Snowed Over: Mark “Snowy” Robertson, competing in his
first Green Race. (Photos by
Chris Pageau.) Peanut Gallery:
The 1,200-strong crowd
at this year's race.
Watch out, Robert Downey, Jr. There’s a new Ironman in town. Hot on the heels of his win at the Lord of the Fork race on the Russell Fork, Andrew Holcombe pulled off first place finishes at the Green River Narrows race in the long and short boat divisions, earning the overall “Ironman” title and setting a new course record in the process...
“All around, it was the best Green Race ever,” says Andrew, who paddled an aptly named Dagger Green boat to pick up the coveted stained-glass trophy and year-long bragging rights for the win. “Awesome still doesn't begin to describe how I feel. That was my best race in a very long time, and the first time I've won both long and short boat classes.”
Still, it didn’t come easily. Paddling a made-for-the race Stinger from Liquid Logic, Isaac Levinston started before Holcomb and set a new course record at 4:24. But it didn’t last long, as Holcomb then blistered by less than a minute later, setting an even newer course record of 4:18. Following Levinston and also paddling Stingers, Erick Deguil and Eric Hurd took third and fourth.
Records fell in the women’s division also, with Adriene Levknecht crushing the women’s record in both the long and short boat categories. She was the first woman to break the 5-minute mark (4:59), and her short boat run would have won the women’s long boat race.
“The race was awesome,” says Liquidlogic’s and post-party host extraordinaire Woody Callway. “The weather and water level was perfect, about 9 inches on the gauge, and there were 168 starting times, the largest so far.”
It also drew the largest crowd ever, with more than 1,200 people hiking down to view the course at Gorilla. And most importantly, despite a few horrifying upside-down runs over Gorilla, no one got hurt.
As for the party at Woody’s house, that’s another matter, with more than a few brain cells getting annihilated, thanks to a huge bonfire, kegs of PBR and blues/fusion tunes by the band Johnny Floor and the Wrong Crowd. After that, a late night DJ provided by Red Bull rocked the house (literally), as people danced their derrieres off on the upper deck. “The party was off the hook,” says Callaway, adding that they fed at least 280 people. ”I actually got a little worried that the friggin’ deck was going to separate from the house. The cops came around 1:30 .am. -- when the cops come to a party in the middle of nowhere and tell you it’s to loud that’s something to be proud of.”
Notes from Shane's Blog on the new Remix Stinger: Read more here
With just a couple weeks before the Green Race Woody and I decided to make another version of the Remix 100. We are calling it the Remix Stinger. A boat designed to go as fast as possible down the Green. I met up with a group of our fastest racers and talked about what sort of changes we would like to make. We paddled the 100 and a few other raceboats to compare styles and performance and we came up with a plan. The Remix 100 was arguably the fastest of the race boats in a straight line but it is a little more challenging to maintain your line. So we decided to attack two areas of the boat. One I wanted to make it significantly faster and see if we could handle it, and two, I wanted it to track better but not limit the ability to turn as needed.
I really like the fact that this boat was made for one single purpose to go fast on the Green and after doing the work to make it happen the first water that all of these boats will touch is the Green. I was a little nervous when we first slid into the water. I knew the boat would be fast but you never know for certain how it will perform in the rapids. So there were lots of questions going through my head as I slid into the water. The question of speed was answered immediately by how far the boat glided out away from shore. As we moved downstream John and I smiled about the speed and got more and more confident with each rapid about how the boat handled. By the end we all bombed off Sunshine and raced all the way out to the takeout
The stats are 12'5" long, and 23.5" wide, and somewhere around 100 gallons would be my guess. As far as design changes go, I added 9" inches of length in just the stern end of the boat so in reality you could say that its like adding 18" of length to the boat because usually you would add length both bow and stern for balance but what we wanted for this boat was the speed of a long stern but the maneuverability of the shorter bow moving through the drops. I also worked on the entry of the bow through the water by tucking the chines under the bow a little more on this version of the boat. The idea behind the pintail and tucked bow chines was to make this version track harder while moving through the cross currents and hammering across the short flat sections of the race section on the Green. Basically we wanted to make a boat that had the potential to go faster than anything has gone before on the Green. After some serious calculations I think this boat is 9.654% faster than anything else on the river.
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They Said It
"The night after the fair, Steve Fisher was kidnapped by a bunch of German kayakers and found himself in an even bigger party: the Oktoberfest in Munich -- he loved it."
--Stephan Glocker, editor of Kanu magazine, of the revelry at this year's Kanumesse tradeshow.
"I got 300 bucks for the next couple weeks so should be able to make it.... If not I'll kill some raccoons or something..."
--Team Teva paddler Rush Sturges on training on the Ottawa for the upcoming Worlds
Not sure he would feel so warm and fuzzy if Outdoor Retailer, for example, attended the C&K awards party and used that stage to publicly point out that C&K was not serving its advertisers or readers well and as a result Outdoor Retailer would be launching another magazine to better serve the paddlesports community. SNEWS reporter Marcus Woolf on Canoe & Kayak magazine's surprise announcement to host its own paddlesports tradeshow at this year's Outdoor Retailer Summer Market show in Salt Lake City.
The stuff that people are doing in their second and third year now would have beat me in the world championships in 1993." --Four-time world freestyle kayak champion Eric Jackson in a story in The Wall Street Journal on how today's kayakers are improving quicker thanks, in part, to the proliferation of whitewater parks.
The scariest part was looking up afterward and seeing a bunch of boa constrictors..." --Brazil's Pedro Olivia on The Today Show, after setting a new 127-foot waterfall record and emerging in a cave behind the falls.
"These paddlers began treating waves more like a trampoline than a slip-n-slide." --Tyler Bradt, in an American Whitewater story on the evolution of kayaking, referring to the Young Gun era.
"They will be punished...the lawyers must be fed." --KISS star Gene Simmons after discovering at this year's SIA ski show that ski company Faction used his tongue-hanging likeness as a graphic on one of its company's skis.
"I felt most at home camping [on islands] mid-river, part of neither the U.S. or Mexico, a citizen of the river rather than of a particular city." --Keith Bowden, author of The Tecate Journals, of overnighting on his 1,885-mile descent of the entire Rio Grande along the Mexican/U.S. border.
It’s peers certifying peers -- no bullshit, no huge costs. Assessors would be as nervous as a poodle at a rottweiler party if they passed someone who didn’t belong.” --Australia Rafting Federation President Graham Maifredi on the International Rafting Federation’s new plan to certify commercial river guides.
"He was one of the leading paddlers of his era, a man whose skills set the standard that others tried to emulate." --Safety guru Charlie Walbridge on John Sweet, who was on the first party to run the Upper Gauley and just turned 70.
Dude, it was sick. I was surfing the wake of big rigs in Los Mochis and splatting mini-vans that were floating down the street!"
--The Oil and Water Project's Seth Warren, on surfing in the wake of Hurricane Ike.
That was my fourth one...I broke three other paddles while training." --Olympic Cinderella story and Togo kayaker Ben Boukpeti, on breaking his paddle in elation after winning the country's first-ever Olympic medal in any discipline.
Thread of the Month!
"My girlfriend and I are LEGITIMATELY interested in a nudist raft trip through Deso-Gray. We have a raft but are interested in having a few more. Kayakers would be welcome as well. We have a permit that leaves on August 15th. We drink a bit so if you're uptight we might be slightly incompatible..."
-- View Thread Here!
"Part of the art is managing your blood levels and knowing how to regulate hydration and body temperature, and that is how one truly succeeds...” --Tao Berman, winner of the Homestake Creek Race at last year's Teva Mtn. Games, to Ken "Hobie" Hoeve, who was too cold to take his second run (who can blame him...it was 30 degreees.)
"We did the first ever kayak fishing descent of Boca Grande, where we caught a couple of monster Tarpon...scary place for kayaks." Ken Whiting, on kayak fishing Florida for a new video, adding that they had a huge hammerhead shark take out a 120-pound tarpon 10 feet away from one of their kayaks.
Steamboat Springs Police Blotter (night of Paddling Life Invitational): "A suspicious person was reported in the 800 block of Yampa Street. The person was taken to detox and given a citation for urinating in public." Ring any bells, competitors?
"I only caught three fish all day but they were the right ones."
--Capt. Roger Bump of his winning 65.5” slam, consisting of a 29.75” red, a 19” trout, and a 16.75” flounder at the 2008 Jacksonville Kayak Fishing Classic. View results here.
“Vegetables…that’s what food eats!” --Rafter (and pig farmer) Channing Reynolds on a recent float on Utah's San Juan
"You are no longer on the rafting trip..." --NHL hockey defenseman Martin Skoula of the Minnesota Wild--in a text message to the Colorado Avalanche's Milan Hejduk after Heyduk checked him into the boards--in reference to an annual rafting trip the two take together.
"They could relate to sports, but it was certainly different than what they do." Olympic sprint kayaker Greg Barton on being inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame alongside the Detroit Red Wings' Steve Iverson and NFL star Desmond Howard.
Joke of the Month!
Saturday morning I got up early, put on my long johns, dressed quietly, and slipped quietly into the garage to put the kayak on the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. There was snow mixed with the rain, and the wind was blowing 50 mph. I turned on the radio and discovered that the weather would be bad throughout the day. I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. There I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, "The weather out there is terrible."
My loving wife of twenty years replied, "Can you believe that idiot husband of mine is out kayaking in that shit?"
If you don't sit in the right place, you'll sink." --72-year-old Leo Swinimer (as told to the Wall Street Journal) on paddling his 600-lb. pumpkin in Nova Scotia's annual Windsor-West Hants Pumpkin Regatta.
Dear Editors: I really enjoyed the latest e-newsletter from paddlinglife. Seriously, one doesn't often read and click through these things "cover to cover," but I just did. Of course, pole dancing is always guaranteed to up readership. I'd like to request more pictures of Shea Stephens. Can you post some, or email me some, or just give me her phone number? Thanks guys! --Aaron Bible
The aircraft that found him said they could not lift that amount of weight. Every resource we had simply did not work until we got down to physical manpower" --Chief Deputy Steve Ovick of Minnesota's Pine Cty. Sheriff's Office (as told to AP), regarding the resuce of a 500-lb. rafter from a shallow stretch of the St. Croix River. To get him out of the river, 50 rescuers took turns hoisting the boat two feet at a time until they got it to a spot deep enough to float.
“That kayak kind of kicked my ass out there. Everything else was easy."
--Ice Cube on the most difficult aspect of filming Are We Done Yet, which involved hopping in a kayak.
"My son and I are avid canoeists, fishermen and camping nuts. In other words, we smell badly on weekends..."
--Canoeist James Collins
Canoe Thread of the Month1! Note: Check here for the best of paddling forum threads...this one from rec.boats.paddle:
"I ran my BlueHole 17A down Husum Falls (White Salmon River, WA) in June 1980...afterwards, several outfitters told me that no one else had run it in anything other than kayak. Does anyone know of any earlier canoe runs of the falls....?" (View entire thread at www.tinyurl.com/38wlvh).
Thread of the Month2!
"How many people are there who paddle flat-water freestyle routines to the sounds of Yanni? And of those, how many are guys?" View thread here.
Thread of the Month3!
"Yeah, the RPM sea kayak is notoriously difficult to control. A native Greenland design, the RPM originated when the arctic seal population disappeared and smaller sea kayaks were made from the only hides available, those of the now extinct giant lemming.
"The RPM name comes from an Inuit corruption of the Danish "v'Rij Pathetisch Misvatting""
"I congratulate you on your perception that any decked boat is, of course, a sea kayak." View thread here.
Thread of the Month 4
Newbie looking for Stable Wreck Boat: Must be under 10'', and fast, very stable for paddling lakes and rivers, interested in running Class III whitewater and maybe ocean too. It needs to be light too and have a large seat for my big butt.
How many cupholders does a good stable boat have? How hard are these to lift onto my motor home? Can't spend more than $500 for both boats for the wife and myself. How big a motor can you put on one of these? Where are some good paces to fish and drink alcohol while paddling? DO I need a wet suit? I googled for some austrailian wetsuits .. try googling for "Radiator Wetsuit Ads" .... what do you think? View thread here. You can get anything you want (even a Swift canoe!). Click here for Alice's Restaurant Link Thread of the Month
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