History of the Tsunami Rangers Sea Kayak Race – Part 2

Editor’s Note: In 1989 the race did not take place at Rodeo Beach. TR John Lull, who was not present and did not race, wrote this summary of what did not happen in 1989 and published his report in the July issue of Bay Currents. This is the story of the race that never happened.

IT NEVER HAPPENED
by John Lull
(Bay Currents; July, 1989, vol. 4, no. 7, p. 3)

For lack of liability insurance a lot failed to happen on Sunday, June 4th. The Golden Gate Kayak Meet did not start out with a flash of lightning and roar of thunder at Rodeo Beach. Local wave warriors and spectators did not show up and Force 10 paddlers did not fail to show.

In the singles category, John “Killer” Weed did not win the main race, Mitchell Powers
did not come in second, and John Lull did not catch Eric Soares in the skyscraper waves at Pt.
Bonita on the return leg and beat him by 30 seconds to the finish, taking 3rd place.

Jim Kakuk didn’t win the surf slalom and the team of John Holland and Walter Weed did not win the doubles, beating out Creig Hoyt and John Hale. The intrepid BASK team of Lull-Dixon-Jeppeson did not get a great lead in the surf relay, only to lose by a narrow margin to the Tsunami Ranger team of Kakuk-Powers-Soares. In said relay, John Dixon did not do an Eskimo roll-reverse endo (aka vertical reverse corkscrew maneuver), bending a rudder.

John Jeppeson did not nearly slice off a finger trying to fix the #!*@ rudder, thereby losing valuable seconds and trailing blood all through the surf zone, attracting great white sharks. (There is an unverified rumor that two X-1 Rocket boats were flipped over in the wake of a Coaster as it powered out through the surf.)

Haruo Hasegawa, the kamikaze wave warrior, did not get trashed a dozen times in the surf, only to come up smiling each time. The spectators did not cheer everyone on with unsurpassed enthusiasm and the great party afterwards at Craig Hoyt’s never happened either.

Why didn’t any of this happen? Because the Herberts told us it would be too dangerous (and of course they are concerned for our safety). No, nothing happened on June 4th, not unless you were one of the lucky few to attend the Golden Gate Kayak Meet, one of the greatest kayaking non-events of the year.

Sounds pretty gnarly. Good thing it NEVER HAPPENED! Stay tuned for more excitement next week with Part Three of The History of the Tsunami Rangers Sea Kayak Race, and if you want to find out more about Herberts, click here. Thanks for reading and happy paddling!

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