Rowing in the Blackburn Challenge

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Outside Magazine, July 2004

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Out There
Blackburn and Blue
How I honored tradition by taking a vicious beating in the East's toughest rowing race

By Rob Buchanan


	(Digital Stock)

LET ME JUST SAY RIGHT OFF THE BAT that I didn't have any illusions about doing well in the Blackburn Challenge. Or at least not that many. After all, the Blackburn, held each year in mid-July, is the longest open-water race on the East Coast, a 23-mile marathon circumnavigating Cape Ann, the rocky thumb of Massachusetts that juts out into the Atlantic north of Boston. While the beginning and end of the course are in protected waters, the bulk of it—about 20 miles—is in open sea, where anything can happen. Tough people row the Blackburn, and not all of them finish it. What kind of threat was I, a guy from New York who'd rowed crew in college but now got out just a few times a month on the placid waters around Shelter Island?

Not long after arriving in the old fishing port of Gloucester, I stumbled on the Crow's Nest, the grungy locals' bar immortalized in The Perfect Storm. I was tempted to go in for a beer but didn't, fearing the inevitable conversation: "Did you say Shelter Island?" "Actually, I live in Greenport, but it's near Shelter Island, you know, out on the East End of Long Island." "Hey, boys, whoo-whee, we got somebody here from Shelter Island!"

Down at the Gloucester High parking lot, launch site for the Blackburn, hard-bitten scullers and paddlers were unloading battered shells and kayaks from their cartops, all the while staring anxiously at the sky. Low, gray clouds were streaming in from the northeast, and the forecast was calling for a major low to pass overhead during the night.

The first guy I talked to was Dana Gaines, 46, a Blackburn veteran who, rowing a two-man shell in 2001, had set the course record of two hours 21 minutes. "I'd say out of ten years, seven are pretty nice, two are bad, and one is awful," he said when I asked him about the conditions. "Tomorrow'll probably be one of the bad."

As more waves broke, I felt a growing SENSE OF ALARM: I was soaked, barely moving, and STILL A GOOD 19 or 20 MILES from the finish line.

But the next morning, things seemed OK. Though the wind was blowing out of the north-northeast, the Annisquam River, whose snaking channel we would follow for the first two miles of the course, looked reassuringly flat. The race was set to go off at 7:30, shortly after high tide, the idea being to ride the ebb north to Ipswich Bay and then on to Halibut Point, at the northern tip of the Cape Ann peninsula. After a sweeping turn back to the south, we'd follow the rocky coastline all the way to Eastern Point, at the head of Gloucester Harbor. From there it was a short jog north to the finish line, off Gloucester's main beach.

By the time I launched, there were about 150 people on the water, split into two main camps—backward-facing rowers and forward-facing paddlers. Eyeing one another warily, we exchanged cursory nods and slowly grouped ourselves into smaller subcategories. The rowing contingent went first, led by four venerable Banks dories, the traditional high-ended, flat-bottomed boats emblematic of Yankee seafaring. After that, at five-minute intervals, came waves of increasingly speedy fixed-seat rowing craft—home-built plywood skiffs, rugged surf boats, fragile wherries, multi-oared gigs. Last among the rowers was my category: sliding-seat racing singles—skinny, tippy fiberglass shells nearly as long and light as those rowed in the Olympics.

As the one-minute warning sounded, I felt an unexpected surge of confidence. True, there were two fast, smooth-stroking guys who were probably out of my league. But the rest of the field of seven looked vulnerable. One rower about my age (45) was clearly fit, but his boat was a couple of feet shorter than my 24-foot one, and thus theoretically slower. There was an aging graybeard (he would wilt down the stretch, I figured), a petite, if determined-looking, woman, and a fat guy in a life preserver. The dorky vest, I knew, would prevent him from bringing his oars all the way into his body, and thus from completing anything close to a full stroke. Plus, it looked ridiculous—nobody rows in a life preserver.

So it was that, as the starter barked out a few final commands, I mentally assigned myself a podium finish. Not bad for my first stab at the Blackburn!

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Contributing editor Rob Buchanan wrote about Antarctica in November 2001.

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