2004-06-24 Hoigaards with Kenn Ketter

Sunny skies with white cotton clouds over Lake Calhoun with enough wind to make the water look like a field of sparkling shards of broken glass looking across into the sun dropping lower to the horizon.  Not enough wind to make the waves high enough to be a challenge though.  Still there were sailboats and windsurfers on the city lake.  Tonight, I was paddling with Kenn Ketter who is the owner of Ketter Canoeing and last living member of one of the founding families of Minnesota Canoeing. 

Before the race began, Keith Canny told me how he and Lee Jarpey had played a trick on the faster paddling teams on the Rum River last Saturday.  The faster teams had pulled quite a ways ahead coming back downstream and were waiting at the last bend above the County Road 116 bridge as Keith and Lee’s group came around the bend above.  Keith realized that they wouldn’t have a shot at beating the faster teams in the inevitable bridge sprint if they paddled the stretch between while the faster teams rested.  So Keith had the slower teams turn back upstream once they knew they had been spotted.  Then they hid around the corner and waited until the faster teams had come back upstream to chase them down. 

As they rounded the bend heading upstream, Keith and Lee led the downstream charge past them.  They hollered “It’s a trick”, but it was too late.  Keith and Lee had a big head start on what turned out to be a very long bridge sprint.  They weren’t quite able to beat all the faster teams to the bridge, but they had given them quite a run.  As we laughed and Keith ended the story he said “Skullduggery may not win the race, but it sure can give you a jump on it.”  The older you are, the more important it becomes.  We would find out that skullduggery would come in handy in this race.

Kenn and I agreed that our best strategy would be to hold onto the faster team wakes as long as we could and see what happened.  Apparently they had forgotten the horn so they shouted “Go, Go, GO!”  We ended up on Lee and Keith’s stern wake. We were seventh or eighth canoe across Calhoun and made a good turn doing same side paddling without using any rudder.   Going under the tunnel to the channel to Lake of the Isles, we swung wide to give Cal Stenso-Velo enough room for his kayak and the wakes bouncing off the walls forced Kenn to use a rudder to avoid hitting the cement.  When the canoe finally straightened out, Kenn waited until the waves picked up the back of the canoe before he sprinted to catch back up to Lee and Keith’s stern wake.

We spent the next few minutes fighting off Al Dubois and Gareth Stevens who kept trying to steal Lee and Keith’s stern wake from us as they zig-zagged back and forth in front of us.  Once they got it away from us, I said let’s pull up and we sprinted alongside Lee and Keith.  At this point, we decided to go over to the shallows and try popping it up on our own wake.  As we neared shore my paddle hit the muddy bottom and broke in half.  I quickly grabbed my junky spare paddle, but we had lost two canoe lengths and ended up on the back of Al and Gareth’s stern wake.  About this time, Dave Dahl and Ed Arenz passed us up too. 

As we came to the 360 degree buoy turn, Al and Gareth sprinted ahead to the inside of Lee and Keith and Dave and Ed.  We followed and Kenn had to use a strong rudder to avoid hitting the canoes outside of us who actually made it around the correct side of the bouncing plastic bottle buoy.  We didn’t quite make it, but we didn’t hit any other canoes as we took the turn.  We had passed Dave and Ed and were again side by side with Lee and Keith, but Al and Gareth were ahead of us all. 

Dave and Ed caught up as we headed to the islands on Lake of the Isles and came alongside of us.  We were riding their side wake a foot or so back from their bow.  Suddenly, their canoe came over and Kenn didn’t stop our canoe from hitting them so Ed yelled “Come on, Kenn!”  I said, “You came over” just to let Ed know that it wasn’t completely our fault.  As we came out around the island, Dave and Ed sprinted out and got ahead of us.  Lee and Keith came back up alongside.  It wasn’t looking good for the deep-water boys as we headed into the shallow channel.

Lee and Keith sprinted to the buoy ahead of us and held onto the inside but we held onto their stern wake rounding the buoy.  We rode their wake all the way to the next buoy turn and held it coming around the turn.  Kenn said stay on their wake until he said to pass.  They tried to scrape us off on the shallow spot next to the cement wall at the bend in the channel just before the bridge going into Calhoun.  Kenn saw it coming and picked up our pace just before the  huge roller wave lifted our bow out of the water.  As it dropped back down, we were still on their stern wake and Kenn said “Good move Keith”, but it hadn’t worked. 

Then as we came to the bridge, Kenn nodded to the right and we sprinted alongside Lee and Keith before they could cut us off against the cement.  Kenn later told me that the waves were just right and we were on the deep side of the channel.  Coming into Calhoun, we headed directly into the wind and waves coming from the west.  We worked hard to get ahead of them before we got to the 90 degree buoy turn and made another good same-side turn without using a bow rudder.  However, after the turn, Lee and Keith popped up alongside us again. 

We knew we couldn’t catch Dave and Ed who were still on Al and Gareth’s side wake way up ahead of us.  We knew there weren’t any canoes within striking distance behind us.  Neither team worked hard heading south across Calhoun toward the finish line Lee and Keith rode our side wake.  Keith said “You gotta give Al credit;  he’s still got it” and we all agreed.  Of course, his partner Gareth was a good canoe racer too, but we knew he couldn’t do it all by himself. 

Once we got two thirds of the way across, Lee started their sprint to the finish line.  It was still a long way to the buoy, and we had a challenge hanging on to their side wake.  Everytime we went out wide, Kenn pulled us back in next to them.  As we came through the last patch of weeds in front of the finish line, Kenn quickly cleared our bow while we were still side by side.  Keith said “Clean the bow” to Lee and when he did, we sprinted hard and shot ahead of them to cross the line by a half canoe length.  Skullduggery had given us a good jump.