We had a great day at Busse Woods for a Canoe-O. It was a little windy, but this helped to keep it cool, and added some extra challenge for the competitors. The direction and speed of the wind made for some interesting route choices around a few of the islands.
We had another great experience with ePunch on-site, but we had some problems analyzing the data. At this time, the standard results are official, but the extended results are known to be missing some data. This will be corrected as time allows. The software that we use to analyze the data is not as robust and easy to use as we'd like. Please have patience.
Once again, the fastest competitors on the long course took about 75 minutes to finish. The course was shorter than last year, but offered little advantage to splitting up and running or portaging the boat. Congratulations to the top two finishers, Milan Kratka and Kathryn Connolly, who each competed in a solo kayak. Their low profile may have offered some advantage in the wind and shallow water on the north part of the course.
The medium course finish times were shorter this year, as expected. Team Skizm took first place with a 6-minute lead over second place Brigada.
Only two teams competed on the short course, a lower-than-expected turn-out. Perhaps the late notice of the change in date had something to do with this.
We had many teams waiting for a half hour or more for rental boats to return. We had 15 boats for 25 teams who rented. Next year, we may have people make reservations for boats at specific times, so that they aren't waiting around as long. The club's cost for boat rental went up significantly this year (+20%), but we kept the cost the same for competitors. We'll probably need to increase the pass-along cost next year. Perhaps these two factors will encourage people to bring their own boats next year.
Thanks to everyone who came, and special thanks to Jeff Porter and Kathy Bullard for help at registration and with the boats and ePunch instruction. Thanks also to Nick Preys for control retrieval.
Michael & Christina Collins
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