Au Sable, Oh! Au Sable
Or: Why I Didn't End Up Participating In The World's
Most Famous Canoeing Marathon Race
by
H. Kent Craig
The Time: the late 1980's ~ early 1990's
The Places: Raleigh, NC ~ Au Sable River, Michigan
I'm not exactly sure how I developed a very modest but
evidently regional and national reputation of being a
marathon canoe paddler. I never entered any canoe races of
any kind, and other than publishing some canoe trip reports
in The Paddler (the newsletter of the Carolina Canoe
Club) about some longer stretches of North Carolina
flatwater, which I published as strictly information-only
pieces for other flatwater paddlers, never sought any
publicity a'tall for my long-ish canoeing daytrips.
Which is why that mysterious phone call from a very nice
lady, her name was Phyllis if I remember correctly, way
back in 1988 or 1989 or maybe even 1990 (I honestly don't
remember the year), who was on the organizing committee for
the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon really intrigued me,
really intrigued me. She asked if I had ever heard
of the Au Sable Canoe Marathon that took place annually in
lower
Michigan, and I replied honestly that I hadn't. She went on
to tell me bits and pieces about it, and then asked me
point-blank if I would consider becoming a contestant in
it. Again, just being honest, I replied that I really
couldn't afford to take the time of from work, not spend
two days driving up and two days back plus basically two
days non-stop paddling during the actual race, plus all the
associated costs. She was blunt in then asking me "what if
we could get you a full sponsorship...fly you up here,
arrange for you to have a first-class bowman, take care of
all your hotel and per diem, give you a rental car, take
care of all your needs while you're up here...you could do
it over a three-day weekend, easy...whaddya' say?"
I couldn't hardly believe what I was hearing. Thinking
someone was playing a not-too-bright practical joke on me,
I asked what airport I'd be flying into and on what
airline, what hotel I'd be staying at, who would be
sponsoring myself/my canoe/my team, on and on and on.
Within twenty minutes, she had me convinced that the offer
was legit. Still, I couldn't help but wonder aloud, how she
found me, why she was really calling me, etc. Her
answers were, in a nutshell, that in the past couple of
years, I had developed a reputation as a world-class
flatwater marathoner, something that still flabbergasts me
to this very day, because I had never sought any publicity
for my hobby of doing 30-40-river-mile canoeing daytrips.
Still in polite disbelief, I asked her to send me a package
of information and entry booklet and such for the upcoming
Au Sable Canoe Marathon, and I'd look it over, give it
serious consideration, then get back to her.
When the 2" thick package of information and such came in
the mail three or four days later, the one HUGE immediate
thing which caught my eye was the distance of the race
which was prominently mentioned on the cover, the given
distance being listed as 240 miles. Then, my heart sunk for
a second before I broke out verbally laughing when I saw
the winning time for the winner of the previous year's
race, that time being 18 hours and some odd minutes.
Snicker, snicker, guffaw, guffaw. Why, you may ask?
Because of the physics underlying hydraulics and canoe
hulls. Even the delta-shaped Olympic-style open canoes, the
fastest human-powered-by-paddle watercraft in the world,
can only hit a maximum speed of seven miles per hour and
then only for short bursts, usually averaging a sustained
speed of slightly less than that, around 6.7-6.8 MPH. Do
the math, my friends. If the Au Sable river on which the Au
Sable Canoe Marathon is run is supposed to be 240 miles in
length, and the winning time for a two-man OC-2 racing
canoe is supposed to be 18 hours and change, that means the
winning team would have to keep up a hullspeed of slightly
over 13 MPH, or double that of what the laws of physics and
the ghost of Sir Isaac Newton would allow. Blustering
laugh, sinal sucking snicker. And when you allow extra time
for the six or so portages around dams and such on the Au
Sable which were part of the race, that can't be the facts,
Jacque.
Almost sheepishly, not wanting to make waves pardon the
pun, seriously not wanting to cause an unnecessary stir,
somewhat reluctantly I called Phyllis, and with timid
voice, asked about the "official" race length of 240 miles.
She replied that, no, no one had ever accurately measured
the length of the river, but that no one would be willing
to pay surveyors to measure the length more precisely. I
then explained my problematic knowledge of potential canoe
hull speeds and why, unless Moses was the winning team's
bowman last year and somehow was parting the waters in
front of their canoe to reduce friction drag on the hull,
uh-uh, no way Josey, you couldn't paddle a canoe that far
in that short amount of time.
Just trying to be helpful, and out of sincere curiosity, I
told her that hiring surveyors to ascertain the true
distance wasn't needed, and asked if anyone had ever set
down either with a series of county highway maps or a full
set of USGS topographical maps, and run a set of dividers
down the middle of river as it was shown on the maps, to
create an accurate mileage estimate. God bless her honesty,
she replied "I have no clue as to what you're talking
about". I then gave her the five-minute explanation of how
to accurately determine the distance between any two given
points on a river using standard maps (read my article at
this site
Basic Of River Navigation Via
Canoe , if you're curious about learning how to do so),
and suggested that for honesty's sake and the potential
safety of the participants, she or someone on the race
committee should do an accurate mileage reading of the
length of the river.
I didn't hear a peep from her for about a week, and the
race was now just two weeks away. I was positive I had shot
myself in the foot by bringing up to question in the
long-held belief that the race was actually double the
length that it was, was probably incorrect by a factor of
two or more. I was so sure that, in the name of accuracy
and physics and canoeing common sense, that I had made
angry enough people to where all the promises of a full
sponsorship up there and all would be pulled out from under
me like a cheap rug greased with talcum powder. And, I was
right on in making those assumptions.
Phyllis was extremely, extremely apologetic when she
called. She said that yes, I was correct about the actual
river mileage, that it was slightly less than half of what
had been common belief spouted so often for decades that it
had come to be accepted as fact of the length being 240
miles, when in reality it was around 116 or 117 or so. And
yes, my pointing that fact out had made a whole bunch of
people very angry at me, and yes, the promises of a fully
sponsored race participation had been withdrawn. She still
urged me to come up and participate at my own expense, but
I told her politely "no, thanks, Phyllis", that after
making so many so irritated with me so quickly that there
might a noose-maker somewhere on the upper Michigan
peninsula weaving me a rope necktie with my name on it
because of all the harmless and unintentional fuss I had
created, and I really didn't feel like becoming a DNF
listing because of lack of oxygen to my brain caused by a
vertical twine swing. She giggled, and said she understood.
And the moral of the story? I don't know if there really is
one. If I had to draw a conclusion of a lesson learned from
the experience of how I almost but not quite ended up
participating in the Au Sable Canoe Marathon all those
years ago, it would have to be that there's a fine line
between being a knowledgeable person, a smart canoeist, and
a smart ass, and when knowledge as expressed skepticism
slaughters a long-held sacred cow belief, now matter how
innocent one's motives are, one is usually justly or
unjustly branded as a smart ass. But hey, even all these
years later, physics is still physics, and hull
speed limits still haven't been repealed by God yet!
Addendum
Date: 14 Jan 1999 21:06:07 GMT
To: kent@hkentcraig.com
From: dfjensen@nospam.net (DFJensen)
Subject: Re: Au Sable, Oh! Au Sable
Nice story.
More info about the race can be found at:
http://www.ausablecanoemarathon.org
Dave Jensen
(2 time Au Sable River Canoe Marathon finisher)
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