Canoe Orienteering!

Today I took part, for the first time, in a canoe orienteering event put together by Aims Coney.  I was teamed up with Shawn Burke, a canoer who lives in Andover.  Having never done a Canoe-O event I was curious to see how this would go. Its been years since I've done even a regular O event.  Answer - It was a blast!!  Fortunately, Shawn has done a number of these events and had his canoe all set up with clipboards for maps, etc.  I was the bowman and therefore the designated runner.  In canoe-O there are wet controls, reachable from the water, and dry controls, reachable by running to them, all fairly easy to find.  In addition, there are places where you split and the runner goes for a couple controls by running and the other paddler paddles to a predetermined meeting spot.  One last big decision is whether to paddle the boat or portage it and run.

We got off to a good start with the first 3 wet controls.  For 4 I hopped out, bushwhacked straight up the hill and nailed the control, but veered left coming back down and lost a minute finding Shawn again.  We opted to paddle the next couple controls, but perhaps should have done a long portage for 6, at the far end of the course, clearly faster than paddling it, but a long way to run with the boat. We made another mistake by not reading the directions and got a couple controls out of sequence going upstream.  We did a couple splits on the way downstream toward the finish where I ran and Shawn paddled, meeting up successfully, and found the last control, 14, pulled the boat out and portaged it a few hundred yards to the finish rather than paddle.  All in all, a decent run.  The winners must have run the really long portage because they stomped us but we were in 2nd until we learned that we were supposed to get all the controls in order.  Oooopsssssy!  Remember, READ THE DIRECTIONS!!!  However, we had some good fun, a long, varied workout, worked well together and didn't make any big mistakes, so all in all, a good, fun day!  If you are looking for a fun way to get a different sort of workout in, try it!