WaveChaser Race #1, Half Moon Bay, October 22, 2005:

The forecast for race day was for flat conditions. A big (12-15 foot) northwest swell was on its way, but wasn't scheduled to start to arrive until 12 hours after race time. We had reports that there was thick morning fog in the days leading up to our race. Despite all the forecasts, you really don't know for sure what you'll get until you arrive at the race site on race day, so figuring out the best race course would have to be a race day decision.

Sure enough, upon arrival there was almost no swell or wind, but lots of fog. We figured out the race courses for the 2-mile novice race and 6-mile short courses first thing in the morning, but held off on the decision for the 10-mile long course to see of the fog would lift.

The short course race went off first. Seven OC1s and one kayak did two loops within the harbor with nearly the entire course being visible form the start/finish area.

Next came the short course...two and a half loops inside the harbor, then an out and back in the fog outside the jetty, followed by a half loop inside the harbor. The total race distance ended up being closer to 7 miles than our target of 6 miles. The flat conditions didn't separate the paddlers much, and we had a bunch of close finishes. The top three surfski paddlers (Jude Turczynski, Scott Kelly, and John Dixon) finished within 13 seconds of each other. Two seconds separated the top two OC1 men (Peter Hirschmann and Kyle Muin), and eight seconds separated the top two OC1 women (Connie Chin and Ellen Amistad).

It was nice to see that there was pretty much equal numbers of men versus women paddlers in the novice race and short course race. Novice race had four men and four women. The short course race had 22 men and 21 women.

The fog didn't clear in time for the long course race, but it did thin out just a bit. We opted to have the course do an out and back down the coast to the southeast. The shoreline would be visible to the paddlers during the entire race, so getting lost in the fog wouldn't be an issue. (Our normal Half Moon Bay long course takes paddlers the other direction, where to stay outside the shallow reefs we would be far enough from shore that visibility would be an issue.)

The 40 long course paddlers lined up and the race started. As we exited the harbor, we had a lead group of five surfskis (Dave Jensen, Alan Clark, Steve Kaspar, Carter Johnson, and Zsolt Szadovszki) with the rest of the field trailing behind. At the far turn around, Steve and Alan had dropped off a bit from the lead group. In the OC1 classes, Chris Cornejo was working hard chasing after Justin Banfield, and Judy Barker was even with Stephanie Siaris.

By the finish Zsolt opened up a small gap to come across the line first, and Carter edged out Dave in the sprint for second place. Chris was able to outpace Justin with 200 yards to go, and Stephanie had opened up nearly a minute lead over Judy.

Afterwards everyone had their race stories to tell while enjoying the food from the "WaveChaser Bar and Grille".

In an effort to get the overall results to everyone as soon as possible, we tried a new timing/results scheme for this race. In the past we've taken the boat numbers and times from the finish line and entered them into a laptop computer at the race site. Results are then available after the data entry and sorting is done in the computer. This race we put the boat numbers, times, and names on a whiteboard in real time as the paddlers crossed the finish line. When the last paddler crosses the finish line, the whiteboard is available for all to see. The computer data entry would happen back home after the race. Hope everyone liked our new method.

Thanks to everyone that came out to participate in our race. It's encouraging to note that we had 12 racers that had previously never been to WaveChaser race. Hope to see everyone back at WaveChaser race #2 in Richmond on November 12.

-Dave Jensen

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