Rusty Iron, April 25, 2009

Yes, you read that date correctly, we did an outrigger race in April. Being Portland that meant chilly and raining, but we warmed up. We had been training to some degree since January, so we had a pretty strong crew together. We were in the mixed division since we had three women (Deb, Kim, and Anne from the front of the boat to the back) and three men (Me, Robert, and Tom also front to back). The start was a little hairy with all the boats just kind of taking off in one big mass, but it thinned out as we got moving. There were two turns in this race with the first being a tight, bunched bouy turn, and the second being a turn around a bridge piling near the end. We fought a couple crews for most of the first half of the race course, but put them behind us to finish 8th out of 11 mixed teams. We also beat about half of the women's teams, and even got better times than a couple of the men's teams. Overall a teriffic feeling to pull in after a 9 mile race course and watch the other teams finish.

Rusty Iron, April 24, 2010

Rusty Iron time again. We were in the mixed division with Kim, Ann, Change, Robert, Robin, and me (in order from seat 1 to 6). This was my first time steering in a race, and it wasn't quite as scary as expected. Everything went pretty well overall, but there was a brief deluge with very high headwinds in the last 2 miles of the race. You couldn't even look up for more than a couple seconds at a time. Our finish was pretty similar to last year. Our canoe was borrowed from Pacific Outrigger, so we actually had a 3.5 mile paddle before and after the race to get it to and from their marina. Nothing like a 15 mile day.


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