39 people in 11 canoes and 15 kayaks participated in the Ice House Landing canoe-o on the Assabet River in Maynard and Stow.

This was a partially new map, adjoining last year's Rock Bottom map, and thus giving us a complete canoe-o map from the dam in Gleasondale all the way to Ice House Landing and the dam in Maynard, a distance of about 5.5 miles. At 1:10,000 the map is 25 inches long so it was printed on two 8.5x14 legal pages with an overlap in the middle and were then placed back to back in the map case.

The short course started and finished at Ice House Landing in Maynard but the medium, advanced and long entrants and their boats were driven to the Sudbury Road bridge in Stow for their start. The medium course went directly downstream toward Maynard while the advanced and long first went upstream toward Gleasondale before turning downstream to the finish at Ice House Landing. This all would not have been possible without J-J Cote who made continual runs with the van and canoe trailer, pausing only to load up and do it again. As each van ride began the maps were distributed and the trip passed quickly as people studied their maps and planned their route.

Among the record 11 boats on the long course there was considerable disagreement about whether to portage via roads to the farthest control or to paddle upstream. The Miller brothers ran there and won with a stellar time of 1:33, but Darrel Scott paddled all the way and came in second at 1:59. J-J Cote and Jon Campbell started at the same time, J-J portaging and Jon paddling, and J-J had already punched the upper two controls before encountering Jon coming upstream, but Jon eventually caught and beat him with better boat speed. Jeff Shapiro and his sister Amy had a unique approach where Amy paddled alone upstream to meet Jeff who set off on foot for the far control and then swam down river to meet her. Jeff finally got mired trying to swim in a back cove with eight inches of water sitting over a bottomless muck base and needed a rescue by Amy.

The wonderful folks who helped are identified in the results with an asterisk. Many, many thanks to Pelle Wahlstrom and Marcia Steele who arrived at a crucial moment and ran the registration table, to J-J Cote who logged over 70 miles shuttling competitors and their boats to the start, to Victoria Campbell and Lori Huberman who took over the finish and organized the results very nicely, and to Sam Levitin who, even after falling out twice on the extended short course, was still generous with his time and paddled with me to pick up every control.