I haven't paddled for almost three weeks. The last two I spent in Europe: Aveiro, Portugal and Warsaw, Poland. I have more than 1000 pictures to edit from this trip. I am starting with pictures of "moliceiros", beautifuly painted, gondola-like boats from Aveiro. Here is just one example of moliceiros.
Surfski.info features several posts on the 2007 US Surfski Championships (28-29 September, San Francisco) including a race report written by Joe Glickman. He considered the race to be the most competitive US Champs to date:
I was struck by several things. It was the most competitive US Champs to date. In the top 15, there were just three American-born paddlers, and one was named Barton. For the record: the average age of the top three was 43. Six of the top15 hailed from South Africa. Robert Clegg, a former winner of the Fish Marathon, who’d never finished worse than fifth here, was 15th. Mark Sandvold, 9th year last year, was 21st; Dave Jensen, 12th last year, 22nd. In other words, the US Surf Ski Champs have arrived. [The only down side was the scarcity of women – there were only four in the field. DeAnne Hemmens, a former U.S. Olympian (and one of the driving forces in starting the U.S. Champs), won for the third time by five minutes over Megan Quale. DeAnne, who gave birth to her third child just six months ago, was 52nd overall; Quale 59th.]
So, what did I learn? Well, the most obvious thing is how critical
surfing skills are in this sport. It's quite clear to me that even if
I were to come back to this race 20% stronger, with 20% better
endurance and 20% better balance skills, that I still wouldn't do a
whole heck of a lot better. Even though I go out of my way to paddle
on windy and choppy days, we just simply don't have an ocean here in
SE MN, and I can't get to Superior enough to feel totally comfortable
pushing it up there in really bad conditions, given the 40F water
temps. There's no question that being able to extract every last bit
of speed out of the waves is the key to this sport, plain and simple.
You can find great pictures with interesting angles from the first Chicago Shoreline Marathon shot by Scott Fincher. There are captions too, so it is possible to connect some names familiar from the Web to faces.
Heather and Brandon Nelson paddled
100 km Length of the Lake Race again. This is an ultra marathon paddle race from Vernon BC to Penticton BC on the beautiful Okanagan Lake.
