Surfski Knowledge Base

Brandon Nelson
05/06/17 #21251

Hey Racers and Friends,
Great turn-out at the Lake Whatcom Classic today. Thanks to all the volunteers, racers, friends and families who came out. It was a gorgeous day with the standard headwind in both directions!
Results are here:
https://www.webscorer.com/race?raceid=99772
Big, big thanks again to everyone!
Brandon

Lake Whatcom Classic photos now online
Michael Lampi
05/07/17 #21257

Thank you, Brandon, and everyone else who worked to put on an excellent race yesterday!

The photos I took are now online at:
http://soundrowers.org/racePhotos/2017/Lake%20Whatcom/index.html

Enjoy!

Michael Lampi

Reivers Dustin
05/07/17 #21258

excellent race photo's Michael, thx.

I chatted a bit with a fella named John Mooney. Real nice guy, drove a long ways for the race (Eugene, OR). Maybe he had other stuff going up here. Anyway, that name rang a bell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mooney_(canoeist)

So that was pretty cool. Kinda big deal race going on last weekend with all the heavy dudes.

In other news, I got to see somebody flying the amma in a bad way. A couple of boats kindly pulled over and helped put the thing back on the boat. I had a better than average Classic for myself. Always feel good if I can clock in under 2 hours. Sure seemed like lots of strong paddlers out this year. Crazy fun to have the thundering herd of young paddlers swarm the lake with us. I've always done long course, but the short course is getting good battles going on nowadays.

One last tidbit: when Joost started this thing he named it the classic as a reference to the original race that was a big deal for open canoes many years ago. I think it was big in the '80's. No one around here had heard of a surfski or an outrigger. But even back then paddling was a thing. Reminds me a a scene in one of the leatherstocking tales (books by James Fenimore Cooper - for example “the deerslayer”) where the hero and his buddy are chased in a canoe by hostiles. If they weren't fast enough, they get killed. Very exciting for the young reader.

Thnx Brandon and host of peoples.
rd

Re: Lake Whatcom Classic photos now online
David Scherrer
05/07/17 #21259

Good post, but I think you will find that Ol'Pete Wells started the Lk Whatcom Classic (sponsored by Lake Whatcom Watercraft, his canoe retail business). Named “Classic” because of its length ( 21 miles aprx.) then we went all the way to the far end of the lake and back. Any yes, it was all canoes. Great fun. Jeff David and Pete were the tandem to catch. A fair amount of canoes would show up. Today its great to see the different manifestations over time, really great to see the amount of boaters last Saturday and the amount of younger paddlers! D.

Tony Brown made a little Whatcom Challenge history, and I think we missed it.
Steve Bennett
05/09/17 #21270

I just wanted to congratulate Tony Brown for his Whatcom Challenge record performance last year in the FSK class.
His time of 1:54:05 easily exceeded the prior best times posted by Peter Marcus and me back 2002 on a day ideal for racing.
A nice bit of history that I don’t think got noticed.

Steve