The Pacific Northwest has been coming alive this paddling season with the widespread introduction of the unlimited canoes that are now becoming more common at each race.
The 19 PNW-ORCA clubs and our Canadian friends to the north have seen a resurgence of excitement about learning a newer, more precise paddling discipline, and I can safely say that the stoke level is pretty high!
May and June saw our paddlers intermixed in a variety of long distance and sprint races. The long distance paddlers found themselves racing in Frenchman’s Bar for the Rusty Iron Race, Jericho, British Columbia for the Jericho Iron, and Burnaby, British Columbia for the Lotus Iron Race.
The sprinters stayed a bit more local to the greater Seattle area and were working hard to make sure they put in qualifying times for the 2018 World Sprints that will be held in Tahiti.
Looking forward, we have a busy July and August ahead of us. The Gorge has already been rocking with massive windy days making for some epic downwind conditions. The Gorge Iron race will be held on July 15th followed by a week of downwind surfing and the Gorge Downwind Champs held in Hood River, OR. The end of July will find paddlers up in the Seattle area racing at da Grind, in Bellingham at the Bellingham Bay Classic and finally getting ourselves ready to travel to Hawai’i for the Queen’s race, Pailolo and Moloka’i.
See ya on the water, Tyler Irwin
