2008 Deception Pass Dash

The third annual DASH, has grown dramatically since it's inception. This year 144 kayakers signed up for the event and 137 participated in the race. Management of the DASH was assumed by Redmond, WA's Outdoor Adventures who did a fabulous job hosting the event. It has become an international event, with paddlers from Canada and Europe participating. A French paddler won the event, how cool. The DASH started a half hour before ebb at 10:00 sharp with a fairly strong breeze hitting the paddlers in the face. A 4+ft swell coming down the Straight of Juan DeFuca made for an exciting start. Lot's of swimmers before we rounded Deception Island ! With big waves and the water converging from several directions made for an interesting first mile or so. Glad to have Deception Island behind me, the current now was a great help assisting the paddlers eastward towards the bridge. By the time I got to Pass Island the paddlers were quite spread out ( the real athletes were long gone) so unlike last year I just hugged the side of Pass Island taking full advantage of the back eddie's and only deposited a small amount of gel coat along the way, another improvement over my effort from last year. Once past Pass Island a big eddie again tries to grab my boat but persistence and a dozen hard strokes and I'm on my way to Strawberry Island, the half way point. By this time the ebb current is building. As I head back on the north side of Pass Island and back under the bridge ( lot's of folks way up there cheering us on, very cool) there where a half dozen standing waves to greet us. A couple of good sized whirlpools form then just as quickly disappear, they always get a lot of my attention. The wind is straight out of the west so with the ebbing current heading into the wind, the waves are starting to REALLY stand up at Lighthouse Point, really stand up. The police on their wave runners reported 8 to 10 ft waves off the point, from my vantage point they sure seemed that big. The area between Lighthouse Point and Deception Island was the end of the line for many paddlers who decided they had had enough. The swirling water here was big, confused as swell, current and wind waves battled each other. I headed back around Deception Island and again through the choppy water off the west end of the island. I saw lots of boats heading straight for Bowman Bay after coming around the island but experience has taught me that is not the way to go. You have to go all the way back to the east point of Deception Island and then jump out into the current which is rougher water but if you make it through that quarter mile of bumpy water the current will assist you all the way back to Bowman Bay and the finish line with a lot less effort. Despite the conditions ( weather man reported there were wind gusts up to 26 mph during the race) I covered the 6.2 st mile race in 83:16 minutes, five minutes faster than last year. YEAH!

Here are a bunch of links to videos and pictures, I thank the content owners...
Brian Boatman's stern deck video (OC2) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUsmXaKk5I
Michael Lampi's 388 pics (he was the guy in the green pedal boat, snapping pics of you while he raced. Thanks Michael!) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUsmXaKk5I
Stina Larson's pics - http://tinyurl.com/dpd2008
Steve Weilman's blog has some cool pics and his 2008 DPD video. - http://www.xexplore.com/journal/index.php/2008/12/deception-dash-movie-release/
Michael Cline's images on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/61825503@N00/sets/72157610978742216/

http://www.ramblinlamb.com/2008-dpd/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Daf3KuJcI