What a difference a year makes…
We arrived at Seaward Park in Seattle early Saturday morning to meet up with Chuck Patterson and Karen Wrenn to see how their Paddle with a Pro class was doing. The weather was amazing with clear skies, calm winds and the air temperature hovering around 78 degrees. Before long we were unloading boards and beginning to set up the site for tomorrows race, Barrett Tester and Kelly French arrived and began working with Dan Eberhart and Jeff Underwood on logistics, location of the finish line and buoy locations.
The conversations kept going back to the same thing, the amazing weather with record temperatures and the number of days the sun had been shinning. The weather forecast was predicting almost 90-degree temperatures for race day. The SUP Gods were surely smiling down on us and tomorrow was looking like it was going to be a fantastic day.
Race Day:
We woke up Sunday to what was maybe the best day of weather in an 8-day run of sunshine in Seattle. It looked like the weather men were right on and we were going to have a stellar day for the race.
We rolled into the event site around 7:00 am and finished rolling out our gear while the event staff and volunteers showed up and began getting things ready. Vendors were setting up tents racers started arriving and before long what was a deserted park a few hours earlier now looked like a small rock concert that was about to take place. We were hoping for a 9:00 am sharp start to the 13-mile race but do the overwhelming number of beach entrants the start was pushed back almost 45 minutes. Finally the last person was signed up and everyone gathered for race instructions and a few words about the significance of the day and a remembrance of those we lost on September 11th ten years ago to the day.
Soon everyone started heading out to the starting line, which was about 100 plus yards off shore. Kelly French the beach marshal paddled out on a board with a bullhorn and tried his best to get the racers all lined up for the start. After a few attempts at calling some racers into place on the line the horn blew and all 209 racers were off for the mad 13-mile dash around Mercer Island. It wasn’t long before the last racer disappeared around the corner. It would be another 2 hours plus before we would see anyone rounding the other corner of the island heading to the finish line.
We started rounding up the groms for what I think is the one of the highlights of the day the Kids Race. The kids are the future of the sport and it’s great to see the kids category growing at such a fast pace. 23 enthusiastic kids of all ages took part in the race.
Around 1 hour 45 minutes into the Elite race we saw some racers in the distance starting to round Mercer Island. Upon further inspection we could see it was Thomas Maximus the Unlimited class winner from last year coming in first again. Behind Thomas was local unlimited paddler Beau Whitehead followed by our event promoter/founder Dan Eberhardt. The next group to finish was the 14’ class led by Brian Haag 1st place, Cyril Burguiere 2nd place and in third place was Mike Darbyshire.
The 12’-6” class was led by Riviera’s Brandon Rambo 1st place, Blake Hanley 2nd place and 3rd place going to Greg Gilbert.
The over all women’s winner on a 14’ was Bend Oregon’s own Karen Wrenn.
Next up was the 3.5-mile fun race, which is a great event to do if you want to see how you would like racing or if you just want an excuse to get out and paddle and visit with your friends. 95 people lined up and decided to paddle, have fun and enjoy an incredible fall day on the water in the North West.
Team relay was the last event of the day and next to the kid’s race is probably the most fun to watch.
We would like to thank Dan Eberhardt, Jeff Underwood, REI, Barrett Tester, Kelly French and all the many volunteers who made this year’s event such a huge success.
Men
Thomas Maximus Shahinian UL 2:04:48
Beau Whitehead UL 2:11:23
Dan Eberhardt UL 2:18:50
Brian Haag 14, 2:21:07
Cyril Burguiere 14, 2:22:30
Mike Darbyshire 14, 2:22:53
Brandon Rambo 12.6, 2:23:38
Blake Hanley 12.6, 2:32:19
Greg Gilbert 12.6, 2:37:34
Women
Karen Wrenn 14, 2;23:47
Shannon Bell 12.6, 2:39:08
Terri Plunkett 12.6, 2:45:49
Jaime Donnelly 12.6, 2:52:42
