Reef Madness, 2009 – by Anders Landin

Editor’s Note: For various reasons, 2005 was the last official Tsunami Ranger Sea Gypsy Race, but the very next year the race returned as Reef Madness. As Eric wrote in his book, Confessions of a Wave Warrior, “an anonymous consortium of brave and cunning paddlers on the San Mateo coast resurrected the race, minus the media hype”, and it ran for another 10 years. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to paddle in this infamous race, especially on a “sporty” day, Anders Landin gives you an excellent idea. Anders wrote a blow by blow account of his experience racing in the 2009 event, and we’re so glad he did! Also, props to cinematographer Andy Cominos, who took most of the photos, especially the fab head shots! The race results appear at the bottom of the article. 

Impressions From the 2009 Reef Madness Race

As you may have seen Ed Anderson announce at one of the recent BASK meetings, this year’s Reef Madness race happened last Sunday. Reef Madness is an annual ‘extreme’ sea kayak race that continues the now 24-year tradition of the Tsunami Rangers’ Sea Gypsy race. The race starts at Miramar beach in Half Moon Bay, well-known for its dumpy shore break.

The course goes out around Pillar Point, forcing the paddlers to negotiate the treacherous waters at Maverick’s infamous big-wave surf break and the rocky Boneyard that lies inside it, including named rocks such as Sail Rock and Mushroom Rock. The paddlers are then required to land north of Pillar Point (Ross’s Cove), grab some sand in the hand, and then return the same way back to Miramar beach.

This year the conditions were relatively challenging. When I checked stormsurf.com  just before carrying my kayak to the starting area, the Half Moon Bay buoy reported an 8′ swell, with significant spectral components up to 14 seconds. This means that there were long, powerful waves moving fast and carrying very large amounts of water with every wave. The tide was low and falling, with a low of 0.5′ a little over an hour after the start.

A couple of hours before the start, I walked up to the bluff north of Pillar Point to scout the approach to Ross’s. A group of nine board surfers were sitting far outside, waiting for the bigger sets. They were catching very nice, long rides whenever the big sets were coming in. Even in the big sets, I could see a path out to deep water that didn’t close out at all during the 10-15 minutes I was watching. Using this deeper path required one to continue north quite far after passing Pillar Point, and then cutting back in to the beach.

There is an offshore underwater reef which starts at Pillar Point and reaches south for about a mile. I was standing on the street in Miramar overlooking the ocean, talking race strategy with my friend Marcus Choy. We could see wide white sections close out over the reef almost two miles away whenever the bigger wave sets were coming in. While this helped to take the brunt off the bigger waves close to the beach, we also knew we would have to pass through this impact zone at the reef once we got there.

As it turned out, there were no big sets immediately after the start, and I’m not aware of anyone having problems making it off the beach to the deeper water outside, but I must admit I didn’t pay much attention to the others, as my adrenaline had started pumping – I was racing. I hung back for a brief moment, waiting for a smaller wave to break, and then applied full power to punch through the foam pile and clear the break zone.

I was paddling my trusty old NDK Greenlander Pro. It’s a hard-chined kayak with almost no rocker. It is 17′ 10″ long, and 21″ wide. This is the boat I choose when I need to go reasonably fast, but still be able to handle serious conditions.  The majority of the field was parallel to me on my left side while two kayaks, Michael Powers and Scott Becklund in their Tsunami X-2 double and Ken Armstrong in his red plastic Chatham 16, had established an early lead.

Often when I race kayaks I tend to tense up, expending energy with far too many muscles, especially in a competitive situation with another kayak close nearby. The result is always that my stroke technique suffers. I’m gripping the paddle too hard, which tends to limit my arm movement, and pushing with both legs instead of one at a time, which kills the lower-torso rotation – the foundation to proper torso rotation. As a result I settle into a shoulder-rotation stroke style, which consumes way too much energy.

This time something really interesting happened. A couple of minutes into the race I started to become aware of my technique in a way that I normally can not do. I don’t know what triggered this clearsight, but by relaxing a bit while still paddling hard, I could analyze my own stroke in a way I’ve never done before in a pressure situation. As a result I lowered my cadence slightly, and got into a better breathing rhythm with deeper breaths. I started to push with relaxed hands, and began to lift the off-side elbow for the proper chicken-wing technique. My legs started pumping with what little the Greenlander cockpit allows, feeding a better torso rotation, and I improved my posture allowing me to move both my catch and release a bit forward.

I was really in a zone I’ve never been in before while trying to paddle hard, and it was wonderful! The results came almost instantly. I started to move forward in the fleet while expending less energy, and shortly I had caught up with Ken and the double. Before I got parallel to the harbor entrance, I had opened up a significant lead over all the other boats. Wow! This was fun!

Before the race, while discussing race strategy with Marcus Choy in the street above the beach, our whole analysis had centered around where to go relative to how the race leaders would move – I had expended no thought on the scenario where I would lead the race… Well, now it was time to make some critical decisions about how to pass over the shallows south of Pillar Point, and where to transition over the outer reef out to deeper waters. Due to the low tide, there were moderate breaking seas in multiple locations over the shallows, and the Blackhand reef area was breaking most of the time. For every big set coming in from the ocean, large breaking seas were standing up over wide areas of the outer reef.

Further out, I could see the inner Maverick’s break go off occasionally, flushing everything inside into the Boneyard. To play it safe, I chose to go a little north, and go between Blackhand reef and the harbor jetty – an area I know extremely well, even though it would have been a little shorter to go south of Blackhand. Given the decision to go north of Blackhand, it was very natural to pass the outer reef in the usual place, just a little bit south of Mushroom rock. As I was getting closer to the impact zone I was scanning the ocean outside for larger sets, but I was fortunate enough to be able to pass out onto the ocean without interacting with any breaking wave. The next challenge would be the Maverick’s area.

I have a HUGE respect for the area outside the Boneyard and around Maverick’s. A couple of years ago I was passing by deep inside on a day I thought the break would be silent. While scanning for oncoming sets, I could suddenly see a big set approaching, far, far out to sea. I immediately turned toward it and paddled as hard as I could, paddling what felt to be almost straight up for the last boat lengths. I got lucky that time, and was able to punch over the lip before the wave broke.

The sound from Maverick’s going off just a few yards behind me was horrifying – nothing I want to experience again. In October last year I happened to witness two people on a small fishing boat getting killed after their boat was overwhelmed by the inner Maverick’s break. I still get a big knot in my stomach whenever I see anything bigger than a 6-8′ wave starting to wall up in front of me. So, my choice was utterly clear – I was very happy to give up some distance to get a little extra margin to the impact zone. I took a wide arc around the inner Maverick’s break.

When I got out towards Maverick’s proper, there was no foam or any other sign that the waves had been breaking for a long time. Still I put some extra margin in before I turned north towards the planned landing in Ross’s cove. I could see the double with Michael and Scott come almost parallel to, and a bit inside of me here. I never saw Ken Armstrong, but assumed he was significantly further inside at this point.

When you pass Pillar Point, aiming to land in Ross’s Cove, it is quite tempting to cut the corner and turn into Ross’s early to gain some distance. That often proves costly as bigger sets often break far outside here and sweep any flotsam into the rocks at the foot of Pillar Point. My strategy was therefore to paddle parallel to the cove for what always feels like an unnaturally long distance, until I could see the path with unbroken waves that I had scouted before, and then cut back into the cove.

It is always hard to judge the size and nature of the swell on a beach from outside. This time, as I paddled outside the cove, I saw several big sets come in and break one after another a bit inside my route. Michael and Scott seemed to be holding a good line, just outside the breakers. What I didn’t see was the path with green water into the cove that I had seen while scouting from the bluff a couple of hours earlier.

It appeared that with every larger set, and they were coming all the time, the whole cove was closing out. I assumed that the lower tide had led to the change in conditions. While landing in these conditions wouldn’t be too hard, I was afraid that it would be very hard to launch again if the whole cove was closing out. It seemed that Michael and Scott in the double were drawing the same conclusion as we all paddled past Ross’s. I later learned that this analysis wasn’t too far off the mark. Arch Tsunamis Eric Soares and Jim Kakuk told me that they did land in Ross’s Cove. They reported that while paddling out a big wave took their gigantic 24-foot Tsunami X-3 triple kayak, and threw it end over end backwards as they tried to exit the cove.

I decided to land at the ‘Pyramid’, a place north of Ross’s Cove with some offshore rock formations that give a little bit of shelter and often allow landing and launching even on days when Ross’s is closing out. Michael and Scott were landing a little bit south of me, and I could see them disappear in front of a bigger foam-topped wave on their way in to shore. As I paddled in for my landing at the Pyramid I noticed that all the bigger waves were breaking at a well-defined location. When I got closer I saw a rocky formation submerged in front of me that I’ve never seen before.

The low tide was bringing more surprises. I also saw a big wave build behind me. I back paddled so that the big waves could break a boat length or so in front of my kayak and then took the first smaller wave and rode on top of it over the submerged formation. The remaining stretch in to shore was easy, and I could land without complication. On my way out, I held back to allow a big set to break over the submerged rock, then got lucky and could paddle out to deep water in a wide-open window. I met Bill Vonnegut who was headed in to shore at the same location I had used. I also saw Michael and Scott emerge from their landing at about the same time as me. Again they were choosing a little less conservative route around Maverick’s which gave them the ‘inside track’, and they steadily put me further behind them.

As the double got into the impact zone over the outer reef I could see a big wave mount up behind them. It broke pretty violently. They must have had an amazing ride, and when I could see the double again they had put another 100 yards between us, leaving me maybe 250 yards behind them. As I got to the most critical part of the impact zone I could see another really large wave wall up behind me. I didn’t like my position at all, and decided to back paddle as hard as I could. The wave rapidly closed the distance between us, and I found myself paddling backwards going upwards and ended up jumping the wave and falling down it backside while still going backwards. There was a second wave that I passed in a similar manner before I could paddle forward and catch a ride and pass over the outer reef on a more properly-sized wave.

I followed in the path of the double all the way back to Miramar beach. This time we went directly across Blackhand reef which provided a few interesting surf rides. With the waves from behind it was clear that the double could catch more waves than I could, and they continued to extend their lead. Suddenly as I paddled I could see an object behind me in the corner of my eye as I was taking a glance over my shoulder. I feared someone was closing in on me. Immediately I started to paddle ‘harder’ as I didn’t want to lose what I thought was a second place arrival at the finish. I continued like that for closer to a minute, before I realized that I had gone back to my old habit of tense paddling with poor stroke technique. I took a deeper breath and allowed myself to get back in my good zone. Immediately I felt the kayak accelerate, and I could catch a lot more of the following waves. As I relaxed I allowed myself to take a new glance behind me to see how I was doing. I laughed out loud as I saw that the ‘opponent’ I thought I had seen was actually a Coast Guard cutter heading south quite far out to sea behind me…

I approached the beach impact zone with a small wave behind me. I tried to ride it in towards shore, but had a humiliating capsize as it jacked up and slammed down on my back deck. The water was only about two feet deep and I briefly touched the sand with my paddle as I rolled up again. I enjoyed the commotion from the crowds – the cheers and the steady drum beat as I paddled the last few yards in to shore, and pulled my kayak over the finish line. As I stopped I saw not one kayak ahead of me as I had expected, but three other kayaks! I realized that Ken Armstrong must have made an absolutely phenomenal ride on the inside around Pillar Point to have been able to get so far ahead that I never even saw him!!!

I hope what he did is obvious to everyone who reads this story, even if I didn’t have the privilege to watch him, and therefore couldn’t make him a bigger part of this story. To my relief I soon learned that the third kayak belonged to a paddler who had decided to turn back upon seeing the breakers at the outer reef, and not another competitor that had beaten me. I was very satisfied to claim third place in this infamous race, and to be able to watch so many other amazing paddlers as they came ashore to cross the finish line in the following minutes.

The flags were flying, the band was playing, and the crowds were dancing. The party that followed at Michael and Nani’s wonderful place lasted into the wee hours (well almost) but that is another story…

My sincerest thanks to everyone who made this event possible, in particular to Ed Anderson for making most of the arrangements, and to Michael and Nani Powers for letting us all invade their wonderful home. It is a true privilege to be part of this wonderful group of people!!!

Thanks,
Anders

The Result List From Reef Madness 2009:

1st      Ken Armstrong                                       Necky Chatham 16         1:18:44
2nd    Michael Powers & Scott Becklund     Tsunami X-2                     1:21:48
3rd     Anders Landin                                       NDK Greenlander Pro    1:24:01
4th     Bill Vonnegut                                         Necky Chatham 16          1:25:12
5th     Don Barch                                               Necky Elaho                     1:27:36
6th     Dennis Holton                                                                                  1:28:00
7th     Marcus Choy                                           Coaster                            1:29:07
8th     Matt Krizan                                            Sirocco                              1:30:07
9th     Jim Kakuk & Eric Soares                     Tsunami X-3 Trident         1:32:18
10th    Patrick Tierney                                     Cobra                                  1:33:12
11th    Steven King                                            Tsunami X-15                     1:34:24
12th    Gordon Brown & Bob Stender           Necky Lopaca                     1:35:20
13th    Ed Anderson                                          Necky Chatham 16            1:35:23
14th    David Ethridge                                      Coaster                               1:35:24
15th    Rodger Medler                                      Meridian                             1:35:59
16th    Phil Sager                                               Nibbus                                1:41:45
17th    Jonathan Percell                                   Looksha Sport                    1:44:25
18th    Steve Lidia                                             Sirocco                                1:45:10
19th    Anne Demma                                        Coaster                                1:49:36
20th    Gregg Berman                                      Necky Chatham 16             1:49:50
21st    Joanne Muszynski                                WS Tempest 165                  1:50:58
DNF     Nikos Mourtos             Tsunami X-15
Safety  Rick Blair                       Necky Chatham 17

Thank you Anders so very much for this wonderful account of one of our best races ever! Congratulations on your skill and daring and your 3rd place win! Quite an accomplishment on a big day. We appreciate you!

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