Avid Canoeist Chronicles : 2004-10-18 Karen Febey at Rookie Night

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2004-10-18 Karen Febey at Rookie Night

We had a total of six canoes. The paddlers included Peter Hanson & Ed Arenz, Bill Kremer & Joe Conrad, Dave Dahl & Lee Jarpey, Todd Ellison & Ole Mersinger, Karen Febey and Rick Lorenzen. Since we had an odd number of paddlers, Brett Arenz paddled my Gene Jensen designed and built SSS 180 C1 solo racing canoe. It was just before dusk and the light was fading fast with the overcast sky, but the weather was relatively warm with the temperature in the fifties. We used a disposable camera and took some pictures of the group paddling against the last gasp of the fall colors left only some orange and rust colored leaves on the most sheltered part of the western shoreline.

Karen Febey came to the University of Minnesota from Grayling, Michigan, where the famous 125 mile Ausable Marathon Canoe Race happens every year. She said that her father was a ham radio operator with the call sign of KB8MMY. Karen had been watching those canoe races while standing on shore at night with flashlights shining politely down on the river for the participants. Now she had a chance to try canoe racing from the inside of a racing canoe. Karen came to our Monday Canoe Racing Practice at River Flats Park on the East bank of the Mississippi River regularly the whole summer of 2004. As a rookie racer, she had normally been put in the bow where her partner could see how to coach her.

However, she wanted another shot at learning to paddle the stern again tonight as she had done last week so I paired up with her since I hadn’t paddled with her yet. As we started paddling, Karen confirmed my guess after evaluating her previous week’s training session, which was that her left wrist had been injured in the past. That injury was keeping her from turning the blade at the correct angle. She would have to either do some rehabilitation work on the wrist to loosen it up or she would have to learn to let the top of the paddle twist differently in her hand when the paddle blade is on the right side of the canoe.

As it is now, because of the injury, she has a very hard time putting the blade in the water at the correct angle on the right side. That means she can turn the canoe to the right while paddling on the left side in the stern, but can’t turn it to the left when paddling on the right side I the stern. That makes for some zig-zagging with some very long zags. Having the bow paddler try to correct the zig-zags prevents her from learning because she can’t tell what is working and what is not. She needs to practice paddling the stern of a tandem canoe on a calm lake with nothing but heavy weights in the front. Getting rid of the current, the wind, and the bow paddler will reduce the number of variables so she can find out exactly what happens when she paddles. Then she can paddle slowly and change one thing at a time to see how each stroke effects the canoe’s performance.

Paddling a solo canoe would be a difficult way to learn how to paddle the stern in a tandem canoe because you are seated in the center of the canoe instead of behind the midpoint of the canoe. If the paddle blade is not exactly perpendicular to the center line of the canoe, each stroke in the front half of the canoe needs to have an opposite angle than a stroke in the back half of the canoe. That means if you take a long stroke in a solo canoe, you will need to switch from a bow stroke blade angle to an opposite stern stroke blade angle during the course of the stroke as it passes the midpoint of the canoe.

Once we had passed the white sand beach, Karen and I switched bow and stern so we could do less zig-zagging and stay closer to the other canoes. We headed back upstream because it was already dark at 6:45PM. The lights of the bridges reflected on the swirling dark water as we approached. Karen was serious about learning to paddle because she listened and tried to implement my suggestions on moving her shoulders to engage her torso muscles. She said she could tell that it took less effort from her arms when she did use her shoulders.

Turning the last corner by the concrete wall we saw the lights of the buildings in downtown Minneapolis shining on the water. Just having come out of the Saint Anthony Lock, a barge’s searchlight framed us in white as we scurried across the dark river to the east bank. Had we stayed on the west bank’s concrete wall, the huge barge wake bouncing off the wall would have been dangerous.

The river was shallow close to shore on the east bank and we heard friendly voices from a group of students sitting on shore in the dark. The first set of foot-high barge wake waves tossed our bows into the air to come splashing back onto the waves behind it spraying water to either side. Some of us hollered with glee. The flash from a student’s camera surprised us as the next large set of three waves. Several more sets of larger waves tossed our bows into the air, but it was shallow here and we weren’t far from the parking lot and dry clothes. It’s still not a good thing to swim in the Mississippi River because of the pollution, but I have done it on six different occasions over the fifteen years I’ve been paddling on it. But those stories will have to wait until later. Tonight, we were all being careful paddling in the dark and none of us flipped over.