Tiadaghton Elm Classic, PA
Ah, a K2 race with Kathy, my favorite! And the Tiadaghton is one of my favorite races because of the camaraderie. “Everyone” does Tiadaghton. The race organizers provide pizza for lunch in between races. There are morning races and afternoon races, youth races, C4 races, there is something for everyone at Tiadaghton. If you can’t find a race class here that you like, you just aren’t trying.
Kathy and I had an excellent start, right in the middle of the rolling wakes of other boats. Kathy did a great job steering the ICF K2 in the swirly water. We had a good buoy turn and picked our way upstream against the current. Most people were staying to the left, following the pro canoes. I told Kathy to cross much earlier, and head up the right side. I told her it would be faster than following the pro canoes. We both know an ICF boat requires at least 4 feet of water to run well, and the pro canoes require about 4 inches of water. Ok, maybe they need a little more than 4 inches, but those pro canoes were going upstream in a foot of water and I knew our ICF K2 could not do that. So we crossed, breaking from the pack.
The rule is always to not break from a pack unless you have a very good reason. But Kathy didn’t question me, she trusts my river reading. And I’m happy to say she put her trust in a place it should have been this time. When we came to the bend of the river where all the other boats were crossing over to our side, we were four boat lengths ahead of the pack we were with when we split off.
We continued upstream as we heard some pro C2’s, competing in the money race, coming up behind us. I had no idea who they were, but they were coming fast. I knew they’d want to be working the eddies close to shore, and Kathy and I didn’t want to be close to shore anyway because we wanted deeper water even going upstream. We moved out a bit from where we were, we faced more current that way, but I was sure we would be giving enough room for the pro racers to come through between us and the shore.
We felt a tap on our stern, one of the proboats had hit us. I looked right and saw the bows of two pro boats, fighting each other for the best line upstream. A narrow bridge abutment was ahead with strong current in the middle. Canoe paddles were clashing and they were about to clash with our wing paddles. Kathy and I could not move farther left because there was a huge gravel bar straight ahead and only three feet to our left. We would have ground out if we moved any farther left. Kathy turned around, and I saw that she was ready to cuss at the pro boats for running us into shallows and rocks. I said, “We can’t cuss them!” “Why not?” she asked. “Because that’s Ken Gerg and he isn’t doing it on purpose, the other boat is pushing him toward us and he’s the guy who went out into the flooded Sinnemahoning to bring our wrecked K2 up from the bottom of the river.” Kathy laughed and we clashed paddles and boats with Ken’s boat as everyone tried for the best spot at the bridge abutment.
Once the pro boats were past us, we had smooth sailing for the rest of the race. There were shallows around the islands, but Kathy steered awesomely and we got to use our swearwords to cuss the suckwater like we always do.
It was a good day.