Congratulations are in order for two NSPN paddlers who came in first in their divisions in the Blackburn Challenge on Saturday: Matt and Lisa! Congrats! Sure was a hot day for a long paddle!

pru

Congratulation to you both - hard work does pay off sometimes.

Les

Hi, guys, thanks! Hard to take any credit for being #1 of 1, though. We need to get some more ladies into this race. I think the statistics were something like 73 of the participants were women, out of 370 or so.

Matt, awesome - you do us proud!

-Lisa

(PS for the record I think Caroline Pierre was mis-registered as HPK. She should have taken FSK, really. But 2nd in HPK with an FSK boat is pretty impressive, too!)

Yes, congratulations to both Matt and Lisa. Matt, that was a fantastic time for a SK class boat. I think that you would have been in the top three for the FSK class if you were paddling an Epic or similar fast kayak.

In case you’re wondering about what happened to me (my time was over one-half hour longer than last year), I had a little transmission problem. My broken leg started to cramp in Ipswich Bay and I stopped there for about five minutes to work it out. Then it happened again in the Straitsmouth cut. After about 10 minutes I was about to call for help when someone yelled out to me to just take it easy and see if I could finish on my own. I did finish and I’m happy that I did. It was my 14’th Blackburn Challenge (even though it was my slowest ever).

-- Leon

Hey Matt,

I forgot to mention that I took a pretty decent pix of you holding up your medal. Email me if you want it

leon dot g at verizon dot net

I didn't want to post it here for obvious privacy concerns.

-- Leon

I didn't want to post it here for obvious privacy concerns.

Good sentiment, but it looks like Matt has already gone viral on surfskiracing.org.

Looks like a happy camper to me! Are we going to lose you to the hpk guys, Matt?

Lisa

Congratulations !!!

Great job!

Congratulations to all three of you. It's so impressive to even do the 20 miles! You are an inspiration!

Janice

Good Morning Gloucester has posted time-lapse and video coverage of the race:

2012 Blackburn Challenge timelapse video/coverage at bit.ly/7yGKTS

Aw, shucks, guys, thanks! *blush* Wow, what a great race -- I think I could have done pretty well in the beautiful Merganser, but Tucker offered up his Surge and man, I'm sure glad he did! What a great boat! I couldn't believe the splits I was getting from Folly Cove to Straitsmouth -- six or seven in a row were less than 9:30/mile -- the Surge literally said "hey, if you don't mind, I'd like to ride these little swells coming along here, oh and how about that boat wake, oh yeah, and let's surf that chop, and..." -- the boat just seemed to take advantage of every little bit of energy coming our way.

Congrats Lisa and Leon for your races as well -- Leon, I can't even imagine what paddling with a broken leg must have been like -- you are hardcore!!!

The HPK guys are working me pretty hard to jump onto a ski -- I have to admit I'm a bit torn -- they look like so much fun! Maybe I'll give one a shot at the Nahant Bay Race on August 18th (http://www.surfskiracing.com/nahant-bay-race) -- the race is open to all paddlers, so please consider it -- I think the course last year was around 9 miles long and I was one of two or three SK'ers.

That said my heart is still with my kayak, so you can bet I'll be hanging around and going on trips with you all for a long time

>>Leon, I can't even imagine what paddling with a broken leg must have been like -- you are hardcore!!!

Or perhaps I'm just hard headed!

>>Nahant Bay Race on August 18th (http://www.surfskira...nahant-bay-race) -- the race is open to all paddlers, so please consider it -- I think the course last year was around 9 miles long and I was one of two or three SK'ers.

Yes, I was one of those sea kayaks. I even beat you by about 2.5 minutes and I'm sure that'll never happen again! I think I'll do the race again this year, though it's only a few days before my operation. Do you think they'll give me a waiver on the Le Mans-style finish ...I can barely walk now, let alone run to the finish line?

Mike's a pretty understanding guy -- I'm sure he'd be willing to swap the finish for a bit of additional elapsed time