2010 Wildside Relay
“What’s Wildside?” someone asked JD just after the race.
“Well,” JD said, “The Columbia’s the state line. You got the Oregon side… and the Wildside!!!”
And what a frothy, world-class playground of a state line that river is. Without a doubt, the Columbia is one of the most insanely energy-rich corridors on the planet.
On any summer day you’ve got a giant, corduroy-surfaced river gunning for the Pacific, 30+++ knots of wind blowing against it, hundreds of windsurfers and kiteboarders ripping, farm-sized barges barging up and downstream, paddle-wheelers and fishing boats and locomotives and busy highways chugging along both banks…
Then you throw an army of surfski and outrigger paddlers into the mix, send them right up the gauntlet, charging as hard and fast as they can spin their arms and link together the endless cycle of waves, grinning like a bunch of monkeys and hooting as loud as the trains ripping right alongside… This is Wildside!!!
This year’s race and the pre-race shake-down paddle delivered totally epic conditions, once again. Remember: catching and riding and linking swells is what surfskis and outrigger canoes were built to do. In the NW, we end up paddling a TON of flatwater by default, because we love to and need to be out on the water more often than we have waves to ride.
But our craft WANT to run downwind. So when we get a chance to take them in that environment — like EXACTLY what Wildside offered this past weekend — it’s like taking your thoroughbred to the Kentucky Derby!!! And boy, did she run!!!
Imagine linking 6 or 8 or 10 waves together as warm, freshwater spray peels off your bow and paddle blade like confetti. This is the standard in the “mellow” sections of Wildside.
Then anyone who paddles into and through Swell City is going to, again and again, stare into a steepening, opening, ever-growing trough that sucks at your boat like a syren song. And right before you take the drop, you’d bet the farm that you’re going to stuff so hard into the bottom of that trough that the bow of your Chinese-built boat is going to return to its home country.
Somehow, though, as you accelerate and drop in, the trough opens up and you’re just screaming forward. Yeah, you look like a monkey with that smile right about now!!! It’s beautiful.
Eventually you start paddling again and like magic another trough starts to form up right in front of you, and its on again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
At Wildside this year, I watched two of the best OC paddlers on the west coast get launched off their boats within minutes of each other. The same thing happened to the lead surfskier not once but twice, and those are just the ones I know about. But here’s the thing: it’s bathwater, so it’s all good. It’s not just world-class downwinding… it’s WARM, world-class downwinding.
Bottom line: You don’t need to fly to Hawaii or beyond, or be in 50-degree water in 50-knot winds, to surf your brains out. You can do it just down the road, amongst all your friends, in a destination people flock to from all over the world to see and experience.
Commit to the next Wildside Relay. You can thank me later!
