Arrrrgh.

One of my projects this week has been installing new rudder lines on my three surfskis.  I think the general wisdom is that any surfski paddled regularly should have its lines changed once a year, so the boat I keep down on the riverfront was definitely due for new ones.  Meanwhile, my other two mostly just sit in storage in my garage, but when I took one of them down to Ocean Springs in March I noticed that one of its lines was getting pretty worn right at the rudder post.  So I decided to just change them out on all my boats and head into the summer with some peace of mind on this particular boat-maintenance issue.

The problem is that changing the rudder lines on a surfski is a monumental hassle.  No other task I can think of makes me want to scream impolite words at the top of my lungs like stringing rudder lines does.

The first challenge is to get the new line to feed through the tube inside the boat.  The best-case scenario is to have the old line still in place, because then you can just attach the end of the new line to the end of the old and pull it through.  But... you can't just tie them together, because the knot is too bulky to fit through the tube.  In the past I've used a little piece of electrical tape to join the ends, but you have to make a very neat, very thin tape joint so it will fit through the tube.  And then you have to pull it through very gently, lest the tape joint fail deep inside the boat.

This time around, my strategy has been to fray the end of each line, like so:

and then soak each end in G-flex epoxy resin, twist the two ends together, and let it cure overnight, with the intention of pulling it through the next day:

Each time, the epoxied joint has been too bulky to fit through the tube; so I have to whittle it down with a sharp knife or work on it with a piece of sandpaper.  One of the joints failed during this trimming process, and I had to glue the ends all over again.

(If you are not so fortunate as to have the old lines in place for pulling through the new lines, I know of a couple of things you can try.  One is to feed a stiff wire through the tube, and then use that to pull the new line through.  The challenge with this method attaching the line to the wire in a way that will fit through the tube.  Meanwhile, there are videos on You Tube that show the use of a vacuum cleaner to suck the line through the tube.  I've tried this a couple of times, and I seem to remember having success at least once but having more trouble other times.)

As of this writing I've been working on two of my three skis, and I've successfully installed two of the four new lines.  The other two have raised the frustration level of this project to a new height.  On Tuesday morning, while pulling on the old line to move the new line into place on one of the boats in my garage, the joint hit a snag inside the boat and broke.  Upon further inspection, I realized that the tube was broken inside the boat.  This was bad, because a surfski is a closed shell with no way to get inside short of taking a saw to it.

That is in fact what I ended up doing to my oldest ski when I found its tubes were broken a few years ago.  I hated to do it, but at least by that time the boat was getting old and beat-up and I was using it just for training anyway.  This photo shows what I did:

First I cut a circular hole in the deck aft of the seat bucket.  Peering through this hole, I found that the tubes were broken in many places and would have to be replaced entirely.  To do so, I would have to access the boat's insides closer to the footboard, and I ended up using a circular saw to make slits on either side of the seat.  After much painstaking work I got the new tubes in position and secured them in place, and then, by way of repairing the surgical damage I had done, I installed a hatch on the back deck (I ordered it from West Marine or some such supplier) and used Kevlar and fiberglass seam tape to patch the slits on either side of the seat.  The boat is now rather ugly and at least 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) heavier than it was when it was new, but like I said, it was already sort of beat-up anyway and relegated to training duty.  It has paddled just fine, and that's ultimately all that matters.

The broken tube I discovered Tuesday morning causes me more anguish, because even though I've had this boat eight years, it still feels new to me because I've mostly kept it in the garage and gotten it out only for races.  I was so infuriated by it all that I had to walk away from it and go down to the river to paddle (the whole point of all this work, after all).

I took the other boat from my garage--the one I hadn't messed up yet--down to the river with me because I wanted to bring my training boat back home so I could replace its rudder lines.  The boat I was taking down there happened to be the most stable one I own (V10 Sport), and that was a good thing because there was a strong south wind blowing and there were some pretty legitimate downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.  They weren't epic like the Miller's Run or the Columbia Gorge, but they were more than adequate for practice in reading conditions and linking runs.  And they were ideal for the mood I was in: infuriated with the awful turn my rudder-line-replacement project had taken, I needed to do lots and lots of hard sprints until I was too exhausted to feel angry anymore.  And that's what I did.

I brought the other boat home from the river and spent some time working on it yesterday.  I got one new line strung, but had that glue bond fail on the other one like I mentioned above.

This morning I returned to the river.  Some heavy thunderstorms had moved through overnight, part of the same system that spawned deadly tornados farther east in Tennessee.  By the time I got down to the dock the sun had come out and there was a mild breeze blowing from the northwest.  There would be no down winding today, but I paddled the V10 Sport out onto the river hoping maybe there would be some barge wakes to ride.  But the river was free of traffic, so I just paddled for 60 minutes, working hard on hip rotation.  With a more stable boat under me I felt comfortable rotating hard out on the river, so much so that my whole pelvic area was quite tired by the time I was finished.

This afternoon I went down to the shop to work on my training boat's other rudder line.  I was expecting this task to be the smoothest yet; after all, should anything go wrong I have access to this boat's innards through that hatch I installed a few years ago.  I shaved down the glue joint so that it would fit through the tube, and began pulling.  The line hit a snag, so I opened the hatch to investigate... and discovered that the tube had broken up into many fragments.  This is a tube that was new just a few years ago.  The only thing I can figure is that when a boat lives outdoors year-round, the tube material can't withstand the constant fluctuation in temperature, with the freezing and thawing and all that.

I'll have to install a new tube, and that'll probably mean taking the circular saw to the edge of the seat bucket again to get the tube properly situated there.

Or...

Maybe it's time to retire this old boat.  Fifteen years is a long life for just about any canoe or kayak, and I've certainly invested a good bit of money and many hours of labor to keep this one going for this long.  It's seen me through hundreds of days of training and exploring, and it feels like an old friend, but perhaps the time has come to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery.  Sigh.

That would leave me with the V10 Sport that's currently down at the dock (the state of whose insides I have yet to explore), and that other boat in the garage (a V10L) that also has a broken tube.  In that boat I'm pretty sure there's just one break near the stern, and I'm hopeful that I can cut a smaller hole, run the rudder line across the break, and repair the hole with a smaller hatch.

Anyway... what a week it's been, all because of what one might think is some simple routine maintenance.  And yes, I do have sort of an issue with the manufacturer of these boats regarding the durability, accessibility, and repairability of their interior parts, but I'll save that rant for some future post.

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Monday photo feature

John P. Batson of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, competes in the "Nooga Loop" canoe and kayak race on Saturday.  This is a 10.9-mile (17.5-kilometer) race on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Photo by Rick White.

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Warmer weather makes wetter better

Both the weather and the water are getting warm enough that I'm starting to feel comfortable surfing wakes out on the Mississippi.  I got to do a little of that both Tuesday and Thursday.  On Tuesday I was on the river north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge when I saw the Coast Guard's buoy tender the Kankakee coming upriver, and I found some nice waves in its wake.  The vessel was moving fast and I really had to sprint hard to catch something, but each time I did I felt that rush of satisfaction that's part of what makes surfing/downwind paddling so addictive.

As I was paddling out of the harbor on Thursday there was a barge rig heading upstream in perfect position for me to get out to it, and I was eager for more surfing goodness.  I achieved a couple of nice rides, but unfortunately there was another barge rig coming upriver behind this one, and it started blaring its horn at me, so I moved over toward the Arkansas bank to ease the pilot's troubled mind.  Once I was down below this towboat I checked out its wake, but the waves weren't nearly as good.  Oh well.

I had a bike ride planned for Friday, and my biggest challenge was the weather: when I checked the Internet radar Friday morning, it showed a huge mass of rain moving across Arkansas right toward Memphis, and I didn't think there was any way I could do my ride in the morning without getting drenched.  I figured I would have to wait and hope the rain would move out by the afternoon, but as I continued to watch the radar it looked like the system was moving slowly enough that I could squeeze the morning ride in.  I rode the Greenline out to Shelby Farms and back, thinking there was a good chance that the last 20 minutes or so of my 95-minute ride would be done in the rain.  But the rain held off, and once I was back inside I checked the radar again and the rain had only just arrived in Forrest City, about 50 miles west of Memphis.  So it was moving more slowly than I’d thought.  And when the afternoon arrived with still no rain, I checked the radar again and saw that the part of the system that appeared headed for Memphis had fallen apart.  Spring weather is unpredictable.

Yesterday I headed out on a slightly longer paddle--80 minutes--and I was expecting it to be a calm distance paddle.  But as I left the harbor I saw three upstream-moving barge rigs down below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, so I knew that before I was done I'd have an opportunity to surf some more.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled up into the lower reaches of the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back downriver.  By this time the barge "convoy" was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and once I was below the last rig I paddled in to explore the surfing possibilities.  The waves were moving fast, and they were sort of wandering from side to side rather than moving in an organized wave train, so I really had to sprint to catch them, and once I did catch one, the ride didn't last long.  But it was good practice for the next time I'm in a true downwind situation.  I had to focus on staying balanced on the crest of a wave, and keep my eyes open for another run to catch when the one I was on petered out.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes on a river that was all clear of barge traffic, and that was okay with me.  Surfing is hard work, and I was ready for a calm session.  All this week I'd worked on that thing that's been the theme of the whole winter and spring for me: improving my rotation from the hips.  Again, now that swimming is no longer such a frigid prospect I'm feeling a lot more relaxed out on the turbulent waters of the Mississippi, and rotating more freely.  It's still a mixed bag, though: some days I feel like I'm still making myself do it rather than doing it naturally.  Today I actually felt better rotating out on the river than I did in the harbor.

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Monday photo feature

This screen-grab from NBC Sports footage shows Casey Eichfeld of Drums, Pennsylvania, moments after crossing the finish line in his final run of the U.S. Olympic trials at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Saturday.

How long has Casey been participating in the sport of whitewater slalom?  I was still racing slalom myself when he first started showing up at races, so that's a pretty long time.  If I remember correctly (it's possible I don't), the first time I ever saw him was at an age group nationals event at South Bend, Indiana, in the summer of 1999.  He was hard not to notice: at 9 years old, he was three or four years younger than the next-youngest kid there.  Then in November of that year I attended a Thanksgiving training camp on the Tuckasegee River at Bryson City, North Carolina, and Casey was there too.  This would have been just after his 10th birthday.  He was a tiny little kid, not exactly a threat to us "grown men," but he was already showing some solid technique in the gates.

Over the next several years I did less and less slalom racing myself, but I spotted Casey here and there, training and racing wherever he could even though he was too young to be eligible for the junior national team.  Little by little the kid grew up, and in 2008--less than a decade after I'd first seen him--he made his first Olympic team, racing in men's double canoe (C2) at Beijing with partner Rick Powell.  Four years after that Casey was in the Olympics again, racing in single canoe (C1) at London.

He was staying busy in the non-Olympic years, too, training all over the world, making national teams, and racing in World Cup series and, of course, the world championships.  His finest moment might have come in the 2015 worlds at La Seu d'Urgell, Spain: in his final run, Casey seemed to be laying down a winning performance before a gate-touch penalty near the end of the course knocked him back to fourth place.

Unbowed, Casey came back to make his third Olympic team the next year.  At Rio he raced in C1 and teamed with Devin McEwan to race C2 as well.

At this point Casey wasn't exactly old--he wasn't even 30 yet--but he was a veteran of two decades full of hundreds of thousands of paddle strokes all over the world.  And he was now married, with thoughts of starting a family.  The question of whether he shouldn't stow his paddle and get a "real job" was a legitimate one.  But after serious thought and support from his wife, Casey decided he wanted to try to do something no other U.S. slalom racer had ever done: make a fourth Olympic team.

That meant another four years of training, and the Covid-19 pandemic turned that into five years, as the Tokyo Olympics was pushed back into 2021.  And then Casey failed to make the team.  He was beat out at the trials by a surging Zach Lokken of Durango, Colorado.

Once again it was decision time.  But at least this time the next Olympics was just three years away, and Casey decided to give it one more shot.  A few more cycles of training brought him to this month's Olympic trials, which began the weekend of April 13-14 at Montgomery, Alabama, and concluded this past weekend at Oklahoma City.  Once again Zach Lokken was Casey's most formidable competitor, and coming out of the first weekend Lokken held a slim lead.  Lokken maintained a slight edge after first runs at Oklahoma City, and Casey would say later, "Honestly, I thought it was gonna be Zach after the first run."

But then came second runs, and Casey uncorked a simply gorgeous display of speed, power, and precision.  In the photo above he's just a couple of meters past the finish line, knowing he's posted a terrific time and unable to contain his emotions any longer.  At this same moment Zach Lokken is sitting in his boat up at the start, about to take his last run, and while he can't know exactly what Casey has done, he's able to hear the spectators' reaction and the commentary of the venue announcer, and he has to know that Casey has just done something exceptional.  In other words, he's not in an enviable position.  He went on and made a valiant attempt to stick to his plan, but a time error early in the run spiraled into bigger mistakes farther down the course.  I suspect he knew deep down it was game over.  You can watch video footage of both Casey's run and Zach's run here.

Casey is one of two slalom racers the U.S. will send to Paris this summer.  The other is Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City, North Carolina, the trials winner in women's kayak and women's canoe.  Unfortunately, the U.S. did not qualify to enter a men's kayak athlete in the Olympics this year.  Such qualifications are based on U.S. athletes' performances in last year's world championships and in a Pan American competition this spring.

I'll conclude by saying that even in this era of pro athletes at the Olympics and lucrative "N.I.L." endorsement deals and all that stuff, most Olympic athletes are not rolling in the dough, and that is especially true of athletes in the more media-marginalized sports like canoe and kayak racing.  Meanwhile, the expenses are quite huge.  In the several months between now and the opening ceremony at Paris, Casey will be traveling to train on the course there and also to do some World Cup racing to make sure his game is in order.  He might get a little bit of financial support from the sport's national governing body, but it won't be nearly enough to cover all the airfare and lodging and other expenses he'll face.  And so... anybody who would like to send a few bucks Casey's way can do so here.

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Another week of spring-fever fun

It's been another week of trying to keep something going in the athletic department while having lots to deal with in my non-athletic life.  The next race I'm considering doing is in mid June, so before long I guess I'll ramp things up again.  But I'm satisfied with how this past week went.

I made it down to the river Tuesday for a 60-minute paddle.  It was quite breezy from the south and I went out on the river to see if there was any downwind action, but it was small.

I did a leisurely bike ride Wednesday afternoon, thinking I would do a more serious one on Thursday, which has been my bike-riding day lately.  But rain moved in Thursday afternoon.  I'm just fine with paddling in the rain, but riding my bike in the rain?  I don't like that so much.

So I pushed the bike ride to Friday, and I made it a good one, taking the Greenline out to Shelby Farms and looping around the lake before returning home.  I often see deer out in Shelby Farms or in the Wolf River bottoms, and they usually dash away when they see me coming.  But on Friday there was a whole flock of young deer grazing no more than 30 feet off the bike path, and when I rode by they stayed right there and kept on munching grass:

I continued on and did my loop around the lake, and when I passed back through this location about 20 minutes later, the deer were long gone.

Yesterday I was ready to get back in the boat for a longer paddle.  There was a strong south wind blowing, and rather than expose myself to all that with another trip around the Loosahatchie Bar, I elected to stay on the Tennessee side of the Mississippi River and paddle up the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge before heading back.  Up on the Wolf the water is much more sheltered from the wind, and I was able to relax and focus on technique and stroke mechanics in a way I can't quite do on rougher water.  Meanwhile, I was actually feeling tired and sluggish in the boat; I think Friday's bike ride took more out of me than I realized.  So it was a pretty tough two hours.  I had to paddle some rough water on my way back down the Mississippi, and I tried my best to relax and let the current carry me.  Even so, I was flat-out exhausted by the time I was back in the harbor.

I woke up a couple of times last night with my arms throbbing, probably because I'd used them too much out on the river.  I went back down there this morning planning to keep the intensity low.  The south wind was blowing even a bit harder, and I relaxed and didn't fight it as I paddled down to the harbor's mouth.  Once I got a look out over the river I saw some small but serviceable downwind runs, and I couldn't resist going out and playing on them a little.  I didn't stay out there too long: the runs were confused and hard to catch, and I also still wasn't entirely comfortable out there myself.  In another six weeks, when hot weather has settled in for the summer, I'll be able to go out there and not care about swimming.  Anyway, back in the harbor I paddled easy and tried to take good strokes until time had expired on a 50-minute session.

I'm still not in super-serious training mode, but I'd say it wasn't a bad week.

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Let's hear it for Admore!

I've visited the town of Fish Hoek, Cape Town, South Africa, twice.  A big reason that I want to get back there sooner or later is the daily dose of goodwill and hospitality I can expect from Mr. Admore Dzinzi.  The Zimbabwe native is the caretaker at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, and it's clear the club members are fond of him as well.  Local You Tube celebrities Zach & Jerry put together this video in tribute to Admore and his commitment to the general awesomeness of the club, the town, and the sport of ocean paddling.

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The Loosahatchie Bar

I've paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar twice in the last two weeks, and it's occurred to me that it's been a while since I've shared a map of this route.  I'm kind of a hopeless case when it comes to generating maps from my G.P.S. device, but fortunately my friend Adam Davis has the procedure down.  Here's a map he produced after we paddled around the Bar several years ago:

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  The river's main channel that the barge rigs use is to the east (right) of the Bar.  The narrower channel on the west side of the Bar is known as the Loosahatchie Chute, which happens to be maybe my favorite wilderness spot in the greater Memphis area.

This image shows the start/finish location at the downtown Memphis cobblestone landing, where Adam parked his car that day.  The distance units are in miles, and as you can see, we covered about ten and a half miles starting and finishing there.  I, of course, keep my boat at Harbortown Marina (circled in yellow), which is about a mile north of the cobblestone landing, so when I go around the Bar I cover about twelve and a half miles (that's about 20.1 kilometers).

On this day we ferried across the Mississippi's main channel where the 4-mile mark appears.  Sometimes I make the ferry higher up than that, and other times I make it sooner than that.  This past Saturday I ferried across about where the 3-mile mark appears in this image.  That's because there was a big river tour boat moored along the bank there, and rather than fight the current to get around it, I decided to just go ahead and ferry from there.

Anyway... I hope this image is helpful to those who have wondered what I am talking about when I mention paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

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Monday photo feature

A big reason I prefer to do my athletic stuff outdoors is the chance to see wildlife.  On the Memphis riverfront I see many species of waterfowl and wading birds, fish, beavers, turtles, and snakes.

Meanwhile, things I do in the middle of town--running and bike riding, primarily--might not offer as many wildlife-viewing opportunities, but there are a few.  When I ride my bike out to Shelby Farms like I did this past Thursday, I often see some wildlife in the park and in the adjacent Wolf River bottoms.  Most of the time it's deer, but on Thursday I came up on the creature pictured above near one of the smaller Shelby Farms lakes.  I could tell right away it wasn't poisonous; I'm not much of a snake expert, but I'm thinking maybe it was a king snake.  I dismounted my bike to watch it for a few minutes, snap its picture, and make sure it got across the path without being run over by other riders.  When I rode back through this location some twenty minutes later, it was nowhere in sight.

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