A friend of mine since childhood started building woodstrip canoes when he was in high school, and continues to this day, more than 50 years later as a source of his primary income. He has raced (and won) the Adirondack 90 mile canoe classic several times. I live and work(ed) not far from the race route. Friends of mine at work who were white water kayakers and flat water canoers, we are all engineers, decided to have Pat build a woodstrip "war canoe" canoe (common name later changed to "voyageur canoe") to race in the '90" and wanted to know if I would like to be a partner in the project. I accepted and for some reason as the oldest, ended up as bow paddler. We did well, winning first place the first 2-3 years and regularly placed 2nd or 3rd after that when younger competition showed up. And I loved it.
My wife, not a physically competitive soul herself, participated by being our "pit crew" along with parents of the younger team members, driving our transport truck and setting up camp at the designated race campgrounds each night while we raced.
The 90 miler race director was one of the originating leaders of an Adirondack BSA trek guide leadership program, along with NYSDEC Forest Rangers to develop and run an annual 8 day program, largely based on LNT, to train adults (typically, but not all college age) to work summers at Adirondack BSA camps leading week long high adventure canoe and backpack wilderness treks. I was invited early on to be one of the permanent program instructor staff, specializing in canoeing, backcountry land navigation, and camp meals (home dehydrated and commercially prepared). I've done so every year for the past 30 years.
So began my race and canoe tripping career. A few years into it, eventually my younger voyageur team members moved on, leaving me to continue paddling solo or C2 in the 90 and other area races for a few years. At one of those I encountered a fellow voyageur canoe racer and GRB woodstrip boat owner who we had raced against several times. Known to my team only as "straw hat guy" (SHG), because he always wore an Amish style straw hat while paddling from the stern of his voyageur. Although not Amish himself, he lives deep within northern NY Amish country. He had raced in the 440 mile Yukon River Quest the previous year (2007) and was looking to build a crew to go back the next summer. I was invited to join, but of course would have to check with my family first! With very little convincing my wife agreed and joined us with her pit crew duties in the Yukon Territory.
"Straw Hat Guy" does not fly, so it was perfect that he drive his voyageur to Whitehorse. As the navigation expert, I set forth for months to study the river maps and historic resources to develop the best and fastest route on the YRQ race. With that we finished fourth out of 100 race starters, only behind fast sea kayaks.
It was announced in 2008 that in 2009 there would be the first ever Yukon 1000 mile race. The same team was roaring to go. More months of river study on my part in the navigation complexities of the Yukon Flats among hundreds of islands and gravel shoals, based on my recently gained YRQ experience. I came up with nearly 800 GPS waypoints to carve us around obstacles and river bends while remaining in the average highest average 6mph current. I also home dehydrated all of the main breakfast and dinner meals for the entire team. One quirky race rule requirement for that year only was to have onboard 20 Kg (that's 44 pounds!) of food for each paddler (water weight to rehydrate not included -do the math for 6-7 paddlers), planned for potentially 2 weeks of race plus one week of emergency backup on the river. In the end we only ate 1/4 of the total I had prepared during our six day race to the finish and no one went hungry or lost weight.
Our 90 miler race director friend was also planning to paddle a C2 in this race. we found him at the river bank team meeting, chatting on the phone with his partner who was still back home in NY in emergency surgery. We were not about to leave Brian stranded there alone. As it happens, a very large carbon fiber voyageur canoe from Texas was available for rent so we spent a day cleaning and reconfiguring it for our now 7 paddlers. A bit over six days after race start we finished in second place about an hour behind a tandem sea kayak (our encounter with them on the river is another long and nasty story), but technically we finished in first place due to the accumulation of 9 hours of race rules penalty violations by the paddlers of that kayak.
My team took a break from the Yukon in 2010, while the same SHG owned GRB built voyageur woodstrip canoe was rented by another NY team to race the Y1K. I was recruited to join in with that team, being offered an all expense paid trip for all to the Yukon paid by one well to do esoteric eccentric team member, but after seeing how one practice training event was run, I decided I did not like the dynamics of that team, so I declined to join, which was proven out as a wise decision during their poor performance in their actual Y1K race. i may have killed one of them if I had gone.
With the majority of my original team, a partial new team was formed and trained for a return to the Y1K in 2011. I spent more time revising and renewing my older GPS route, based on what I had learned from earlier direct experience, and from SPOT online tracking of other fastest teams in previous years. We finished top of our class in that race as well.
Although I much prefer the 1000 mileY1K race over the YRQ (veterans of the 1000 mile Y1K get to call the much shorter 440 mile YRQ "the sprint"), there is so much more involved in coordination and $$$ with the Y1K that we decided to do the YRQ again in 2013 and again in 2017, paddling in the first ever allowed C4 canoe class in that race. At age 71, I say I am not finished with the Yukon quite yet, but my wife has other thoughts on the matter
. Meanwhile, this past season I completed my 25th consecutive 90 miler canoe race, and continue with other annual regional races.
I credit paddle training and canoe racing and the desire to get outdoors and to do well and to instruct with my continued good health at my now advancing age. I am also a senior Search and Rescue certified crew boss and SAR instructor with the NY State Federation of SAR Teams and still participate in deep woods backcountry search incident efforts. I recently certified in state training in swift/flood water and ice water rescue, and was thankful to be able to easily keep up with my much younger classmates.
