Curley Memorial Race, Oscoda, MI
“Give me a rudder,” came the command from the stern. Odd, I thought, that there are rudders for canoes. When in a solo kayak, to rudder means put your paddle blade in the water behind you, very close to the boat, so as to turn the boat. I never heard of such a thing in the bow of a canoe, but my job was to follow the instructions of my sternman, and so I ruddered, exactly as I would in a kayak. This caused two things to happen simultaneously, my sternman gently yelled “No, no, no, no” and everyone on shore cracked up laughing.
Earlier in the year I’d met John Hazel while paddling on the Silver River in Florida. I let him borrow my outrigger canoe in exchange for him being my pit crew for the General Clinton. While at the Clinton we discussed our desire to do the AuSable Canoe Marathon. I said I’d love to do it, but I didn’t know anyone who would take on a novice canoe paddler for such a race. He volunteered. The Curly Memorial Race was our first time to race in a canoe together, a sleek brand new Crozier built V1-Pro. We clearly had some communication problems to work out, and I clearly needed to learn canoe commands. I had gone out to Michigan earlyfor that exact purpose.
The Curley Memorial Race is held on the last 20 or so miles of the AuSable course. When we registered for the race we were given two large stickers to put on the boat. The stickers were the name of one of the sponsors. “Sunny Buns.” I put the three foot long, 8” high stickers on each side of the boat right where John sat in the stern, it still makes me laugh to think about it.
After my initial mishap of not knowing what a canoe rudder was (turns out I knew the command as something like a “post” that Judy Jeanes had taught me last year), things went pretty good for us. We started in the “Expert II” class, the class of pro boats that is for beginners. This is where we belonged, John has experience in a pro C2, but I had next to none. As an east coast paddler, the thing that most amazed me at this race was that there were over 80 pro boats lined up. Of the 80, the 11 or so that were in the beginner class went first, the other 70some pro boats started 10 minutes after us.
We had to sprint out into a dam pond (I kept calling it a lake, but was corrected - in Michigan they called are called dam ponds), turn around a buoy, sprint back to the dam, portage the dam, and then continue on our way on the AuSable River.
We didn’t do too badly on the sprint, as in, we weren’t dead last, although we were close. Our portage was atrocious, due to my total lack of experience in getting out of a canoe at a dam where you have to stand up in the canoe and pull yourself up on the retaining wall to get out. We could see that the spectators didn’t hold out much hope for us, but we didn’t care. We were in this to learn if we could work together as a team in a canoe.
After gingerly walking the canoe down a set of steep steps, we realized the expert racers were now coming to the dam and portaging. We did our best to stay out of the way and we jumped in the canoe during a small window of opportunity when there was a short break between expert racers running down the hill and into the water.
After that things got a lot easier, and a lot more humorous. There is a spot in the river that the locals call “three pipes.” John, being familiar with the river, told me that when we saw three pipes that we would be very close to the end. Four or five times he told me, “Thee pipes is right around this bend.” I teased him relentlessly that either someone moved the pipes or he had no idea where he was.
We finished next to last. We didn’t care. We finished as much more of a team than when we started, we were learning, we had fun, and I won’t ever forget what a canoe bow rudder is.
It was a good day.