2004-03-28 Wave Riding

2004-03-27 RR EA 2 Wave Riding

Ed Arenz & Rick Lorenzen, Todd R. Johnson & Ann Manns, Todd Ellison & Al Dubois, Lee Jarpey & Keith Canny, and Dave Dahl & Brett Thunstrom met at Anoka Fairgrounds boat launch on the Rum River just above where the dam in Anoka.  It was 50 degrees, only a few crows & geese watched us paddle, the leaf buds were just coming out on the maple trees over the river, mostly cloudy with occasional slight drizzle.

We paddled up to the sandbar island and back in just under 2 hours.  When Keith and Lee sprinted ahead, Ann told them “Hey, No sprinting!”  Keith said “That’s what happens when you have a mom along.”  We still took turns sprinting and chasing each other upstream.  This was my third day in a row of paddling and the water has been feeling thick for several weeks now.  I’m finally learning how to apply almost all my effort completely to moving the canoe as efficiently as possible.

With 4 canoes side by side sprinting upstream on the 6 inch deep shallow sandbar curve raised there was a 1 foot high wall of water following directly behind them.  The nose of our canoe nestled into the wave and the back of our canoe rose up on the trailing wave.  This gave us an almost effortless free ride upstream as long as we kept the canoe pointed directly upstream.  The canoe behaved very squirrelly because it was perched on rolling hill of water and it’s easy to shoot off the wave out into the oncoming current.   I yelled, “Yeehaw!” and Ed yelled, “There’s water spilling into your canoe over the back Al”.  Racing canoes have low sides to keep them from having too much wind resistance and sometimes canoes can swamp by filling in from the back.  Todd and Al speeded up their pace a bit and the wave dropped back far enough to keep from filling up their canoe.