What a beautiful day for canoeing! The sky was clear and temps were in the low 80s. Fifty people in twenty-three boats competed in the Norembega Canoe-O Challenge on the Charles River Lakes District in Newton and Waltham.

Format was Western Mass Rules with 15 controls that could be approached in any order. Any 5 formed the short course, any 10 the medium, and all were required for the long.

Three controls were on land, the rest were set to be punched from a boat. Competitors could decide which course they were on once they saw the lay of the land.

One water control was in a separate pond along a possible portage route between two other controls. A few teams ran to that pond without their boat thinking the control was on the bank and decided to skip it when they saw the buoy out the middle. A boatless Tom Dawes plunged in anyway figuring that he'd thrash around enough to scare off any snapping turtles or other beasties hidden below the green weed-covered surface.

But it was Jeff Sharpiro, who won the gross-gross booby prize. Sending his teammates back to the finish with the canoe, he deliberately set out on foot for two water controls, one of which had a description of "serious muck area". He arrived at the finish covered from hair to foot with rotting leaf pieces and other goo and after turning in a filthy punch card, cannon-balled into the Charles for a rinse. Come-on folks, this is canoe-o! Use a boat!

We had a record-breaking six teams on the very challenging long course which was won by J-J Cote' and Andy Hall in a borrowed cruiser. Andy is a new-comer to canoe-o but is undefeated in two attempts with two different partners. Second place went to solo kayaker Jim Henderson and third to solo canoeist Terry Myers. Terry startled the finish crew by appearing in the vegetation above and behind them after hopping over the guardrail from Commonwealth Avenue with her boat in hand.

The medium course saw tight competition between the Kotowski team and Tom Dawes with Tom winning solely because of his daring plunge into the green pond. Third, despite Jeff's muck adventures, was the Shapiro/Sankas team.

David Yee and Barb Bryant brought a ten person group that broke into three canoes to take second through fourth on the short course, but it was Katie Coney in a solo canoe who won, a huge 19 minutes ahead of the next boat.

Many, many thanks to Charles River Canoe and Kayak who gave us a good portion of their shoreline and use of their busy sales dock. Katie Coney gets a big thank you for running the start/finish table in the hot sun all day (except for the brief 28 minutes she was competing). And Katie gets another thank you, along with Terry Myers, for waiting for three very overtime boats to finish and then picking up the seven controls at the north end.

This marks the end of a very exciting NEOC canoe-o series, with an unprecidented three meets, two on new maps. Let's hope next summer and more canoe-o comes along very soon!