As Scott Cummins and I finished up our paddle yesterday morning, it was SELFIE TIME!!!! Getting out on Taylorsville Reservoir with my friend from Louisville was easily the best part of my weekend.
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I arrived in Lexington, Kentucky, in the mid afternoon on Saturday. The National Paddling Film Festival started at 4 o'clock at the Lyric Theatre, and the first thing I learned when I got there was that I was mistaken about the awards being handed out. The "viewer's choice" award, based on votes from those who watch the movies online, won't be announced until next Saturday, February 26, when the online viewing period ends. So you've still got all this week to watch and vote if you haven't already. Information on how to do so is here. If you have already watched my film and voted for it, I am sincerely grateful.
What they did announce on Saturday was the winners of the amateur, accomplished amateur, and pro categories as determined by the festival's own panel of judges. In my category (amateur), the winner was a film called "My Dolphin Paddle." Honorable mention was given to a film called "Calloway Creek, KY." I encourage you to watch those films as well as mine, and see if you agree with the judges.
There didn't really seem to be a reason for me to be there, but I stuck around and tried my best to socialize until 9 o'clock (the event ended at 10:00). Then I returned to my motel--a spartan place even for a Motel 6--and tried to get some sleep.
Saturday had been a cold day, and when I got up yesterday the temperature was below freezing. But the sun was out and the forecast called for a Fahrenheit high in the 60s. I found some breakfast and then drove an hour or so west to Taylorsville Reservoir. These days I'm trying to make Sunday my "over-distance" day, and this time I had company: longtime racing friend Scott Cummins came down from Louisville to meet me. We paddled for two hours and covered about 18.6 kilometers (11.6 miles), and talked about everything under the sun. It felt good to paddle and burn some energy and forget about driving and films and all that stuff for a while.
Scott and I talked about our racing plans for the year. I told him I hadn't made extensive plans but intend to go to Ocean Springs next month. Scott and I both plan to race at the Gorge Downwind Championships in the Pacific Northwest in July. We also discussed maybe racing in Scott's double surfski at some point in the spring.
We said goodbye and I hit the road, getting home around 6:30 last night.
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Tuesday was an utterly lovely day: sunny skies with a high around 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I paddled steady and relaxed for 60 minutes Tuesday morning, and that was just what I needed.
The warm weather continued yesterday and, following the usual trend for this time of year, the wind picked up. Strong thunderstorms with lots of wind were forecast for today. The temperature was supposed to rise into the low 70s this morning and then drop into the 50s this afternoon, so I was sure to paddle in the morning. I did another set of six 1000-meter pieces, starting every 8th minute. The wind was blowing from the south, so I started off paddling toward the south end of the harbor so I could do most of my 1000s coming back north with the wind at my back. I did do the first 1000 into the wind, and though I'd hoped to move at 11.0 kilometers per hour, I could only manage 10.6 or 10.7. Once I was paddling with the wind my goal was to maintain 12.0 kph, but the speed and direction of the wind were so inconsistent that it was hard to find any consistency in my speed. Sometimes I did 12.0 or a little faster, but other times I was as slow as 11.4 or 11.5. I tried my best to keep my intensity at a consistent level. It definitely was another tough session. After a couple of pieces I wondered how I would complete all six, but I kept the workout moving along and finally made it out the far end.
Tomorrow I'll be heading out on a little road trip, not for a race but for a film festival. The National Paddling Film Festival in-person event is Saturday in Lexington, Kentucky. I'm not sure what I'm going to do there besides hang out and fly the flag for my entry, but I reckon I'll find out. The award for the amateur category (in which my film is entered) is scheduled to be handed out at 4 o'clock Eastern, so I'll find out if my movie was the best-liked of the bunch. If you haven't gotten around to watching my film yet, I'll be most grateful if you go here and watch and VOTE!
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This Saturday is "Awards Night" at the National Paddling Film Festival. That means there's just a short time left to watch and vote for my film "A Paddler's Journey."
To watch the film, along with the other 17 films in this year's NPFF lineup, go here. Scroll to the bottom of the page for ticket options.
I'm utterly grateful to everybody who has supported this project!
Here's the official trailer for the film.
This Saturday I'll be attending the National Paddling Film Festival at the Lyric Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky. They'll be announcing the viewers' favorites of the 18 films in the lineup. The overall winner will receive the award pictured above, the Palme D'Or.
At least, I think so... it's possible I'm confusing the NPFF with some other film festival.
Whatever the case, I'm hoping that a lot of festival-goers will decide that my film, A Paddler's Journey, is their favorite.
Mind you, I didn't make the film just to win awards; I saw it as a challenge, an interesting project, a fun way to share what I've learned in 40 years of paddling, and just getting it finished is reward enough for me.
But I won't lie... it sure would be cool to win at the festival.
So... if you would like to help make that a reality, please visit this page of the NPFF website, purchase a ticket, watch my film online (and the others, too!), and then VOTE for it! I'd sure appreciate it.
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I spent most of Friday doing more ice storm cleanup work at my rental property and in the alley behind my place. I used a chainsaw to cut the bigger stuff and a handsaw or pruning shears for the smaller stuff.
Such work leaves me tired and sore, but I like it anyway. I find it relaxing somehow. And I'm pretty good at it, too. I'm grateful to my dad for that. Fairly often I get asked if my dad taught me woodworking, and the short answer is no, but the longer, more accurate answer is that he had a lot to do with it. He made his living as a lawyer, but when he wasn't poring over boring documents in his office he was often working in the yard or addressing various household chores, and I think he got the same kind of relaxation from it that I do now. Thanks to him I grew up in a house equipped with saws, shovels, rakes, hammers, screwdrivers, and all kinds of other things that seem like normal trappings of life to me but apparently not to everybody. Sometimes I encounter somebody who never learned to use landscape tools or other tools, and I realize that I'm fortunate in that regard.
We had unseasonably warm weather Thursday and Friday, but by yesterday morning we were back to the kind of weather I expect in February. When I got down to the river it was around 38 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast with a biting north wind blowing. I got in the boat and headed for the north end of the harbor, slogging into that wind. Once I'd warmed up and done three 8-stroke sprints, I launched into what's become sort of a bread-and-butter workout for me in recent years: ten 30-second sprints starting every third minute. I did the first two sprints into the wind, and that was a drag, but at last I reached the harbor's north end and turned to have the wind at my back. I was tired by the last couple of sprints, but the workout went well enough and once it was over I paddled easy until I'd completed an hour in the boat. Then I took out and got into dry clothes as fast as I could. I've said this many times: 38 degrees and overcast and windy is much worse than 28 degrees and sunny and calm.
As if to prove my point, this morning it was around 28 degrees (30, actually, but still below freezing), sunny, and calm when I got to the riverfront. It was time for some old-fashioned over-distance training, and I set out to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar. I felt pretty comfortable, especially once I was paddling up the Mississippi with the mild south breeze at my back. I tried to keep the stroke race below 70 strokes per minute until it was time to ferry across the main channel, at which time I picked it up to around 80. I was looking forward to rounding the north end of the Bar and having the current helping me, but that south breeze picked up a bit and that made the downriver leg more of a chore than I'd anticipated. By this time it was probably in the mid to high 30s--still pretty chilly--and I had to stiffen my upper lip and forge ahead into that wind. It was still nicer than yesterday because of the sunshine, but I was feeling a bit chilled and very tired when I got back to the dock.
I made the trip in about 30 seconds over two hours. I try to break two hours when I paddle around the Bar, but today's river level (19.1 feet on the Memphis gauge) was lower than usual for when I do this circumnavigation, and the sandbar at the Bar's north end was more exposed and made the course a few hundred meters longer.
Paddling around the Bar is always taxing and I was pretty worn out the rest of the day. But it felt good to have done good work in cold weather.
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The next race I intend to enter is six weeks from this Saturday, a 13.7-kilometer flatwater affair down at Ocean Springs, Mississippi. For the next several weeks I plan to get in some old-fashioned endurance base training.
I started Tuesday with a set of six 1000-meter pieces, starting every 8th minute. My goal pace for each one was 11.5 kilometers per hour. There was a south breeze blowing, and whenever it was at my back I moved at more like 11.8 kph, while I struggled to do even 11.0 kph when I paddled into the wind. This workout is tougher than it sounds, but I'm going to do it once a week for the next little while and I hope maybe I can work up to 12.0 kph for each piece.
This morning I went out and did a mostly-steady 70-minute paddle out on the Mississippi, keeping my stroke rate below 70 strokes per minute. I felt tired in the boat, because of both Tuesday's workout and the tree branch cleanup work I've been doing at my rental property. An upstream-moving barge rig created a bunch of waves out on the river, and while I might welcome that in the summertime, today it made me tense up a bit and paddle defensively. I felt that much more tired by the end of the session as a result.
Meanwhile, the online portion of the National Paddling Film Festival is underway from now until February 26. I've bought my ticket and am working my way through the 17 films that make up the lineup alongside my own film, "A Paddler's Journey." There's all manner of interesting subject matter: rivers in Iceland, multi-day trips in wooden dories out West, a bike/paddling expedition in the Alps, paddling with dolphins in Norway, downriver racing in British Columbia... and more!
I hope everybody reading this will consider buying a ticket and joining in the fun. The ticket allows you not just to view all the movies, but also to vote on your favorite. I'm sort of hoping that my film might be a lot of people's favorite, but regardless... watch and vote. I think the vote winners will be announced at the in-person event on February 19, so be sure to vote before then. The place to buy tickets is here.
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Am I even in a boat, or am I just standing around in the surf? This is one of the more amusing photos that John and Tamsin of Cape Town Sport Photography caught of me during my visit to South Africa from the 22nd to the 31st of January.
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As Winter Storm Landon moved out early Friday, my city was getting some national attention as one of the hardest-hit areas. That was definitely true in terms of power outages: at one point Memphis Light, Gas, and Water Division was reporting over 130,000 customers without electricity.
I heard a few people compare this storm to the big ice storm we had here in 1994, but I remember that storm well, as this one was not nearly as bad. We do of course have some unfortunate folks whose homes were damaged by falling tree branches and stuff like that, but the streets were never entirely impassable, and by midday Friday the city was more or less functional again.
For the record, I am indeed among the most fortunate Memphians right now: my electricity never went out. Still tired and a bit jet-lagged from my long trip home Monday and Tuesday, I've been perfectly happy to spend most of the last few days lying around the house like a slug. But Friday afternoon I ventured out to have a look at my rental property over on the other side of Overton Park. I hadn't heard anything from my tenants, and I assumed no news was good news, but the place does have a lot of trees and I wanted to see how they held up under the weight of the ice. I found that quite a few medium-sized branches had fallen to the ground (fortunately, none had hit the building). And a couple of small trees along the side of the house had sagged and were blocking the next-door neighbor's driveway. So I ran back home and grabbed a few tree-trimming tools so I could begin some cleanup work. I was actually grateful to have a bit of physical labor to get my blood flowing again. After a couple of hours I was feeling like I'd rejoined society at least a little bit.
Yesterday morning I went to the river to paddle for the first time since my two Miller's Runs the previous Saturday morning. The temperature was right around the freezing point, but the sun was out and there was very little wind, so it was actually about as nice a day to paddle as one can ask for this time of year. The hardest part was getting my boat off the rack: the tie-down ropes were encased in ice and getting the knots out of them was a real chore. Once that was done I had a boat with icy stalagmites on its deck:
I thawed it all out during a mostly-easy 50-minute paddle.
Yesterday's high was a few degrees above freezing and there was plenty of sunshine. But the ice in the trees endured. Ice-laden trees cause all kinds of problems, but they sure are pretty:
I spent yesterday afternoon doing more cleanup work at the rental property. This morning I was back at the river: when I got there the temperature was around 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was sunny and calm again. All I wanted to accomplish with this weekend's paddling was simply to get the blood moving and maintain some muscle memory; with my next race seven weeks away (Ocean Springs, March 26), I've got plenty of time to put together a good training plan. This morning I paddled a moderate pace for 40 minutes.
By the time I was driving home, the temperature had risen above 40 degrees. The ice up in the trees was melting fast. Little chunks of ice were falling in impressive quantities, making me appreciate just how much ice was up in those branches.
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I really ought to have spoken MUCH more about this here, but I've been so preoccupied with overseas travel that I haven't really found time.
Oh well... time to start remedying that now. I spent much of last year working on a big project: a feature-length film!
As you can see, its title is "A Paddler's Journey." Last summer I marked 40 years as a paddler of canoes and kayaks, and I was looking for a fun way to share all the stuff I've learned in those four decades, and, well... somehow I decided that a movie was the way to go. The film is centered around my trip out to the Columbia River Gorge for the Gorge Downwind Championships last July. Along the way I get some great insights from world-class paddlers Ana Swetish, Austin Kieffer, and Greg Barton, and people like Rob Flanagan, Jules Gismondi, Chris Hipgrave, Carter Johnson, and Michael Meredith also pop in to say hello. My friend Jason Freeman, an awesome musician here in Memphis, helped me jazz up the soundtrack.
How can you see this film? It's making its premiere as part of the National Paddling Film Festival. The online phase of the festival starts February 6 (this Sunday) and runs through February 26. There's also an in-person event on February 19 at the Lyric Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky. Go here to buy a ticket and find information about the festival. Proceeds from ticket sales go to support American Whitewater.
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Winter Storm Landon is raging outside, but my electricity has stayed on long enough for me to bang together a little video from footage that the Mocke brothers and I shot last week. It's 77 seconds long, and I know that's very long in this age of social media, but brevity is not my thing. Enjoy.
I do at least have happy thoughts of the people and places I saw on the Western Cape of South Africa to warm my heart.
Here's a photo of one place where I spent quite a bit of time: the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club. For a long time it was primarily a sailing club, but under no small amount of leadership from Dawid Mocke it has become a very nice gathering place and home base for surfski paddlers.
It's not particularly fancy--it'll never be mistaken for the Memphis Country Club or any such place--but for a guy who feels lucky just to have a marina with a water-level dock where he can keep his boat, the club is downright posh: it has storage sheds for boats, locker rooms with showers, a small kitchen and bar, and this lounge area where we unwound after each paddling session:
Clockwise from the bottom, we see Ezra, Moses, me, Donald, Jasper, and Dawid.
There's even a wind gauge outside, with this display on an inside wall:
My lodging in Fish Hoek was A Tuscan Villa. It's basically a bed and breakfast, though "guest house" seems to be the official term for such places in South Africa. Whatever you call it, it's a lovely place that I highly recommend to anybody visiting the area:
Fish Hoek itself is not a tony resort town; it has more of a working-class feel. I like that about it. I know I'm in a pretty good place when I see signs that make me grin, such as this one:
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Thanks to John and Tamsin of Cape Town Sport Photography, we have plenty of photographs of our Camp Mocke activities last week. Here's a personal favorite of mine: a shot of me paddling by the Roman Rock lighthouse off Simon's Town.
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I felt surprisingly energetic yesterday morning after Friday night's racing. We would be concluding our seven-day camp with two Miller's Runs before lunchtime. The wind was picking back up: the gauge at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club was registering gusts as high as 30 knots.
We drove to Miller's Point and unloaded our boats. Jasper reminded us of how things work on the Miller's Run with the current wind conditions: from the start to the Roman Rock lighthouse, we would point our boats to the right, feeling the wind on both ears, and catch the small wind chop; then we would use the speed generated to turn left onto larger runs; then we would steer back right and ride those runs as long as possible. Once past the lighthouse we would be angling past Fish Hoek and would have to read the conditions for ourselves as to whether to go right or left.
At least the rules are simple until I reach the lighthouse, I thought. I paddled out of the slipway and began to establish a rhythm: get my speed up on some wind chop, then take that speed somewhere. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I felt good for the six or so kilometers from Miller's Point to the lighthouse. But then the conditions started getting bigger and the rules changed a bit, and I had a little more trouble maintaining my rhythm. At one point Dawid paddled up behind me and reminded me to look left as well as right. I struggled with that, and it seemed like a lot of good runs were getting away from me, but I kept on trying until I surfed in to the beach.
I quickly took my boat back to the trailer and readied myself for the second run. We had some change in personnel--one camper was opting out of the second run, while a couple of others who had skipped the first run were joining us; so I stood around getting cold for longer than I would have liked. But at last we were organized and ready to go. We returned to Miller's Point and soon I was in the boat once more.
I was trying to ride each run to the right like I'd done on the first run, but Dawid told me it was okay to stay pointed left longer if that helped prolong the ride. I moved along and got into a nice rhythm.
Apparently the wind abated quite a bit during our second run, but I can't say I was aware of that at the time. I was laser-focused on using the conditions to the best of my ability. This time I felt better on the section from the lighthouse to the beach: I was working less hard and getting greater reward from the swells.
This week I was never trying to set any Miller's Run records--I was out there to practice and learn--but I did keep my eye on the time of each run, for whatever that feedback was worth. During the week my times seemed to range between 51 and 56 minutes. I should note that we never quite did a "full" Miller's Run: to do that you have to start next to a big rock at Miller's Point, and we were always starting a few hundred meters beyond that rock.
Anyway, yesterday I clocked 51-something for my first run and 54-something for my second run. Maybe the lighter wind was the reason for the slower second run... I'm not sure. But at least you have an idea of how fast I'm doing Miller's Runs. I'll just add that the current Miller's Run record in a single ski is held by one Jasper Mocke: 36 minutes and change.
On weekends the kitchen is open at the beach club, and as I changed into dry clothes Dawid asked me if I wanted to order a bacon, egg, and cheese roll. I knew that the innkeeper at the B and B was planning to feed me when I got back, so I should have said no thank you, but at the moment the B.E.C. roll sounded good, so I said yes. That turned out to be a mistake. I wolfed down the roll at the club, then hurried back to the B and B so I wouldn't be late for my meal there. Knowing that I was cramming two Miller's Runs into the morning, the innkeeper presented me with an extra-big meal: two eggs and four--yes, four--meats: a beef patty, a pork sausage, some chicken schnitzel, and bacon. Now, growing up I was taught that I should clean my plate, and of course food waste has become a global problem that I don't wish to exacerbate. But I had no idea whether I'd be able to consume that entire meal. I tried to pace myself with small bites and thorough chewing, but it became more and more clear that I would not be able to finish. I was stuffed, and I knew that trying to eat it all as a matter of principle would just make me sick. I apologetically turned in my plate with most of the beef, bacon, and schnitzel uneaten.
My stomach feeling like a ten-kilogram weight, I lumbered upstairs and collapsed for a long nap. I was thoroughly exhausted, not just from the morning's paddling and the eating but from the entire week. The wind picked back up and I could hear it howling outside. When I got up in the late afternoon I went outside to take a walk, but the wind was blowing so hard that it wasn't all that pleasant to be out there. I finally returned to my room and had a light snack in lieu of supper, then read my book for a while before turning in.
This morning I slept in an hour later than I have been this week. I'm totally in decompression mode now. The wind continues to blow, and I expect there are many people out on the Miller's Run today. If I really wanted to get in another run myself I could probably arrange to use the boat one more time, but I don't think I have it in me. I know people will read this and think "Are you crazy?? You flew overseas! You need to be doing every last downwind run you possibly can!!!!" But right now I'm bordering on catatonic. Who knows... maybe this afternoon an opportunity will present itself, and I'll rally. But right now I'm good.
I'm scheduled to fly out of Cape Town tomorrow evening at 8 o'clock, so I have a day and a half to savor life in the town of Fish Hoek.
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As Thursday went on the wind shifted more to the southeast. After studying the wind forecast, Dawid and Jasper decided to take us someplace new for the afternoon. We loaded up the trailer and headed up to the Atlantic coast north of Cape Town for a downwind run from Milnerton to Big Bay.
Having never paddled anyplace in South Africa but False Bay, I was glad for some new scenery. I'd heard that the water is quite a bit colder on the Atlantic side than on the False Bay side, but as we waded in from the beach it didn't seem too bad.
Once offshore, I had trouble finding the kind of productive rhythm I'd found on the Miller's Run Thursday morning. The conditions weren't that big, but they seemed more technically challenging to me for some reason. One thing I didn't pick up on is that I should have had my boat pointed left while searching for a run, as opposed to right on a typical day on Miller's. Afterward I asked Jasper how I could recognize such a thing in the future, and he gave me a good explanation, but I still had to chew on it for a while to gain a fuller understanding.
The wind died down quite a lot overnight from Thursday to yesterday. Yesterday morning we availed ourselves of this opportunity to take a scenic tour. We drove down into the Cape Point Nature Reserve and put our boats in the water at Platboom Beach on the west side of the Cape Peninsula. Then we paddled down around the Cape of Good Hope, past the Cape Point lighthouse, and up into False Bay, finishing at Buffels Bay.
The weather was very different from the warm sunny days I'd been enjoying on this trip: at Platboom a dense fog hung over the water and the chilly conditions seemed almost lugubrious. As I paddled into the shore break I took some splashes of icy Atlantic water in my face and chest. We'd gotten an early start and if I hadn't been awake yet, I sure was now. As we rounded the southern end of the peninsula we left the fog behind and had a lovely view of the rocky formations at this southwestern-most tip of the African continent.
At one point Dawid had his camera out and instructed us to paddle between him and the Cape Point so he could snap our pictures. I did so, and he scolded me for passing too far away and commanded that I circle around and do it again. I did so. I made sure to be much closer on my second pass:
My snarky grin says it all.
The Cape Peninsula boasts some wildlife that seems pretty exotic to this simple guy from the Mid South United States. Driving in and out of the area we saw ostriches, elands, and baboons.
I was back at the B and B around noon. I had some lunch and rested up good for my second big event of the day: the Sea Dog race!
Races in the Sea Dog Paddle Series take place on twenty Friday evenings from October into March (spring, summer, and fall in the southern hemisphere). Put on by the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club, the event bears the proud tagline "Never Cancelled!" You can see it above and below the skull and crosspaddles:
This would be my second Sea Dog; I did my first during my visit in February 2020. It's five laps of a triangular course out beyond the impact zone of Fish Hoek Beach. One leg of the course is upwind, one is downwind, and one is in a beam wind. One lap is maybe, I don't know, 1200 meters? Not a great distance. The race includes a couple of challenges that this inland dweller still hasn't learned to do as well as he should: a start into the surf and a finish on the beach.
There didn't seem to be any particular limit to how far into the surf racers could wade while awaiting the starting gun. I got myself out into water that was well over knee-high, but many other racers waded farther. When the gun went off and we mounted our skis, I was already well back in the pack. I paddled hard into the surf and tried my best to improve my position.
When I did this race two years ago I overtook other racers on the beam-wind and upwind legs, but gave those places right back on the downwind leg. It seemed as though everybody was doing the downwind better than I was. Now, with two more years of downwind wisdom, greatly enhanced this week, under my belt, I was determined to do better. As we rounded the buoy from the upwind leg into the downwind leg, I immediately looked for those little runs that would lead me to bigger ones. I did a reasonably good job on the first downwind leg and that gave me some confidence to push the pace on the beam-wind and upwind legs to come.
I was still well back in the overall field, but I was picking a lot of people off. I moved by as many people as I could in the non-downwind parts and then tried to hold my position in the downwind. Of all the people I passed, I don't think anybody passed me back permanently.
I was getting passed by a few people, however. One guy paddling an elite-level ski with sponsors' stickers on it flew by me, and I thought to myself, "Did this guy start late? He's clearly much better than I am." Then Dawid came by, shouting a few words of encouragement at me, and then I put it together: I was being lapped. Dawid would tell me later that the first guy who lapped me was junior world champion Uli Hart. After Dawid, two or three similarly-world-class types gained a lap on me. I might be a big fish in the little pond back in Memphis, Tennessee, but here I was the tiniest minnow.
I stuck to my own plan and continued doing the best I could. Finally I was surfing downwind for the fifth and final time, and I steered my boat toward the finish flags on the beach in front of the surf lifesaving club. I sprinted hard to keep from being spun out by a breaking wave, and then unhooked my leash and dismounted the ski. Dragging my boat along, I ran as hard as the knee-deep water would let me, up onto the beach and between the flags. The finish line official recorded my race number, and that was it... I was done.
As of this writing the results are not yet posted on the Sea Dog results page. The most recent results currently displayed are from this past December 15, so the race officials are apparently not so efficient in getting them up. Oh well. I checked my watch before and after the race and determined that my time was in the neighborhood of 34 minutes. I hope to see exactly where I ended up sooner or later.
After the race I rejoined my fellow Camp Mocke participants for our second of two group dinners. We ate at the Cattle Baron restaurant in the Harbour Bay Mall near Glencairn Beach. I ordered--what else?--a steak.
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As readers of this blog know, I laid out a training plan to get myself fit for my trip to South Africa. But where I live there's not much to paddle but flatwater (more often than not I shun the Mississippi and stay in the harbor in the dead of winter), and I'm not sure there's anything I can do on flatwater that will truly prepare me for the demands of serious ocean downwind paddling. And so, while I'm doing some of the most fun stuff a person can do in a boat on the water, it's felt pretty taxing at times.
This trip has also reminded me of how much I don't know about paddling on the ocean. I've long been a "mountains and rivers" kind of guy: having spent decades paddling whitewater, I have quite a deep knowledge of river hydrology and what a paddler can expect from the many different river features. When it comes to beaches and oceans, I still feel like a complete beginner sometimes. This week I've been learning something new about how the ocean behaves every day, if not every hour.
Wednesday was shaping up to be the windiest day of the week. As we looked out over the Miller's Run from the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, we could tell that some huge conditions awaited us. As we drove from the club toward Miller's Point, Jasper offered up one of those lessons in my "beaches and oceans" education: he noted that the tide was in, and therefore the swells should be a bit lower in amplitude in the morning and a bit steeper during low tide in the afternoon.
My run Wednesday morning had its ups and downs; for the most part I think I handled the conditions pretty well, but I was awfully tired by the end and feeling like I'd worked way too hard.
The afternoon offered a change of pace: I would be paddling in a double surfski with Jasper. The swells had steepened with the low tide and the wind was blowing over 25 knots from almost due south, and Jasper said the conditions were perfect for a fast time on the Miller's Run. And Jasper had a bit of motivation to go fast, too: in the morning he and another camper had clocked a little over 41 minutes in the double ski, and now that person was doing some trash-talking, saying that Jasper and I wouldn't beat that time. Dawid said to me, "I hope you're ready to go sub-forty!"
We went pretty hard from the slipway out into the swells, but then Jasper began to give me an impressive lesson in stroke economy. I was in the stern seat, paddling whenever Jasper paddled, and while we certainly laid down some fierce sprints every couple of minutes, much of the time we were just letting the wind and the waves do the work. And we were flying! This was one of those paddling sessions that bordered on a religious experience.
John and Tamsin of Cape Town Sport Photography used their super-charged lenses to get some of the action:
Jasper has the complete package of skills of which I'm still just scratching the surface. He seemed to know exactly how each set of swells would develop and where we needed to be. He'd let some enticing runs go, steer the boat across the wind, lean one way or another, and before I knew it we were on the biggest, most beautiful swell I'd ever seen. Other times we weren't really on a swell at all, but Jasper noted that we could feel the wind on both our ears: "The wind is carrying us!" I was definitely on my toes to keep my strokes with Jasper's, and occasionally getting drenched as the paddler in the stern of a double ski typically does, and absolutely excited; but one thing I was not was tired, because I was hardly having to paddle.
We cruised in to Fish Hoek Beach and stopped the clock at 38 minutes, 57 seconds. So we won that little competition.
When I came back out for another Miller's in a single ski Thursday morning, I was determined to emulate some of what I'd seen while paddling with Jasper. Jasper pointed out that there are some things a doubles team can do that a single paddler can't because of the stronger momentum a big double ski builds up, but otherwise the key to my having a quality run lay in starting small, letting a small run or even just the wind carry me, and then taking that speed onto bigger runs. A good downwind run, Jasper said, is simply settling into a good rhythm that repeats that process over and over.
Thursday morning's run turned out to be my most satisfying of the week so far. I did what Jasper said and kept looking for little runs and letting them lead me to bigger runs. I worked harder than I'd worked in the boat with Jasper the day before, but I didn't feel exhausted when I got to the beach. I just felt... happy.
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My body is getting better adjusted to this time zone that's eight hours ahead of my own, but dawn still seems to arrive awfully quickly. Our downwind camp group is meeting at 8 o'clock each morning, so I'm getting myself out of bed at 5:30 to make sure I have time for some coffee and breakfast and to wake up a little bit.
The wind hadn't really picked up yet yesterday morning, so we put our boats in at Fish Hoek beach and paddled some 4.5 kilometers up to Muisenberg Beach to do a wave session. The shore break at Muisenberg features reliably big, smooth waves that are favored by board surfers for learning and practicing skills, and the Mocke brothers got us out there to do some drills that emphasized boat control and awareness of one's position on a wave. One key skill, of course, is avoiding the big "wipeout" in the "impact zone" where a wave begins to break.
Once again, our photographers from Cape Town Sport Photography were on the job. Here's a shot of yesterday's morning session; that's me on the right, with Ezra on the left and Jasper in the middle:
I've mentioned here in the past that I have sort of a "Goldilocks zone" in downwind conditions. Sometimes the bumps are too small for me and I waste a lot of energy trying to find help from them, and sometimes the swells are too big and I get scared and freeze up. One of my main goals for this week is to expand my Goldilocks zone under the tutelage of the Mockes.
Yesterday afternoon the Miller's Run started out in the "too small" end of things and I was gasping for breath while feeling like my boat was going nowhere. But then the conditions grew into "just right" territory and I started to find a groove. I was reminded of what hard work downwinding is, however, and it seemed like I was letting a lot of catchable runs get away because I just didn't have the oomph to sprint at the right time. This seems to happen whenever I travel someplace to paddle downwind, whether it's South Africa or the Columbia Gorge: my body needs a day or two to adapt to the new demands upon it.
Here's a shot of me at the launch site at Miller's Point:
The wind built overnight and by this morning it was plainly a more serious force. We gathered at the beach club at 8 o'clock and shuttled back to Miller's Point.
All kinds of things happened during the this morning's run that are worth discussing here. But for everybody who participated, the run was defined by my encounter with the seal.
I was maybe a kilometer or two in, and as I glided down the face of a wave I saw something brown, about the size of a large dog, swimming just to the left of my path, headed in the opposite direction from mine. Then it leapt straight up from the water and landed right in my lap. I let out a girlish squeal that I'm glad nobody was close enough to hear. Then I flipped.
I quickly remounted and got back to the business of my downwind run. I didn't give the seal much more thought besides being miffed that he'd made me flip. The conditions were plenty big enough to command my full attention... definitely a bit outside the Goldilocks zone.
Actually, I didn't really feel all that uncomfortable out there. It probably helped knowing that I could indeed execute a remount in those conditions (I guess I owe the seal one for that). But I just about wore myself out trying to link runs out there. The kinds of moves that required sub-maximum effort yesterday seemed to require maximum effort this morning. Dawid was moving around among the campers providing coaching, and each time he got to me he was telling me to Sprint! Sprint! Sprint! every ten seconds. I was fully in the red zone, gasping for breath. The thing is, I greatly admire and respect Dawid and if he'd told me to keep sprinting until my heart exploded, I probably would have.
Once we reached Fish Hoek Bay, Dawid seemed to detect that I'd had enough. He told me to spend the last few hundred meters in to the beach catching runs and then using as few strokes as possible to stay on those runs and link to other runs.
So... how did this run come to be defined by the seal? Well, once I was on the beach I saw Jasper and told him about the encounter, and he looked at my boat and said, "Is that what caused this??"
I hadn't even noticed it, but the boat had been gouged all the way through on the starboard edge of the seat bucket, near where my knees were and right where the seal had landed, both inside and outside the cockpit:
That seal had chomped right down on my boat. Here are his tooth marks inside the seat bucket:
And on the outside of the boat:
As we all gawked at the damage and talked about what had happened, it began to sink in how lucky I was not to have been seriously injured. If the seal had landed half a foot shy of where he did, he might have bitten right into my femoral artery. Dawid and Jasper might be experts of the highest caliber in surf lifesaving, but I can't imagine how they could have evacuated me off the Miller's Run before I bled out. Whew.
Piling that bit of emotional trauma on top of the extreme physical exertion of the run left me utterly exhausted. I returned to the B and B wondering if I even had it in me to do the afternoon run that was scheduled. I had some lunch (we've arranged with the innkeeper to hold our breakfast until after we get back from our morning sessions, so lunch for me this week is eggs and bacon and stuff like that) and then lay around for a while, trying to settle my brain. The wind had blown somewhere around 25 knots in the morning and was expected to be even a bit stronger by afternoon.
I walked back to the beach club for our 3 o'clock gathering, feeling apprehensive but determined to give it my best. The Mockes had kindly pulled out a new boat for me to paddle. Dawid pointed out another thing that hadn't occurred to me: one reason for my exhaustion was that I'd been paddling a boat with a bunch of water in it. He told me to spend the first section of our afternoon run doing more drills where I try to ride and link runs with as few strokes as possible, and then go for a strong finish from the lighthouse to the beach.
I think that bit of advice took the pressure off, and I had a much more enjoyable run. Doing what Dawid told me in the early going helped me relax and let the runs come to me. I was definitely getting tired in the later stages, but overall the endeavor had a more positive, less urgent feel than the morning run had.
And I think my Goldilocks zone might be expanding, even if just a little. One thing is for sure: the Miller's Run is quite a bit more challenging than the Columbia River Gorge, where my last downwind paddling took place. The addition of ocean swell to the wind conditions makes it feel like a washing machine out there. I'm still not totally at home in it, but I have a few more days to work on that. It looks like the wind will continue to blow.
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The town of Fish Hoek, where I am spending this week, is one of many South African beach towns that have surf lifesaving clubs. These clubs train youngsters with the skills and fitness one must have to be a beach lifeguard. My coaches for this week, Dawid and Jasper Mocke, gained the foundation they needed for elite-level surfski racing by participating in surf lifesaving as children. Their late father was a pillar of the Fish Hoek club.
Yesterday afternoon the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club hosted the Nipper Classic, a competition among many regional clubs that featured some ten racing events. The events included swimming into the surf and back, paddling prone boards into the surf and back, and just plain running on the beach. That last discipline is the easiest to photograph with one's phone, and above we see a shot I got of the beach relay, in which teams of eight raced legs of about a hundred meters. We're looking at a baton exchange, and these exchanges had much to do with the final order of finish. I saw many lead changes as some teams blew big leads with bad exchanges while the teams that executed well ended up victorious.
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On Thursday and Friday in Memphis, the temperature was mostly below freezing with wind-chill values below 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yeah, it was time to get out of there for a while.
It was my first air travel since the coronavirus made itself at home in North America almost two years ago. I was apprehensive about the whole experience, but in the end it was about as painless as an almost-24-hour overseas journey can be. The airports and the flights seemed a touch less crowded. The Memphis airport was a ghost town--nothing new, really--and my flight from Memphis to Newark was only about two-thirds full and there was nobody seated in my immediate vicinity. But even the Newark airport wasn't too bad, and my flight from Newark to Cape Town was only maybe 80 percent full, as opposed to jam-packed when I made this trip two years ago.
I arrived in Cape Town at 6 PM local time, and Miller's Taxi proprietor Vinnie Cicatello drove me from the airport to my bed & breakfast in Fish Hoek. Now it was time to begin the process of adjusting my body to the new time zone. After supper at a nice little Indian place I found during my last visit, I turned in just after 10 o'clock, at which time my body thought it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I slept for some 90 minutes, then lay awake for two to three hours, then managed to doze off again. It was daylight when I woke up around 5:30 AM. I got myself out of bed at six.
The Western Cape had been in something of a heat wave when I arrived yesterday, and the temperature was around 93 degrees Fahrenheit. It felt like, well... summer in Memphis, Tennessee. Thankfully, milder weather is moving in starting today. Today's high is a lovely 80 degrees, and the forecast for the coming week shows highs mostly in the 70s. It's very comfortable for walking around in shorts and short sleeves, and that's a nice feeling in the month of January.
"Camp Mocke" kicked off this morning with an introductory session. Our coaches, Dawid and Jasper Mocke, met my four fellow campers and me at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club and helped us get the surf skis we're renting for the week adjusted. Then we paddled from Fish Hoek Beach over to Glencairn Beach and back. The wind was blowing out from the shore--no good for downwinding on the Miller's Run--but that was okay for today. We did remounts so that Dawid and Jasper could be sure that we all had that important self-rescue skill, and we also did a few sprinting drills. Photographers John and Tamsin from Cape Town Sport Photography captured some shots, such as this one of me paddling out from Fish Hoek Beach:
And this photo of me coming back in:
And, finally, this photo of our group for the week:
From left to right, it's Donald, yours truly, Dawid, Moses, Jasper, Garth, and Ezra.
After the paddling session we were free to do what we wanted the rest of the day. I walked a short distance up the beach to the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club, where its youth athletes were participating in the Nipper Classic competition along with a number of other surf lifesaving clubs from beaches around the region.
After watching the action for a while, I returned to the B and B, and then went back out for some groceries and a few other basic supplies. Our second "official" group activity was getting together for supper at Bertha's, a good seafood establishment in Simon's Town.
The wind for Miller's Run action is supposed to start picking up tomorrow and be pretty impressive by midweek. I'll try my best to bring you every thrill and chill here.
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The first half of this week has been relatively warm; the next Arctic blast is set to arrive tonight and tomorrow. So I've made sure to paddle Monday, yesterday, and today.
It was overcast and chilly Monday morning, but with an intense workout to do, the chill didn't concern me for long. I basically did the same workout I did two weeks ago: three sets of seven 20-second sprints, with the recovery interval decreasing from 60 to 50 to 40 to 30 to 20 to 10 seconds. The only different thing I did this time was put medium resistance (two golf whiffle balls) on the boat for the first set. Once again I started to tie up a little in the last couple of sprints of each set, but I otherwise held up well and recovered quickly. I was in the north end of the harbor when I finished the last set, so once my heart rate returned to normal I paddled a good brisk pace for the 2500 meters or so back to the dock.
Yesterday morning I did a gym session, and then went to my doctor's office to get the PCR test that I must have to be admitted into South Africa. Once that was done I headed down to the river and paddled a steady 50 minutes in mostly sunny 50-degrees-Fahrenheit weather.
The forecast said today would be very rainy with plummeting temperatures. When I went to the river this morning some showers were moving in, but the temperature was still a balmy 52 degrees. I paddled in a couple of heavy showers, but nothing to get too upset about. I did the same workout I did two weeks ago Monday: 10 strokes on, 10 strokes off, 20 strokes on, 10 strokes off, 30 strokes on, 10 strokes off, and so on until I reached 100 strokes on. This workout is just plain tough. Once you've committed to it there's no way out except out the far end. I tried to keep the "on" pieces as consistent as possible in terms of speed and stroke rate.
We continued to get a lot of rain this afternoon, and now in the evening the temperature is quickly dropping toward freezing. It's not expected to rise above freezing tomorrow. So it feels good to have all my paddling in the bank.
This afternoon I got my PCR test result, and it's negative. So that's a big hurdle cleared. Now I need to get through Friday and Saturday without any flight disruptions, and here in Pandemic Times that's anything but certain. But if it all works out, the next time I put up a post here I'll be in the Republic of South Africa.
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When I'm in South Africa next week I'll be participating in the fourth of four downwind camps that Dawid and Jasper Mocke lead each year. The third camp took place last week.
From what I was able to gather from the Mockes' social media posts, they apparently had several non-windy days during last week's camp. That, of course, is the risk that those of us who travel there take. The Western Cape of South Africa usually has strong winds that generate good downwind conditions out on the Miller's Run, but they're not guaranteed.
I've found myself worrying a bit about that: what if, after all the expense of this trip, and all the hassle of getting a PCR test and spending 24 hours on airplanes and in airports, I get there and the wind decides not to blow for most of my stay? It would definitely be a little disheartening.
But the Mocke brothers do have other activities cued up to make sure their campers get a worthwhile experience. When the wind died down this past Saturday, they led the group on a trip around the tip of the Cape of Good Hope, and that's something I'd love to do. Don't get me wrong--I'm hoping for five or six days of downwind awesomeness. But I think a chance to paddle around the Cape Point would be a pretty cool alternative on a non-windy day.
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Friday was not what I call gorgeous--overcast skies, temperature around 52 degrees Fahrenheit--but with some frigid winter weather moving in later this weekend, I made sure to get out and paddle. I did a nice crisp 70 minutes, with a big loop out on the Mississippi.
The worst weather wasn't due until last night, but I was happy to stay close to home yesterday with just a gym workout to do. It started raining as I did my gym in the late morning, and continued raining, heavily at times, for the rest of the day.
The rain turned to snow in the early hours of this morning, and when I got up around 6 AM there was maybe an inch of wet, slushy snow on the ground. According to the hourly forecast, the sun is supposed to come out in the afternoon, and the temperature is supposed to rise to about 40 degrees, so I don't think this snow will be with us for long. I'm hoping for nicer weather in the coming days so I can get one or two more good sessions in the boat before I head for where it's summer.
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On Monday I did the bike ride I'd begged off of on Sunday. The weather was definitely better--most importantly, the sun was out--but it was still very chilly with a Fahrenheit temperature in the low 40s. I rode the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms, did a loop around Patriot Lake, and came back home. I rode a little over 90 minutes and covered just over 34 kilometers (21.1 miles).
Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then went to the river for a 50-minute paddle. The temperature was a few degrees higher but still not warm.
I was back on the bike yesterday for a shorter, quicker ride. In one hour I rode 21.1 kilometers (13.1 miles).
This morning we had the nicest weather of the week so far: sunny skies, light winds, and a temperature in the mid 50s. It was time for some higher intensity in the boat. I warmed up and did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, and then did six 250-meter pieces, starting every 7th minute. My times were 73 seconds, 69 seconds, 73 seconds, 78 seconds, 71 seconds, and 74 seconds. That second piece was faster because I did it right at the mouth of the harbor and got a little help from the "tidal race" current that was flowing in there from the Mississippi. I think the fourth piece was actually a bit longer than 250 meters: I paddled under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and I think that disrupted the communication between my G.P.S. device and the satellite. So, I think in all I had a good consistent effort over the six pieces.
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Last year at about this time I was in Florida, doing some training on the Rainbow River with people like (from left) Chris Hipgrave, Alessia Faverio, and Terry Smith.
Some of the same people were back in the Sunshine State in the last couple of weeks, doing some more workouts in much balmier conditions than I had up here in the Mid South. I would have loved to join them, but with a trip to South Africa coming up just a week from this Friday, I elected to tough it out at home. Part of the reason was to save money (the South Africa trip is expensive) and part of the reason was to avoid the elevated risk of COVID-19 exposure (I must present a negative result from a PCR test to be admitted to the R.S.A.).
Whether my training up here is as effective as what I could have done down in Florida is anybody's guess. But assuming nothing stops me from getting in a boat on southern hemisphere waters in a couple of weeks, I don't think I'll be feeling too bad about my decision to skip Florida.
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It was about 18 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I got up Friday morning. Even though the sun was out for most of the day, the temperature never quite made it above the freezing point. It was a good day to stay in and do a gym session.
When I got down to the river yesterday morning it had warmed up to about 38 degrees, but it was overcast and a chilly east-southeast wind was blowing. It wasn't all that pleasant, but I've paddled in much worse, and of course I reminded myself that in two weeks I'll be where it's summer. I went out and paddled for 80 minutes, leaving the harbor and going up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wolf River, then coming back down to the harbor and back to the dock. I paddled a strong pace most of the way.
Today has been a weird one: abnormally warm temperatures and torrential rain in the morning, and then falling temperatures and a screaming north wind in the afternoon. I had a non-athletic commitment in the morning, and though I'd thought about getting on the bike in the afternoon, the miserable weather outside made me decide to do that tomorrow, when it's supposed to be chilly but sunny.
On the weight-watching front, I peaked at 156 pounds in the middle of last week, but since then I've been muddling around in 152-153 territory. Such yo-yoing seems to be the pattern.
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Last fall, as I was wrapping up a somewhat tiring and frustrating race season, I pondered how I would spend the coming winter, and I determined that I should diversify my training a bit and try to maximize the "fun" aspect of my paddling sessions. Among other things, that meant not making myself follow through with a scheduled in-the-boat workout if the weather was miserable.
But then I decided to return to South Africa at the end of January, and therefore committed myself to a certain degree of training seriousness in the couple of months leading up to that.
Now I'm just two weeks and a day from my departure date, and I'm realizing how few training days I have left. While I benefitted from balmy weather in December, that party is apparently now over, and I'm watching the forecast closely as I try to put the finishing touches on the speed and power that I'll need for a week of intense downwind paddling.
I hadn't planned to paddle on Monday, when the high was predicted to be in the mid 30s Fahrenheit. But even though that was indeed the case, by the afternoon the sun was shining and there was very little wind, so I decided to seize that opportunity to paddle on a not-so-miserable day. After warming up and doing a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I did a workout that Dawid Mocke showed me during my trip to South Africa two years ago. I did 10 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 30 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 40 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, and so on, until I'd worked up to 100 strokes hard. This workout is quite a bear, that 10-stroke recovery seeming like no recovery at all once those "on" pieces get up over 50 strokes. But it was over soon enough, and I cooled down back to the dock with endorphins flowing and a feeling of accomplishment.
I was expecting similarly nice weather Tuesday morning even though the day dawned with overcast skies: the hourly forecast said that by 10 AM the sun would be breaking through with a 34-degree temperature, and by 11 AM it would be sunny and 36 degrees. Unfortunately, the hourly forecast was wrong. When I got down to the dock a little before 10 o'clock, it was still solidly overcast and only 32 degrees with a frigid breeze blowing. But I was there, dressed to paddle, so I got in the boat and buckled down. I kept things on the easy side, paddling just 40 minutes and recovering a bit from Monday's hard session, but I did raise the tempo during the middle 20 minutes.
Looking at the forecast again, I saw that Wednesday would be a pretty nice day--sunny with a high in the 50s--before another round of wintry precipitation moved in with colder temperatures on Thursday and Friday. So I was back in the boat yesterday for another intense session. I did three sets of (20-second sprint/60 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/50 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/40 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/30 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/20 seconds recovery/20-second sprint/10 seconds recovery/20-second sprint). I took five minutes between sets. I struggled through the last couple of sprints in each set, but overall I held up well and felt good when it was over.
This morning we've seen freezing rain and sleet, and the temperature is 32 degrees and falling as the day goes on. I'm happily giving myself a day off to recover from this week's work, and I'll be watching the forecast again as I plan my activities for the week ahead.
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On Friday morning I followed up Thursday's workout with a good steady 80-minute paddle. The river was shrouded in a beautiful light fog, and the temperature was about 67 degrees Fahrenheit. I was out there wearing shorts and a couple of light shirts. As I paddled up the Mississippi a barge rig came downriver with some nice-looking waves behind it, but as I was dressed for the air temperature rather than the water temperature, I resisted the urge to surf.
The weather forecast definitely shaped my training schedule this weekend. The temperature rose throughout Friday, and by yesterday morning it was in the mid 70s. And storms were approaching from the northwest. Around 10 AM I started my gym session out on the back deck and watched the western sky get darker and darker. Soon enough the rain arrived, and I moved indoors to complete the routine.
We saw some heavy rain the rest of the day, and apparently some parts of town got some strong winds that knocked out the electricity, but everything was just fine in my neighborhood. The storms have now moved on, and behind them is just the sort of weather we expect this time of year. Today's high isn't expected to exceed 35 or 36 degrees, and there's talk of some of that "wintry mix" precipitation in the middle of the day. The temperature is supposed to drop into the mid 20s overnight.
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