We’ve got three new members to the club this Fall — one adult, two youth. With the addition this summer of a club member from the late 80s and early 90s returning to paddle, plus our second and third year paddlers, we have a steady group of paddlers showing up to our off-season practices now. Once we lost our afternoon daylight, we have moved to club workouts being only on Sunday mornings, with advanced racers getting in additional water workouts on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Our club strongly encourages youth athletes to take part in multiple sports and wants to make sure we aren’t meeting at times that prevent doing so. The best athletes are ones that are well rounded.
A few weeks ago we had a strong windstorm blow through the area. The club’s trailer, while parked in a secure dry storage facility, got blown into the boat and trailer stored next to us. Thankfully, neither our club boats or trailer, nor our neighbor’s boat were damaged and the Harbor Master gave us a heads up about the problem so that we could secure our trailer better. Coaches came to the rescue and tied the trailer to the fence of the storage area and removed 5 boats from the top of the trailer. We’ve decided to end the use of the top rung of the trailer permanently and hope that in the next such wind event, the trailer won’t need to be lashed down or at least won’t be likely to tip over. While we hate to do so, a couple of the 30+ year old homemade C-1s were cut up and taken to the dump. We have other C-1s and when the club needs more, we’ll get new or at least new ones for our paddlers to use.
The C-2 purchased from Washington Canoe Club at the Nationals in August got repairs and equipment improvements made to it. WIth the addition of a canoe paddler from Hungary to our club, we will hopefully have this boat on the water often and it will be an excellent boat for a beginning canoe paddlers, too.
