Surfski Knowledge Base

Re: Long run yesterday
Kevin Olney
08/04/14 #16058

It happened, and it was a memorable event for certain.

The field was small (5 OC-1s, 2 FSK and me in the Swordy) and made up mostly of out-of-towners. The race route was to begin at Odlin park on Lopez, paddle clockwise around Shaw and Orcas then through Obstruction Pass turn north to Eastsound, then back to Odlin. At the pre-race meeting we decided to shorten the course for everyone's safety and piece of mind by eliminating the Eastsound leg, still about 40 miles.

We started at 6:30 Sat morning with blue sky and lake-like smooth conditions. Joel Strimling, an OC paddler from Portland, and I took an early lead keeping a brisk but easy pace until about mile 14 we hit a headwind in Presidents channel and he dropped back a ways.

I stopped briefly at the checkpoint on the north beach of Orcas then was treated to nearly 10 miles of downwind conditions along the NE shore. After rounding Pt Lawerence the current picked up and I had a pretty good push almost all the way back. My time was 6 hours 26 min for 38.72 miles, just inside of the 6mph goal I had set. It felt great!

Within the next 1:45 the rest of the group arrived and we commenced consuming large amounts of food and alcohol.

I want thank Kristian Tollefson, the organizer/director of this event having the vision and guts to make it happen. The main goal was to bring awareness and appreciation to the beauty and wonder that is the puget sound and to understand how fragile it really is.