Avid Canoeist Chronicles : 2004-08-23 Mississippi Classic with Kenn Ketter

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2004-08-23 Mississippi Classic with Kenn Ketter

The water level was very low, but the weather was fairly calm the day of the Mississippi Classic in 2004. The short course (17 mile) race started same time as longer race, but the longer course racers had the best positions downstream. Kenn & I started further back along the shore with the other short course racers. When the horn went off, we didn’t go across the river like everyone else, but waited for the downriver canoes to pass our bow before quickly turning downstream at a much sharper angle than the rest. We sprinted out ahead of everyone in our category, trying in vain to catch the pack of longer race pro-boats that were tantalizingly within sight.

We rested on the stern wake of a big Jensen 18 who went on to win their category for a bit before pulling alongside them and then passing them. About a half hour into the race, we followed Kenn’s plan and took the deep water to the left before the other teams ahead. We caught up with the Sullivans and rested on their wake for a bit before jumping up alongside. Kathy was a bit nervous in the rapids and we pulled away from them to go after the pro-boats ahead of them. Al and Jeff Dubois and Lee Jarpey and Keith Canny were not far ahead. Closer yet were Chris ?? and Io Harberts alongside Jeff Staggs and Jan Guenther.

We took another shortcut over the shallows to pop it up and nearly caught onto the 2^nd stern wake of Io and Jan’s canoes. But they pulled away in the next set of shallow rapids. It would be another 20 minutes of following them downriver before we could catch up to them. We could hear Sarah laughing loudly and talking when Io and Jan caught up to them in shallow suck water. They rode together in a pack of 3 while Kenn and I followed deeper water to pull up alongside them.

We knew that Peter Hanson and Anne Manns were close behind us because we had heard them talking to the Sullivans. They caught up to us and pulled alongside in the long stretch at Elk River. The next set of rapids broke the canoes apart and we dropped Jeff and Jan, leaving Chris and Io on our right and Pete and Anne on our left. All the water was up front while we rode the waves between the canoes which lifted our stern.

We hit a rock hard while sandwiched between Io and Ann and managed not to tip over. Kenn was surprised and a bit frustrated because I couldn’t remember the river from the practice run we had done the previous weekend. I kept asking him if we were heading in the right direction. He would give me a landmark to head for, but I would get distracted talking to the others. He reminded me to stay focused more than once. I had trouble with my drinking tube, I doused my baseball cap in the water more than 10 times to fill it.

We sprinted in a shallow stretch and managed to pull away from Chris and Io. Io said that our canoe took on a lot of water as they caught back up to us in the shallows while our huge roller wake followed us with them. Another shallow rapids helped us dust off Chris and Io, but Pete and Anne ended up six canoe lengths ahead of us.

We followed Kenn’s route through the deeper water above Dayton and pulled up alongside Pete and Anne on their left. Just as they saw that we were in deeper water and came out to pull alongside us before another shallow ledge, Kenn had us cross their stern wake and pop it up over the shallows to pull ahead of them. They came back over to follow us on the right and then Kenn had us go further left back into the deeper water again. They tried to head straight for the mouth of the Crow, but ended up fighting suck water while we had deeper water to the left. We pulled out ahead of them again. But they had just caught back up again as we entered the Crow.

Kenn and I had scouted this section the morning before and had decided there wasn’t enough current to fight to make it worth following the longer curved shore. We headed straight up the middle of the Crow and Pete and Ann took the longer route that conventional upstream river wisdom dictated. Our path was shorter and we got to the buoy before them and did our rehearsed dead stop pry turn to point us back downstream without the normal huge arc. We headed downstream just as they reached the buoy and pulled away from them. We didn’t need our shallow water sprint pop to the finish line, but we did it anyway.

Skullduggery once again proved successful in helping older and more out of shape paddlers triumph over youth and beauty. The moral to this story is always practice the finish because that’s where you will need to know the course most. When it comes down to a close race, it helps to have some aces up your sleeve in the last few minutes. Knowing the course and where to pop it up can make a critical difference in finishing positions.