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Timing Makes a Difference
By Mary Kuykendall
When one watches the Olympics, be it downhill skiing or swimming, it is amazing how the winner may be just a fourth or fifth of a second in front of the top ten. It reminded me of the late l960s when a bunch of us in the Schenectady Wintersports Club decided we should broaden our scope and re-introduce the turn of the century regatta on the Mohawk River.
There seemed to be plenty of reasons to do so. Some of us had competed against Bob Kennedy in the Hudson River Derby. It attracted thousands and was good for the economy up there. Most of us were spurred on by the need to clean up the river. Those of us in GE were well aware the water in the plant was not being returned in the 60s in a cleaner condition than it was received. Even the screens over the pipes bringing the water into the plant were not that effective. There were times when you would notice minnows swimming around in the toilet bowl. Today, I still have the signs written in Polish and Italian throughout the plant not to drink the river water.
The Towpath Regatta got its name from the days of the Erie Canal when mules would “tow” boats alongside the river and its canal section. Because of the regatta’s connection to the historic past when the Erie Canal opened up a way to go west, we had no problem getting the press to run story after story about it. This time we were going to use the Towpath Regatta as a way to draw attention to the fact the river used to be clean. Now it was up to us to make it so again.
Because we had no money in the club to pay for the organization we had to become dependent on volunteers. We also had to run it at no cost.
We also planned it as an “anything-goes” event, giving the media pictures of a couple of homemade rafts to encourage amateurs. One looked like a Rube Goldberg setup armed with two bicycles operating a paddle wheel. This GE engineer, Shield Bishop, had even installed tubes from water bottles to provide water to the bicyclers, who were busy pedaling hard to turn the rear paddle wheel.
To save costs, we decided appropriate (and cheap awards) would be different size bottles of the river water. They were labeled with the year of the aware so winners could save their bottles to notice an improvement in its color and contents each year. The only cost to our club would be printing the labels for the bottles and I had access to the GE printing company.
Thus free labels along with empty pill and soda bottles saved for some six months by our members enabled us to have plenty of awards. We gave them out freely to some l0 different canoe, kayak and anything goes classes with prizes for the top three.
Our financial problem became a timing system. Renting a timing system would be costly. Because we had a lot of competitive ski racers in the club they wanted a timing system. There was much debate about how to arrange the start. Should we have the more competitive canoes in front with the kayaks behind them and then the anything-goes crowd? Would each group understand when it was their turn to take off at the sound of the bullhorn and what would happen if some ran ahead of the start yell? Those with a competitive nature decided we would have a mass start since the river was so wide at the start. Thus it would be fair. They suggested there would be no jamming up problem because the real racers would quickly go ahead of the pack.
But what about timing at the end. It would be difficult to stretch a rope across the river to spot who was going under it first. Besides the river was so wide there might several under it at one time making it difficult to see who was in what boat category.
It was then that I, still having to punch the clock at GE, thought of it and suggested we arm each competitor a time card. They would carry the card with them to the finish line where the lead person would then run up the bank and punch in their times. Each card would be marked with a color to indicate the race category they were in. Moreover it would enable all of us to be in the race and not have to be timers. The idea was quickly accepted and again GE unknowingly contributed to the event with a loan of a time clock which we mounted on a board at the top of the river bank.
What came next no one expected. First, the media had gone all out announcing the event. When we arrived race day the huge parking lot at the Jumping Jacks fast food restaurant and riverside park was overflowing. We counted 252 entries. The riverside and two bridges were jammed with spectators. Fortunately I had gotten several boxes of time cards so we had plenty of those. After we marked the categories for each craft going into the river, we organizers got into our boats, too.
The fast food restaurant owner, who sponsored water skiing events from his parking lot to attract customers, was thrilled to see the turnout for the clean water derby. He was more than happy to use his bullhorn to start the race. The starting line went completely across the river with the “anything goes” crowd content not to be jostling for position among the canoes and kayaks. At the bullhorn blast, there was a tremendous churning of water which promptly sank several canoes in the family and ware canoe classes. They had overloaded their boat resulting in the wake quickly swamping over their gunnels.
Fortunately, they were all able to swim and had worn the required life jackets. They were picked up by the fast food owner in his power boat which he also used to upright and tow in their air-bagged flotation canoes.
There was a huge cheer as the mass of watercrafts went under the first bridge, also loaded with spectators, with the racers well ahead. There was enough space between paddlers to keep them from colliding. But those on the right side of the river soon found out they were on the wrong side to make good time. That was where the raw sewage that could not be handled by the aging plant was coming out. Evidently the operators there had not read about the race and released their overflow. There was much gagging and yelling but those hardy competitors paddle slugged their way through it hoping they could make time up on the river bend ahead.
And it was the river bend where some of the avid competitors did crash into each other trying to take the straightest line possible to win. This time it was not gagging or yelling, just cursing. But no one went over in the pileup.
Things went smoothly for several minutes until a barge appeared on the scene. The press had dutifully asked no power boaters be on the river for two hours that day but we had forgotten about barges. However it was slow enough that no one ran into it but those who had to turn right or left to avoid it swore their time would have been better if it had not been in their path.
So when the finish line was in sight, things at first went as we expected. The competitors in their long streamlined canoes were there first and handily made it up the bank to punch in their time clock. However, one competitor, who was behind another, jumped out of his canoe before it reached the bank in the hopes of racingup the bank ahead of his competitor. He quickly sank in water over his head and that was an omen of what was to come.
Soon the huge middle pack arrived and there was so many of them arriving at once there was not enough space at the bankside to accommodate them in an orderly manner. Even though this group was not considered competitive, these contestants had gotten the fever. Some were floundering in water over their heads trying to be the first to punch in. Others were using raming their canoes and kayaks into others to push them aside so they could get out. Worse, those who had been swimming ashore had dripped enough water to make the run up the bank very muddy. Soon those who did get out of their boats efficiently found themselves slipping and sliding down the bank.
Fortunately there was also a huge crowd - mostly siblings, parents or relatives - who came to their assistance and no one was hurt. In fact, everyone began laughing as other competitors came in to experience what had happened to them.
However, quite a few of the avid competitors did not laugh when it came time for the awards. I had forgotten the time clock did not register seconds – only minutes. Therefore, we had a lot more winners than we had counted on. When we announced each first, second, and third place three or four or more people would show up for the award with their card with the same time stamped on it. Then there were those people who had not even been able to punch in because their card was so wet.
But again with most of the crowd it produced a huge laugh. But not for some of the avid competitors with the same time on their time card, yelling at each other: “you know that I was ahead of you.” Fortunately we had plenty of bottle awards for everyone. Most everyone went away happy, asking us to run this race every year in the interest of cleaning up the river.
Amen-ing that in a loud voice was one competitor who had struggled with the sewage outflow and declared it was a fun but shitty race.
