water but not as a fast as a narrow board in flat water. He tried a 14x22 custom Riviera and a 14x24 Naish Javelin during our practice and decided the Naish was easier to draft me with. Based on our relative paces, we determined that we would split into two groups, with Matt drafting me and Cindy drafting Bill. The other teams had similar cooperative drafting strategies, with the people of similar speed sticking together in clusters of 2 to 3, and a few going it alone.

Our plan worked perfectly until the race started. Each team started separately, and we were first. Tragically, Cindy fell off on her first stroke, and told Bill not to wait up, while Matt and I zoomed ahead of both Bill and Cindy. I went at a hard pace very similar to the pace I would go while racing solo; just a little bit smoother to make sure Matt could stay attached. It was hard to know what the optimal path was through the river because of the unclear current direction. At times I thought we might have been fighting reverse current, but I'm not sure. When Matt and I rounded the bridge at the halfway point we saw Bill first, then Eri Tenorio on his own, then Cindy. Cindy hadn't lost much distance on Bill, but Eri was tearing by everybody at amazing pace. I can't remember exactly what the order was of the people we passed, but I remember Team B had a three-person draft train of Mark Athanacio, Kim Barnes, and Steven Bernstein, who cooperatively traded leads the whole race. In team C Tim Warner and Steve Miller worked as a very fast pair, with Reid Hyle and Maddie Miller each going separately a bit further back.

On the upriver section there were some open water areas where a headwind knocked our speed down by 1 kph or so. In retrospect it might have been wise to hug the shoreline or make other route changes to minimize the wind. A little after the headwind sections, with 2 km still to go in the race, Eri Tenorio caught up with Matt and I. I took a few strokes to try to catch him as he went past, but his speed was >10 kph and I just couldn't keep up. That jazzed me up though, and I forgot about keeping a steady pace to keep Matt attached. Matt let me know he had dropped out of my draft and I slowed down for a minute or two for him to catch up before resuming the pace we'd been going before Eri came by. Nobody else passed us, and we crossed the line still in a draft train.

Here's my GPS track from the course:


The race committee was pretty quick about calculating every individual's time and team time. It was interesting to see how closely matched teams B and C were (just 16 seconds apart). Eri Tenorio's incredible course record time of 37:54 (10.21 kph average!) was a big advantage for his team, but Steven Miller and Tim Warner both getting ~0:39:12 (9.87 kph average!) helped their team a similar amount. Reid Hyle was lamenting that he might have cost his team the win by getting some debris stuck on his fin. Oh, well. Everyone on the first place team got $300, the second place team got $200, and third place got $100 each. So I made money on this race!

After the race there was lots of milling about, posing for pictures, and fussing over boards. The Flying Fish folks were nice about letting me try out some of their boards. I particularly liked the speed and light weight of Steven Miller's 14x22, but I'm not sure I'd be able to handle it in rough water conditions. Eri Tenorio's 14x22 had a little more rocker and was noticeably thicker, which I didn't like for flat water but might have been nice in rougher water.

Race Report: 2018 CGT Summer Race 1

Startline action.


Race: The first race in the 2018 CGT Summer Series.

Date it happened: 24 June 2018

Host: CGT Kayaks and Paddleboards, which you can become a groupie of by joining the CGT Tribe facebook page. This particular race was also associated with an ECS Boards demo event, with ECS vendors Travis Kindt and Leisa Kilbreth.

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

Course / Distance: For this series there are two courses: a short one that goes downriver to a buoy and back (2.9 km), and a longer one that goes downriver to the US 41 bridge and back (6.5 km). The hosts had originally planned to make the long race in this series be a double lap of the short course, but the participants torpedoed that, mainly because a lot of us are paddling long kayaks and outrigger canoes that can't turn around in the narrow part of the river.

Conditions: Aside from intense, mid-summer heat, conditions were good for a fast race. The wind was light, and the tide was high and flowing upriver at 0.45 kph.

Participants, Results and Gear: There were 14 racers, including the usual locals, plus Travis Kindt and Packet Casey from the East Coast. Four people did the short course, with the rest of us egging each other on to do the long course. Interestingly, nobody raced a 12'6 SUP; the shorter, slower SUP class having fallen out of favor since a number of races worldwide have shifted the focus to 14' boards for both men and women. Here are the results, and what people were paddling.

Racer ** Class ** Model ** Course ** Time
Justin DiGiorgio ** Surfski Kayak ** Nelo 550 ** 6.5 km ** 0:36:28
Jennifer Peters ** Outrigger Canoe ** ?? ** 6.5 km ** 0:40:43
James Douglass ** 14' SUP ** 23-wide Riviera RP ** 6.5 km ** 0:40:45
John Weinberg ** Surfski Kayak ** Nelo 520 ** 6.5 km ** 0:40:46
Mark Athanacio ** 14' SUP ** 23-wide custom ** 6.5 km ** 0:41:03
Travis Kindt ** 14' SUP ** 25-wide ECS Stealth ** 6.5 km ** 0:44:20
Matt Kearney ** 14' SUP ** 25.5-wide 404 Ltd ** 6.5 km ** 0:45:42
Bill Mussenden ** 14' SUP ** 24-wide custom ** 6.5 km ** 0:45:46
Cindy Gibson ** 14' SUP ** 23-wide ECS Speed ** 6.5 km ** 0:46:47
Steve Fleming ** 14' SUP ** 24-wide Naish Maliko ** 6.5 km ** 0:49:54

Packet Casey ** 14' SUP ** 25-wide JP Flatwater ** 2.9 km ** 0:18:37
Meg Bosi ** 14' SUP ** 23.5-wide Bark custom ** 2.9 km ** 0:20:40
Donna Catron ** 14' SUP ** 24-wide Flying Fish custom ** 2.9 km ** 0:23:24
Damien Lin ** 14' SUP ** 23-wide Hovie GTO ** 2.9 km ** 0:23:54

Play by play: Before the race there was some discussion of which folks were doing the long vs. the short race. I paid close attention to what my three fastest competitors were choosing- Packet chose the short race, but Travis and Athanacio chose the long race, so I did, as well. I lined up in the first starting group with Packet, Travis, and Matt Kearney. Athanacio opted to start in the second wave so he could do his wolf-chasing-the-rabbits thing. I sprinted hard at the start. I didn't necessarily want to lead, but I wanted to get a good, forward position in the draft train so I wouldn't be struggling with wakes. I ended up getting on Packet's side-wake for a bit, then into a drafting position directly behind him. Travis was vying for the same position, so we bumped rails a bit and I kind of squeezed him toward the mangroves. There were a few times that I deliberately left the draft to avoid shallow water (which increases drag), and to briefly draft Justin DiGiorgio when he passed me on his surfski. I was in a good position right behind Packet when he reached his short race turn-around point at 1500 m, and we had lost Travis and Matt.

Continuing on my own, I tried to paddle hard but efficiently with good reach and a clean "catch". When I looked back, though, Travis and Matt weren't far behind. More ominously, Athanacio had caught up with them and seemed to have his full afterburners on. I really did my best to keep a hard pace and pick a good line, hoping to keep Athanacio from getting any closer. At the US 41 bridge where I turned around, I saw that Athanacio was about the same distance behind me that he'd been when I first saw him, which was good, and that Travis and Matt had fallen back further, which was also good. To keep myself focused and motivated on the way upriver I watched my speedcoach GPS and tried to stay in the middle parts of the river with the strongest assistance from the incoming tidal current. Because of the incoming tide, I was able to average about 10 kph going upriver, which was a delight. There were times that I felt my "engine" overheating and had to cool down the pace a bit, focusing on form, but as I got to the landmarks of 1600, 800, 400, and 200 m from the finish I notched up my effort and suffering level to make sure all my energy was spent by the end. I was really happy to get a sub-41 minute time, which I never managed to do in the last series. I'll admit I was also happy when they called Athanacio's time and I knew I'd beaten him by a few seconds. Cooling off in the water beyond the finish line felt so nice I mostly forgot that just two days prior, Matt, Cindy, and myself had been charged by a decent sized alligator about one km down the river.

Here's my GPS track from the course:


The women did great in this race, with Meg Bosi improving her time on the short course by almost 2 minutes, aided by her slick 14' Bark. Cindy was also about 30 seconds faster on the 14' ECS Speed than she was in the last CGT race on her 12'6 board. She wasn't far behind Bill, and might give all the guys a good challenge if she finds a 14' board that suits her.

After the race there was a lot of board and boat swapping. John Weinberg let me try his Nelo 520, which is a shorter and more stable surfski than the tippy Epic v12 that I have. It felt nice- a bit slower in flatwater than mine, but I think it would be a lot more comfortable in rough water and downwind conditions, where I struggle on the Epic. I also paddled the 14x25 ECS Stealth, which is a very smooth and well-balanced board that has a nice way of cutting through the water. Packet Casey hopped on Athanacio's custom board and remarked at how well it sprinted. Watching him sprint past, almost a meter of the nose of the board was hovering above the water. It seems to be the style of the modern board designs that they "release" from the water when paddled in high gear, whereas the older designs don't do that as much, for better or worse.

Next race on the calendar is Mark Athanacio's "No Name Race" around Lover's Key on June 30th, which I'll probably do on my surfski.

Race Report: Battle on the Blueway 2018

A tight finish between the top two female competitors Kim Barnes and Maddie Miller, decided by a footrace.


Race: The Battle on the Blueway.

Date it happened: 9 June 2018.

Host / Sponsors / Benefitting: Hosted by Lee County's "Calusa Blueway" paddle trails program and the SWFL Sup Club. Sponsored by Ron Jon Surf Shop, Estero River Outfitters, and others listed on the event page. Benefiting Lee County Special Olympics.

Location: Crescent Beach Park, Fort Myers, Florida.

Distance: The main event was four laps around a 3.5 km course, about 14 km total. There was also a shorter race; just one lap. Each lap had 6-7 buoys to go around, although two of those turns were oblique enough that you could curve around them without slowing down. After those races concluded they held some kids races and Special Olympics races.



Conditions: It was blazing hot with a light and shifting breeze. The Gulf of Mexico was glassy except for small ripples, wakes, and "microswells". A noticeable tidal current flowed from SE to NW. The water quality was OK, but a bit brown stained due to discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the Caloosahatchee River, which empties near Ft. Myers Beach. The polluted lake water ought to be passed southward to the parched everglades, where it used to go before being channeled to the Caloosahatchee to appease the sugar barons who own land south of Lake Okeechobee. "Big Sugar" is infamous for getting in bed with corrupt state politicians like awful Florida gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam. (Vote for someone else, please.) As I've advocated in this blog post, the state needs to buy out the sugar land asap and convert it to a wetland for water storage and treatment, or our "Blueway" is going to get browner and browner with polluted water.

Participants and Gear: There were about 90 racers total. The long race had 36 SUPs and 16 outrigger canoes or kayaks. We had good representation from our local CGT race team, including several people opting for sit-down watercraft- Murray Hunkin and Justin DiGiorgio on surfski kayaks, and Mark Athanacio, Matt Kearney, and Bill Mussenden on OC1 outrigger canoes. Besides the CGT crew, another big crew representing at the race was associated with Jupiter, FL's Blueline Surf Shop. Those folks were almost all riding John Meskauskas' "Flying Fish" brand custom boards, made in Florida. Flying Fish had all the top competitors in their tent (literally and figuratively), including pro-level Brazilian Eri Tenorio, top Florida paddlers Steve and Maddie Miller, Kim Barnes, and Tim Warner. An interesting SUP gear trend this year was that a majority of the women in the long SUP race opted for 14' boards, eschewing the slower 12'6 boards that were traditionally promoted for women's racing. This reduced the gap in times between the top men and the top women. In the short race the majority of women were still on 12'6. I used my 14'x23" Riviera RP, which has been my do-it-all board for two years.

Results: Full results are posted on Paddleguru. First over the line were surfskis- Murray Hunkin (01:16:54.85), Chris Vincent (01:17:02.63), and Doug Lindsay (01:21:32.79). Next was first place OC1 Mark Athanacio (01:23:24.57), just ahead of Justin DiGiorgio's surfksi (01:23:37.37). Both Murray and Mark are 50+ years old and beat younger competitors to get first overall. Second and third OC1s were Zachary Cole (01:24:56.01) and Matt Kearney (01:25:04.23). Not far behind the sit-down craft was Eri Tenorio on SUP (01:26:40.00), followed by Steve Miller (01:28:01.10), Tim Warner (01:31:59.63), Zach Rounsaville (01:33:08.92), and me (01:33:35.38). I was a small distance ahead of Packet Casey, who isn't in the official results because he registered late. I barely finished in time to see a tight battle between the top women's finishers Kim Barnes (01:35:50.40) and Maddie Miller (01:35:52.69). JP SUP team member Karen Kennedy was the third woman across (01:43:42.04). The top 12'6 women were Katherine Pyne (01:45:16.94) and Cindy Gibson (01:47:21.09). Cindy was the first woman overall in the 50+ division.

Play by play: They started the sit-down racers from shallow water and waited a minute or two for them to get clear before releasing the SUP racers, who were lined up on a shallow sandbar. I was in the middle of the line and got somewhat caught behind the faster starters. Things sorted out a bit by the buoy turn, and I managed to get ahead of Kim Barnes and Steven Bernstein, and behind Packet Casey and Zach Rounsaville. Eri Tenorio, Steve Miller, and Tim Warner were quickly getting board lengths ahead of us, with speed that we couldn't match. Thus, only a minute or so into the race, it was clear that my battles would be with Packet and Zach. In the past those two guys have beaten me sometimes, and I've beaten them sometimes, so the outcome for today was uncertain. The only thing that WAS certain was that the fight would be long and painful.

On the first leg of the race I found it easier to go fast by getting in clear water and working the tiny bumps than by trying to draft Packet. This let me get in front of him. He was in my draft for the first straightaway, but I think the accelerating and decelerating I was doing because of the tiny bumps might have made it hard for him to use my draft. Eventually he drifted back a bit and I focused on keeping pace with Zach. On the up-current leg I took a more inshore line, hoping that the current would be lighter there. I'm not sure if it helped or not. I also tried to buoy-turn efficiently, and ride whatever microscopic bumps I could. I finally caught up to Zach on the first leg of the third lap. I was able to lower my stroke rate and catch some breaths, but I wasn't very relaxed, and it took a lot of concentration and switching sides to keep the board in the sweet spot of the draft. Towards the end of the leg Zach picked up a bit of speed, and by the buoy turn I gave up and let him go. After the race Zach said that his race plan had been do each lap a bit faster than the previous, which was amazing because my "plan" was to do the first lap fast and then unavoidably fade in each subsequent lap as the heat and exertion took their toll.

After losing Zach, my attention turned to keeping myself focused and not losing my lead on Packet. I had to push myself really, uncomfortably hard to do that. It didn't help me that Packet got a second wind and a burst of motivation as he expertly rode a series of gentle boat wakes to close much of the distance on me. I can neither confirm nor deny that I shouted "kill me now!" at that point in the race. Anyway, in the end I did stay ahead of Packet, and only 27 seconds behind Zach, which I reckoned was respectable. I managed not to fall on my face when I jumped off the board and ran through the finish. I had to IMMEDIATELY jump in the ocean because I was hot as hell and verging on collapse.

The other racers seemed to be in similar states- totally cooked. In fact, several had to drop out of the race before it was over and got "DNFs". There were a few grumbles about the race being 25% longer than advertised, but overall there was a general agreement that it was run very well. The BBQ lunch was good, and the awards and stuff were administered competently. I think lots of money was raised for the Special Olympics. I'll be back next year, perhaps on surfski.

Here's my GPS track and data from the race. You have to go into Strava to see the details. I think it's interesting to click the "view flybys" link in strava to watch where I was relative to the other racers who posted their GPS data there. E.g., you can see where I was gaining on Zach, then where Zach was pulling away from me.

Race Report: Edisto Island Classic

Race: The Edisto Island Classic 2018

Date it happened: 12 May 2018

Location: In the saltmarsh creek backwaters of Edisto Island, South Carolina, starting at the Edisto Beach State Park boat ramp.

Course / Distance: There was a long race and a short race, both following the same out-and-back path through broad, tidal creeks. I GPS'd the long race at 7.9 km, and I reckon the short one was about 5 km. I'll post my GPS track when I get back to a computer with a usb bluetooth dongle.


Conditions: It was hot and sunny, with a slight breeze that picked up during the race. There was a strong ebb tide current at the race start, but the current diminished as slack low tide approached by the end of the race. A few places on the course were shallow. The area requiring the most care was the steep concrete boat ramp where we entered and exited the water. There were some minor injuries and embarrassments there.

Participants and Gear: There were around 58 participants, relatively evenly divided between the short and long races. About 1/3 of the participants were on SUPs, and the rest were on kayaks or outrigger canoes. I was surprised how many serious, surfski kayak racers showed up. Kayak racing must be more popular in the Carolinas than in Florida. As a new surfski paddler it was interesting for me to scope out the other racers' "skis" to see the differences in design that I hadn't paid attention to before. I realized there's quite a difference between the relatively flat bottom shape on a stable surfski like the Epic V8 as compared with the U-shaped bottom on a tippy one like the Epic V12. (Now I know why I'm having such a hard time learning on the V12.) One of the race organizers was paddling a weirdly modified surfski that had a gull-wing "training wheels" outrigger setup. It hovered out of the water most of the time but would prevent capsize if it touched down. My setup was a 14'x23" Riviera RP with a Riviera Bump 7.0 paddle. There were only a handful of other guys in the 14' sup class, but they all looked pretty fit and experienced, with fast equipment. There was an amusing moment when Ken Bowman and I met each other in person and both admitted we'd checked out each other's results and profiles on PaddleGuru. (Gotta size up the competition!)

Results: In the long race, the top 3 finishers were in surfski kayaks- Pete Green (0:36:37), Bruce Poacher, and Larry Dixon. Justin Schaay and his daughter were in 6th place overall in their tandem surfski. Anne Kelly was the first solo female surfski in 0:47:26. I was the first SUP finisher, with an official time of 0:47:44, though I think my actual time was around 0:52:34. Ken Bowman was second SUP, Ernie Eller third, and David Jeffcoat 4th. Jeff Hood and William Dion were the first OC2 and Krista Wilson was the first OC1.



Play by play: The race organizers anticipated the difficulty of staying behind a starting line while being swept forward by a strong current. Thus they arranged a start facing upcurrent, with a short upcurrent sprint followed by a hairpin buoy turn that would send us downcurrent into the longer portion of the race.

It was clear that the marsh shoreline had less current than the center of the channel, so the savvy racers bunched at that end of the line. It was controlled chaos as we all sprinted off together. Ken Bowman and I started well and I inched into his side-draft to stick with him and save energy. Moments later we were passed by a wave of surfskis who had better speed than us but hadn't accelerated as quickly. I slipped into their wakes and used their energy to help me get to the hairpin turn before Ken. Nobody had articulated any rules about not drafting, so I reckoned it was a free-for-all. Heading downriver I briefly drafted the surfskis. I was too slow to keep up with most of them, but there was a prolonged period where the slower surfskis were gradually overtaking me, and I would draft them for a while when I could.

After the first downcurrent leg, we turned into a different channel and went upcurrent. I employed the side-hugging strategy again. The bank dropped off quickly in most places, but some spots, especially around bends in the creek, I ran afoul of shallows that reduced my speed. The surfski paddlers call the drag-inducing shallows "suck water." The lead OC2 team was creeping up on me as we headed into the shallower, bendier section of the course, but I think they were more affected by the suck water than me. I could tell I was getting ahead of them as the sound of their grunting signals to each other faded out.

I didn't know where Ken Bowman was until the turnaround at the halfway point. I was relieved to see that he was 100 m or so behind, giving me some room to breath. For the second half I tried to paddle efficiently while maintaining a strong pace. It helped that the wind and current were at my back for most of it. I gained some distance on Anne Kelly when she stuck the nose of her surfski down the wrong channel. I very briefly drafted her but she wasn't having it and pulled ahead. In the final upcurrent leg to the finish I tried to keep pace with Anne by taking a route closer to the bank while she was more in the middle of the river, but she kept the lead.

It was delightful to cross the finish line as the first place SUP with my parents and aunt and uncle cheering from the dock at the boat ramp. Then dunking myself cool in the muddy creek was also nice. Here's my track from the race:

After everyone finished we made our way to Edisto's "Dockside Restaurant" where we had lunch on a covered pier over the water while the organizers did the raffle and awards. The trophies were made of driftwood debris topped with marsh grass baskets woven by a local Gullah artist. My mother is nuts for decorative baskets, so I was happy to give the award to her as an early mothers' day present.

I hope this race continues in coming years. It has a good, family feel, it's in a beautiful, quiet spot, and it's a great excuse for me to drive up for a little vacation at my folks' Edisto Island beach house. When we're not here you can rent the house yourself. https://www.atwoodvacations.com/vacation/rentals/239-dragonfly

Race Report: Special Olympics Benefit SUP Races

Draft train early in the race: Packet Casey, Mark Athanacio, me.


Race: The 9th Annual SUP Luau Race benefitting Collier County Special Olympics.

Date it happened: 6 May 2018

Location: In the Gulf of Mexico at Vanderbilt Beach, Naples, FL.

Distance: The competitive race was approximately 5.7 km. The course was four laps around a big rectangle that was pinched like a bow in the middle. After the competitive race there were shorter races for the Special Olympics athletes, and "family fun" races. My track from the race is below.



Conditions: The weather was warm and sunny with hardly any wind. There were some tiny swells and wakes on the Gulf, which could occasionally provide a little speed boost.

Participants and Gear: There was a good group of Special Olympians, with a lot of family members and volunteers supporting them and participating in the family fun races. For the competitive race we had a smaller group, but it included experienced studs Mark Athanacio, Packet Casey, Cindy Gibson, and Meg Bosi, among other race-savvy competitors from the CGT tribe. There were no divisions by board size, so most people used 14' boards if they had them. Some of the women on 14s included Meg Bosi, Damien Lin, and Donna Catron, while Cindy Gibson went with her trusty 12'6 Hovie Comet. Packet Casey used a JP Flatwater 14x25; 2" wider than the 14x23 JP that he used last year. I used my 14x23 Riviera RP, with an 18.5 cm Fins Unlimited seagrass fin that I now use for anything other than perfectly flat water.

Results: Since this was a low-key local race focused mostly on the recreational paddlers and Special Olympics athletes, I don't think they are going to post our times. They did keep track of who got what place, though. Packet Casey got first, I was second, and Mark Athanacio was third. Next was Mark Hourigan on a 14x25 Infinity Blackfish, followed by the amazing Cindy Gibson, who was the first place female. Cindy was a bit ahead of new dad Justin DiGiorgio, who was a bit ahead of Bill Mussenden. I think the 2nd and 3rd place women were Meg Bosi and Jen Hayes.

Play by play: I haven't been as obsessive about SUP training this year as in previous years, because my mind and my hours have been more occupied with work-related goals and struggles. I've still been getting time on the water, but not doing such intense intervals training as I was doing before, and not going to the gym. For the past month I've also been doing about half of my paddling on my new surfski kayak. So I wasn't sure how well I'd perform in this race. I knew that I'd be in the top three with Packet and Athanacio, but had no idea who among us would be in the lead.

After the running start from the beach, Packet was first to the first buoy, closely tailed by Athanacio, then me. Justin DiGiorgio also had a good start but dropped behind after the first buoy. The nearshore leg of the course was tricky because one of the buoys brought us into shallow water near shore. There was some strategy involved in deciding whether to take the most direct path to and from that buoy, or to try to stay in deeper (faster) water as long as possible. Following Athanacio and Packet I also played around with trying to ride various parts of their wakes, or getting in clean water and riding the micro-swells and swell-rebounds from the beach. The numerous buoy turns were another opportunity for skill and strategy. One could either step way back on the board to do a tight "pivot" turn, or one could try to just paddle a wider arc around the buoy. Athanacio has a quick pivot turn technique, and he got frustrated with me and Packet for doing slower turns. I reckon that polishing my buoy turns could gain me a board length or two each turn, which in a close race like this could end up making a big difference in final standings.

We did the first lap at a wicked pace around 9.6 kph (6 mph), and I was hurting in the second lap. Athanacio and I had dropped a few board lengths behind Packet, and I proposed that we work together to try to catch him. Athanacio let me around and I put in a good effort for a half lap, with the intention to yield back to Athanacio for the next half lap. But somehow I ended up losing Athanacio, and then I wasn't inclined to wait up for him so I just kept paddling, trying not drop too far behind Packet. That's how things stayed for the whole rest of the race. At times I got a little closer to Packet, but his buoy turns and accelerations were great, and he put on an extra effort in the last lap to get safely out of my reach by the finish.

Though I didn't win first place, I really enjoyed myself, and felt pleased with my pace and performance. My average speed was 9.3 kph, which is quite good for me, especially in a race with a lot of buoy turns. They gave out beautiful, handmade wooden trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and had a little podium set up for us to stand on. I was pleased to be up there with Packet and Athanacio. My trophy says, "Special Olympics - SUP Race - 2nd place," which is slightly embarrassing because I got my trophy without having to overcome the disabilities that the actual Special Olympics athletes face. Maybe next year they can have slightly different wording on the trophies for the non-special athletes, or just give us a little ribbon or something instead of a whole huge trophy.



After the competitive race was over, it was delightful to watch the Special Olympic athletes in their surprisingly fast and closely contested race. I stood in the water by one of the buoys and helped direct the athletes. The course instructions were a bit confusing for me, and I imagine more so for the athletes. Good on them for paddling as well as they did.

What's Next: Next race for me is next weekend in Edisto Island, near Charleston, South Carolina: it's the Edisto Island Classic 2018. It will be a heck of a long drive, but it's where my parents live, and I'll be staying in their beach house there for a few days of vacation.