June's time trial for the distance outrigger program was on the weekend. The women went out on Saturday morning, and we paced them with an OC6. The men were out on Sunday morning, but I was in Victoria.

So I got to do the makeup on Tuesday.

Conditions were ugly. It was windy (15kt easterly). The forecast was for thundershowers. There was a 4.5m flooding tide at the start.

I got to the community centre later than I wanted, got on the water later than I wanted, and made it to the start later than I wanted, and didn't have time to set up my hydration system.

There were 6 people signed up for the time trial, but the 3 smart ones called in sick. The unlucky ones were Norm, Jay, and I.

We started at six, and cruised downwind to the first dolphin off of Spanish Banks. Jay took an early lead, and I fell in behind him by about 4 boat lengths. There was a strong enough tailwind that we were all pretty much going the same speed. I picked a bad line to the dolphin, because it wasn't where I thought it was.

There was a big wind from the east, and we were going west. The further west we went, the bigger the water got. There were some rollers coming off of the straight, mixed with chop from the wind. When we were at the dolphin, and I could only sea Jay's shoulders, and he was only 4 boat lengths in front of me.

When I reached the turnaround point, there were lightening strikes to the west, and it started pouring. I decided to stop paddling and drink something, wondering what the hell I was doing paddling in a thunderstorm. When I passed the dolphin, I noticed that it had a wake, and the water was going west. I drifted about 20 feet past the dolphin while I sucked back some Gatoraide. Then I turned into the wind.

Within 10 minutes of turning around I managed to ride a couple of rollers past Jay, and then it was fairly flat chop and a hard point back into the wind. I don't remember much from the way back, except having the ama pop a few times, stopping a few times for more energy, and noticing that things on shore weren't moving much.

When I finally made it back to the start point, about 90 minutes had passed. This was 45% behind the times posted from the trial on Sunday.

It felt awful, but I think I did reasonably well under the conditions. It was a long, hard, inelegant hack. My specialty.