Our First Race together...La Descente de la Gatineau....September 26,2009

Our first race together and we placed second. Wow! Pretty impressive I would think except that there was only two canoes registered in our class. Bummer. But we had a hell of a good time anyway. It was a beautiful sunny day but we had a 25km head wind for the whole of the 19kms that lay ahead of us. There were no rapids or portages to contend with. Only the wind. We did very well for the first half of the race. We averaged 8.5 to 9 kmph but then things began to take a turn for the worse. We are newbies to the sport and of course did not hydrate anywhere near the amount we should have. So needless to say our average speed for the second half of the race plunged to below acceptable levels. Lesson learned. We need to hydrate properly from here on in. We learned the hard way but managed to finish the race in 2 hrs and 23 mins. We were happy with that result and the day overall.
We met some new paddling friends that day. Well known marathon paddler's Steve and Lyn Hebert made up the other half of our Jensen Class for that day. We were able to help one another with our canoes and shuttle back to the start point. Steve is now Vice President of OMCRA and was more then willing to help us newbies with some valuable information. The race itself was fairly poorly organized and could use some serious re-vamping but having said that,a good time was had by all.

And They're Off..........

It didn't take long for my son and I to get on with the task at hand. It was early August and we wanted to get some practice in. We were nearing the end of the race season and we still didn't have a canoe that could cut the mustard but I did have a 14'8" Old Towne canoe from Canadian Tire and that's what we used for our first few times out on the water.
We started with a trip down the five or so sets of rapids between Pimisi Lake and Campion Rapids in Champlain Park. We ran all of them but one set successfully. We had a close look at Portage la Prairie and decided to walk around for safety's sake. We had thus far managed to keep ourselves dry and wanted to keep it that way. Our canoe weighed 68lbs so the portages were a little more challenging.
We departed from Champlain Park to Mattawa on our second trip out with the same canoe and managed to complete it in 2 hrs. It was a leisurely trip where we had a chance to enjoy the sights.
I was then off to Ottawa to purchase a new 17'Jensen Clipper from Jenda Sports. Mike & I were able to take her out for a test run on the Rideau River prior to purchasing and we were totally satisfied with the results. We couldn't find any Wenonah's for sale anywhere in Ontario but we had heard that Clipper made a comparable boat and although we would have preferred a Kevlar finish,we decided to purchase the fibreglass version and run with it. The manufacturer told us that our registration number indicated that our boat weighed 52lbs. A little heavier then we wanted but nonetheless happy with our purchase. We took it out on Constance Bay next to Mike's house the following day for a few hours of more practice and then returned to North Bay.
Our third time out saw us departing North Bay to Pine Lake in our new Clipper.We managed to make McPherson Drive in an hour and 23 minutes. The remainder of the trip was uneventful except for knee deep mud at one portage and getting lost on Pine Lake.
We were ready for our first race together as a team. Or were we?