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Out There Blackburn and Blue (Cont.) THE HALFWAY POINT of the Blackburn Challenge is the narrow channel between Cape Ann and Straitsmouth Island. I reached it at the two-hour mark, called my bow number to the committee boat that was anchored there, crammed a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup into my mouth, and rowed on. The second half of the race should have been much easier than the first. I was heading southwest now, with a tailwind and a following sea, and in theory I should have been able to surf merrily down the waves like the kayaks that were now passing me with annoying regularity. On rough days at home, I'd practiced the technique and actually gotten pretty good at it. But here, every time I'd get up to planing speed, the boat would invariably veer off course and stall. It felt sluggish and unresponsive, and I began to fear that I was somehow taking on water and might even be sinking. Two anxious miles later, having spied a pocket beach amid the rocks, I turned for shore. There, I removed the little cork drain plug in the bow and swung the boat up over my head, expecting a torrent of water to rush out. Nothing—bone-dry. Then I saw the problem: The boat's skeg, or fin, essential for maintaining a straight-line course, was flopping loosely in its groove on the stern. During a pre-race check that morning, it had seemed a bit wobbly, so I had pulled it out and reseated it with some "miracle adhesive." The miracle, I suppose, was that the skeg was still attached at all. What to do? It was either leave the boat in the dunes and make the long walk of shame back to Gloucester, squelching along in my reef socks, or get back in and claw away with my hamburgered hooks, like old Howard B. himself. "Well, all righty then," I said (I'd reached the point where I was talking to myself out loud), "if you're gonna put it that way ..." The Blackburn wasn't quite done with me. I struggled badly rounding the jetty at Eastern Point, the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. The tide was still ebbing furiously and the course lay once again upwind, and for a few minutes I amused some onlooking fisherman by not making any headway at all. Then, suddenly, I broke free of the current's clutches. The high steeples of Gloucester drew closer with every stroke, and as I came up under the lee of the land, the waves began to diminish. Flat water! I took a "power 20"—20 strokes at full throttle—and looked over my shoulder just in time to see the mountainous form of the Ocean Club, a 145-foot floating casino bound for international waters. Given the way my day had gone, I half expected something terrible to happen—another capsize or a broken oarlock. But I was a Blackburn veteran now, or almost. I turned to port, cranked smartly on the oars, and got the hell out of the ship's way. Five minutes later, I was dragging myself and my shell up on the beach in downtown Gloucester. Most of the early finishers were still there. Dana Gaines and Joe Holland, rowing a wooden double scull, had posted a 2:36, the fastest time of the day. They were followed by two six-man outrigger canoes, another double scull, and Greg Barton, the first solo finisher, just five minutes back in 2:41. One of the two smooth-stroking guys had won my category, sliding-seat racing singles, in a time of 3:05, but Kinley Gregg, the lone female sculler, had overtaken the other for second place in 3:09. My time was 4:04. True, I'd beaten a few of the fixed-seaters. But overall I'd finished 90th, and in my category I was DFL—dead last. I spent a few minutes pretending to tinker with my boat, then joined the circle where the other sliding-seaters were trading stories. When my turn came, the fat guy in the life preserver—he was still wearing it—looked at me and laughed. "Ah," he said. "Your first Blackburn."
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