With Bill out of the boat to attend a wedding, the NCMC for the first time entered the Adirondack Canoe Classic as a Jack-Tom-John three-man team. They used John’s Minnesota III rather than the Minnesota IV with an empty seat. They were happy with the boat, although John had to spend the race in a bench seat without a proper foot brace. Bonnie joined Jan and Mary in a three-person pit crew. The weather was superb, and the NCMC was entered for the first time in Open Touring, which got them off earlier in the morning and allowed them to enjoy calmer water for the first hour or so.
Despite one altercation with Grace McDonnell and her “Adirondack Women” Voyageur crew, it was smooth paddling. The water was low, however, making the Saranac, Racquette and Marion River sections a bit slower. The same was true of Brown’s Tract.
Numbers wise, the NCMC’s time of 16:14:09 was good for 65th place among the 247 boats. They easily beat the six other three-man crews in the race, and finished 28th among the 53 C-4s. They also beat Grace’s boat on Day Two despite the fact that, according to Grace, the NCMC wasn’t racing.
It was the 21st 90-Miler for Jack, the 18th for Tom and the seventh for John. Bill has done 18 and Jay did nine. Andy and Dylan each did one. That’s a total of 75 races for the NCMC. That’s 6,750 miles minus a few miles for the cancelled Day Three in 1996 and Jack and Bill’s one-day race in 2008.
You can see the photos from the race on SmugMug.
Race results are here.