2004-05-03 Jared Clausen in a Minnesota III

There were 10 tandems and Yuyudahn Hoppe paddled his solo racer this Monday night.  The weather was a bit cool and cloudy with a whitecap wind blowing in our faces on the way downstream.  It may have actually rained a little, but we didn’t notice.  We were all busy chasing each other’s canoe wakes and concentrating on reaching out and pushing down with our paddles.   A big blue heron flew downstream ahead of us and waited for us to catch up several times before giving up on us and circling back upstream.

Jared has been racing canoes for years.  He retired last year from being a firefighter at 50 years old and traveled out west.  He hadn’t been racing for a year or more and was going to be racing and practicing with us again this year.  Since we only had a few rookies show up tonight, there were several teams of experienced racers.  I got lucky and was paired up with Jared.  We had raced together once in Muscoda, Wisconsin 2 years ago and it was a disappointing race for both of us because it was a long paddle on a shallow sandy river for a heavy team like us.  I weighed 180 and he weighed more than that.  I knew I could learn some more from him about paddling.

We paddled in Jared’s 20 foot long Minnesota III canoe that he had pulled in the sides on so it was a bit narrower than they come from the factory.   He had made several modifications to make the canoe good for boundary waters tripping.  The gunnels were much higher than racing canoes and we didn’t even notice the high waves. With some effort on our part, it was able to keep up with the other teams in racing canoes and even passed a few.  Jared said that it wouldn’t pop up in the shallows though so we didn’t try doing that.

Jared told me that I was “pushing”.  That meant that I was forcing the canoe to the opposite side because I wasn’t paddling parallel to the centerline of the canoe.  That meant that Jared could stay on the same side longer before calling a “Hut!” but it also meant that we were fighting each other a bit and losing some efficiency.  Lee Jarpey had told me the same thing during our race last weekend.   So it was something I needed to work on.