The start for tonight's race will definitely go down as one of the craziest. I heard the starters say over the bull horn that the race will start in 5 minutes. I did not think anything about it, and went to the line along with Ben. Both he and I had the same idea. We both lined up on each side of Jim.
Jim is a very fast and strong young paddler, who just happens to race for Burnaby. It is nice that the juniors can help out the masters every now and then. But as we were sitting there at the line, Jim decides to paddle around, and off he went, just as the starters came to the end of the dock.
The starter then tells us where the course was going. “The course will south out of the cove, south to Hamber Island, keeping the island on your left, from there, head north to Jugg Island keeping it on your left as well, and back to the finish in the cove” Well the very second after the course description was announced, she said” racers ready 3, 2, 1 Go” I could hardly believe it. I quickly reached down and started my GPS, as Ben was taking off. Brian and Sasha in the XT double were leading the pack out of the cove, with Martin in tow. I managed to get on the side wash of Chris, I think. I can't remember, it was such a blurr. As we were heading out of the cove Jeff came cruising by. He was really moving. I wasn't thinking, I should have tried to jump on his wake. Oh well 20 / 20 hindsight.
Next up was Jim. He was moving very well. This was his first time in a Legend surf ski. He was getting used to the ski for this weekends Round Bowen race. I jumped on his side wake, and hammered to stay on. it was hard work, but I managed to stay on. Right behind Jim was Mike.
As we were going across to Hamber, Mike kept banging into Jim's tail. After a couple more hits, Jim said for him to stop it, Mike said go faster, and then Jim said if you want to go faster you go in front. So that is exactly what mike did. and that was the last we saw of him. He just move over and launched himself forward. He went all the way to the leaders.
At this point Jim picked up the pace and I got left behind. As I was coming around Hamber, rod moved up beside me. So I upped my pace to stay on his side wash. I stay there for awhile, but ended up sliding back to his stern wash. He kept increasing his pace every now and then. I think he was trying to catch Jim who was now paddling with martin about 20 meters in front of us. It stayed this way almost all the way to Jugg. Right after Rod finally shook me off, the safety boat came by. It was perfect, the right speed, the right direction, I jumped on its big waves and rocketed up to Rod in no time.
As I came up to Rod, he saw the waves and sped up to catch them. This made Rod go left, right into my line, so I turned left across the wave I was riding and stalled. I quickly turned back to the right and paddled hard, but I was going up hill at that point. So I slowed down and let the next wave go by, then as the back of my ski came up, I hammered to catch the next wave. The boat just took off, and was rocketing towards Rod, and the corner leading to Jugg. As we came to the corner at a very fast pace, I could see both Martin and Jim. This was great, we were going to catch them no problem. As I was watching Jim trying to catch the waves, Martin all of a sudden turned hard right, this put me on a direct collision course with him.
Martin managed to move to the right as I was cranking it to my left, and just missed each other. That was close. Now I had lost the wave I was on and had to crank hard to try to minimize the gap that both Rod and Jim were making as they rode off on their respective waves. I watched Jim go all the way around Jugg riding the safety boat wave. By the time I had got around Jugg, he was long gone.
Rod was not that far away, maybe 50 meters, so off I went in pursuit. As I was going along, I felt a sudden tap on my tail. It turned out to be Martin riding my stern wash. This went on for about 5 minutes when I decided to hammer it and try to shake him off, and to catch Rod who I was gaining on. It did not take long to catch Rod, just a big effort, which meant my sprinting ability at the end was going to be compromised. Riding my wash the whole way was Martin. This move really wore me out, and I started to slide back. Martin sensing this quickly jumped over to Rod and they paddle ahead.
My goal now was not necessarily to catch the two now in front, but to keep anyone from passing from behind. So from the 5 km can, I just started to power up my stroke. By the end I did manage to catch up to Rod and Martin, but didn't have anything in the tank to try and pass.
Right behind me about 5 seconds back was Matt and right behind him Ben. This was a really strong race for me. I was very happy with my effort.
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