Canoe-O is only one discipline in Adventure Racing

The Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA) will be holding a tentatively scheduled a Canoe Orienteering event on June 27, 2010 at Nockamixon State Park near Quakertown, PA. The Nockamixon Canoe-O event is described as a “Surf ‘N Turf” orienteering course where teams split between a land map and a water map. The team has a 60-minute time limit with the winner based on a Score format total of both courses.

Date: Sun Jun 27, 2010
Venue: Nockamixon State Park
Location: Quakertown, PA
Event Director: Dave Cramer
Course Setter: Porter and Scott

Notes: Contact the DVOA Nockamixon Canoe-O Event Director, Dave Cramer, for details on how teams can obtain a canoe/kayak or on the event regulations and/or rules.

Event Website: DVOA.org

What’s the first secret of successful canoe-o?  It’s pick your partner wisely.  Many thanks to Bob Allen, Barry Fifield, Ernst Linder, Andy Hall, and especially J-J Cote’ who endured so much, taught me so much, and ensured the success for which I later got credit.

Since 2001, championship-level canoe-o has gone through a miraculous evolution.  Back then J-J and I won the USCA Nationals by being the only team to bother portaging and dominated local meets by merely showing up with a racing canoe.  Nowadays the racers who enter the Nationals make far better decisions and local meets attract plenty of fast canoes.  It’s getting more competitive all the time, too.  At the 2001 Nationals there was a 2-1/2 hour margin between first and last places but last year the total gap, first to last, was only 38 minutes.  At local meets the long course often used to go unused, but now is often the most popular.

While for many of its participants canoe-o remains a relaxed, picnic-along-the-river activity, there are now more teams jostling for the top prizes than ever before. We’ll presume you already know a good bit about orienteering and want to learn specifics about canoe-o.   So we’ll skip over stuff like orienting your map and go right to the heart of the topic. Remember though that the perspective from a canoe seat is quite different from the map’s bird’s eye view, made even harder by the expanses visible over water.   So while it first seems that a compass would be superfluous, in fact it can be invaluable.  I’ve found that a basic wrist compass works best.  Your hands stay free and it stays with you when you need to jump out of the boat.  If you’re going C-2, both paddlers need their own compass.

Boat Selection

Choosing the right boat forces trade-offs especially with your budget.  For many people, whatever canoe or kayak they already own is all they need to apply the techniques we cover here.  For elite competition however the stakes increase to lightweight, fast cruisers, both canoes and kayaks, with featherweight paddles made from exotic materials.  The last three decades cumulative engineering improvements to canoe and kayak equipment have benefited canoe-o, too.  Go watch a canoe race and you’ll be amazed by the technology you see.  You don’t know lightness until you pick up a carbon fiber paddle.

Lately kayaks have risen in the overall rankings, however for orienteering purposes canoes are easier to hop in an out of and to carry and so remain the choice of top teams.  Two person boats which can also be paddled solo from a center seat offer the advantage of allowing splitting up, with one partner going for a control on foot while the other advances the craft to a distant rendezvous.

No one boat is ideal.   However if I were starting out, I’d look for a used Kevlar or carbon-fiber two-person racing canoe.  Orienteering is tough on equipment, so it’s smart to find and pay less for a canoe that already has a few scrapes.

Boat Setup

Next, you’ll want to equip your canoe for orienteering.  Stealing an idea from ski-o, first priorities are clipboards at each seat to hold the maps.

A yoke eases carrying the canoe alone and the center seat works great when my partner is off running to a control.  With a little careful fitting, you can squeeze both a center seat and a yoke into your boat.  As a final part of the setup, add paddle holders so you can snap in your paddles and carry the boat and them all together in one piece.

Clothing

I’ve found long pants of rip-stop supplex to be best all-around.  They protect my legs when running through the overgrown undergrowth, drain quickly after wading, offer less resistance running in knee-deep water than gaiters, and provide sun protection too.   Old running or orienteering shoes are better footwear than sandals or flip-flops, both for running and for foot protection.  Make sure your shoes are snug around the tops to keep out stones when you’re wading.

Consider Boat Speed versus Running Speed

Think about it.  7 MPH in a racing canoe is darn fast.  A 6 minute mile is 10 MPH.   The ratio seems to hold so that for the typical athlete, paddling speed is just about 2/3 of running speed.  Even carrying the canoe is still a bit faster than paddling the same distance.  The implication is obvious, whenever you can leave your boat and run to a control, or better yet portage and save a longer paddling distance you probably should.  Now we’ll get into some specifics.

Going from 15 to 16, should you paddle or portage?  The tradeoff is the time to paddle around the peninsula versus the time to get out of the boat, navigate across, and get back in.  Adding to the complexity are factors like wind, current, fatigue, and difficulty of navigation.  Sometimes it can be very difficult to find a shoreline control when approaching from within the woods yet in a situation like 15 to 16 it is probably worth it.

Practice your take-outs and put-ins.  After running through the routines a dozen times in a safe spot like a beach, you can cut out more than half the transition time for portaging.  It’ll also give you a better feel for the time it takes to portage and will help with portage or not decisions in competition.

Set Up for Take Off

Another key is planning your departure from a water control so that you can pull out quickly and easily.  It may take extra effort to swing the boat in alongside the control in the direction you intend to leave but it saves a lot more spent on maneuvering if you nose straight in.

Split and Go

Perhaps the most exciting element of canoe-o is when one paddler gets out and becomes a runner and the other paddler takes over the boat alone.  Beginning teams will land on shore, the bowman will go find the control, and then return to the waiting boat and partner.  Elite canoe orienteers will drop the runner, the remaining paddler jumps into the center seat, and then both go hard and meet at a pre-agreed spot further along.  Remember, keep the boat always moving toward the finish.

It’s essential though to agree on your meeting spot.  If the shoreline is dense but the interior is open, the paddler might land and go inside to be more easily found.  Or the paddler might wade out a bit to be spotted.  Yelling to locate each other isn’t a bad trick either but can be confusing if several times are doing it at once.

Scouting

In an earlier version of this article I recommended scouting the venue in advance.  That’ really only kosher at events where the course is open in advance for practice, such as at the USCA Nationals where orienteering occurs on Wednesday and paddlers are on the river all week getting to know it before the marathon races at the end of week.  If so, study whatever local maps and satellite photos you can find of the meet area and envision how the course might be set.  Drive up and down the shoreline and observe where the roads come close to the water, where running might be possible, and where it isn’t.  But remember, no matter what it isn’t fair to go out the morning of the competition to find controls in advance.

NOW, STEP UP THE COMPETITION!

This year the United States Canoe Association’s Canoe-O Nationals will be held August 6th on the St Joe River in Bristol, Indiana. Let’s hope that by spilling the beans on my secrets that all canoe-orienteering competitors benefit and the competitive level increases yet again.  I can’t wait for you to be the one to rewrite this article in 2018.

Appendix

Three Simple Rules of Canoe-O Course Setting:

1. Designate controls as Wet or Dry: Wet controls are hung along the shoreline or in a similar location are intended to be visited by boat.  A runner attempting to approach a designated wet control on foot is unlikely to succeed.  Dry controls are on land and are meant for foot access.   Wet and Dry controls may be identified in a cluesheet or with a W or D added to the control code printed on the map.  Sample maps in this article use the W and D convention.
2. Nothing yucky or dangerous: Wet controls should be hung so they can be punched without hurting the boat (e.g. on rocks) nor require the paddler to disembark into mud.  The standard is to hang Wet controls so they can be punched from the center seat of an 18 1/-2 foot racing canoe.
3. Team finish: All equipment and team members must start and finish together.  For example it is not allowed to abandon a boat on the course and run without it to the finish.

Canoe and Kayak Orienteering sanctioned meets should follow three rules in the interest of fairness and fun:

1. The Team Finish Rule: Competitors start and finish with all crew members and equipment. One or all teammates may leave the boat during the event, but at the finish line the crew, boat, and all equipment must be back together again.
2. The Designated Wet or Dry Rule: Control locations are designated “wet” or “dry” in the control descriptions or clearly on the map. A dry control is approached by land and is on firm ground while a wet control is punched from a boat. Dry controls are found on hilltops, at trail junctions, or other land features, but never in swamps. Overhanging branches, pilings, or buoys are good places to hang wet controls.

   Note to course setters: Some meets ban swimming or wading to controls but this is difficult to monitor. It is better to place wet controls so that swimming or wading will be a disadvantage over using a boat.

3. The Nothing Yucky or Damaging Rule: It should never be necessary for a paddler to disembark into mud or unsavory water nor to run a boat up on rocks in order to punch a wet control. Additionally, punches on wet controls should be hung so they can be punched without rising from the center seat of an 18’6″ solo cruiser.

Results:

Kayak-O
2009-08-15

Results:

CKO is a timed race in which one- or two-person boats start at staggered intervals.

Canoe/Kayak Orienteering (called CKO or Canoe-O) is an orienteering sport using a canoe, kayak, or other small boat. Usually, CKO is a timed race in which one- or two-person boats start at staggered intervals, are timed, and are expected to perform all navigation on their own. Portages are allowed. The control points, shown on an orienteering map, may be visited in any order. Standings are determined first by successful completion of the course, then by shortest time on course.

Traditional CKO controls may be places around a lake and in the woods.  The course is usually designed as a Score course with points assigned to each control based on difficulty and distance.  One or more competitors navigate the course in a canoe and the winner is the canoe team that accumulates the most points within the time limit.

CKO is best done in a body of water with many small islands and a complex shoreline. Frequently, two-person teams compete using one canoe. Some control points are accessible by water and others by land. Route choice is important: competitors must select both water and land routes so that the controls are encountered efficiently, and neither team member wastes time waiting for the other.

Canoe/Kayak Orienteering has no international sports governing body, although the US Orienteering Federation (USOF) does maintain a Chair within their Programs Committee. The United States Canoe Association (USCA) has held an annual Canoe and Kayak Orienteering Championship since 1996 and has offered CKO during its national championships since 1992.

Race organizers in the US have from time-to-time produced CK Orienteering races. However, no organized effort has ever been attempted to bring CK Orienteering into the forefront of American orienteering competitions. Additionally, there are no American CKO teams represented in any World CK Orienteering Championship events, there is no active effort to form a competitive process for creating CKO teams for international competition, and even the US Orienteering Federation has yet to place any emphasis (or resources) on CK Orienteering within the US.

Phibious hopes to change all that! We believe that the United States is ready for Canoe/Kayak Orienteering and have begun a movement to expand CK Orienteering advocacy throughout the country! If you would like to be a part of the Phibious movement, please contact us today!