ANNOUNCER: Major funding for Racing Rivals is provided by... With support from... And Easton Utilities... ♪ ♪ PETE LESHER: Log canoe racing is a deep Eastern shore, a deep Maryland tradition.

If you look at the fleet of racing canoes today, fully half of them are more than a century old.

OWEN LYONS: Log canoes are old, but most people don't realize how fast they are.

They have no keel, they're very narrow, they fly too much sail, they're over canvassed.

There's very little resistance and a lot of power.

JOHN C. NORTH II: The log canoe today is a racing machine.

It's a high-powered, delicate, dangerous racing machine.

CREW MEMBER: Get up.

PETE: The boats will capsize.

RADIO VOICE: The boat has capsized.

PETE: All that is keeping them upright is the crew.

MICHAEL KEENE: It's just a moment in time that we have these boats that we're going to be racing them, taking care of them, and hopefully leaving them in a condition that they will live into the future.

But it's also competition.

And competition can do some strange things to people.

CORBIN PENWELL: It's not a kumbaya aboard the boat.

We get on the boat sometimes, we hate each other.

FRANCIS SCHAUBER: I expect to win everything...everything.

♪ ♪ PETE: Quite honestly, at this stage of the game, I'm not sure which one is ahead.

(background chatter) My name is Captain Ken Reightler, U.S. Navy, retired.

I have been selected by the crew to be the skipper of the Flying Cloud.

So, the Flying Cloud is about the largest boat in the fleet.

CREWMAN: Hold it, hold it, stop, stop.

CAPTAIN KEN REIGHTLER: And because of its size, everything is scaled up.

The masts are bigger and heavier.

JOHN: Easy now, easy.

CAPTAIN KEN: It takes a lot more people to raise the mast up.

JOHN: They can snap it forward too far.

CAPTAIN KEN: Which we do manually.

We don't have any winches or electronic equipment to do this.

It's very old school, so we do things very traditional here.

That's one of the things about log canoe sailing that's important is keeping those traditions alive.

CREWMAN #2: All right, we're made.

Put it on the block tight.

Tighten that line up.

CREWMAN #2: Just hold.

CAPTAIN KEN: Today, is the beginning of another log canoe racing season.

It's a couple of weeks before the big first regatta.

So, we typically, we will bring the crew together.

We'll find all of the equipment that's been in storage all through the winter.

We'll get everything back out.

We'll make any repairs we need to make and then go out and do what we call a shakedown cruise.

PETE: Captain Ken Reightler, I sailed with him for years on the Island Bird.

He's a former astronaut.

He piloted the space shuttle twice.

He's very systematic, he's very safety oriented.

When we finish a race, he asks the question, what could we have done better?

CAPTAIN KEN: We do a lot of what ifs.

What if this happens?

What if that happens?

And that comes from the NASA training, to make sure that everything is going to go correctly and if it does, something happen, we're prepared.

JOHN: Well, the first sail of the season is always hazardous.

There's so much that can go wrong.

And of course, you're dealing with a bunch of people who, some of whom sailed together last season and some are new.

And to get everything fully synchronized, it takes some doing.

CAPTAIN KEN: These boats don't have a lot of ballast from a keel.

They have all natural or human ballast, and those people on the boards have to move in and out very quickly as the wind conditions change.

If I could have your attention, so first of all, I just want to thank everybody who came today to make this shakedown a real success.

Traditionally, we'll do a debrief here and make sure that we met our objectives, but again, my purpose is just to thank you all for coming, supporting this incredible history that we all share together, the legacy of being able to take these beautiful historic log canoes and get them out there on the racing course.

I'm Pete Lesher and I am chief historian for Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and also a crew member, jib tender if you will, on the log canoe Island Bird.

Log canoes are as the name canoe implies, pointed or sharp at both ends.

But on the Chesapeake Bay they are sailing vessels.

We think log canoes sort of derive from Native American dugouts and possibly African dugouts as well.

And at some point in the 18th or early 19th century, they ran out of big enough trees to carve these boats out of a single log and started joining two logs together and then three logs or even more.

This is the very first object in the museum's collection.

An old log canoe built in 1893 right here in St. Michael's.

We can tell because of its deterioration, something about how it was put together.

We can see the delineations between the five logs, one in the center and two on either side of the center, and each one carved to shape and then fitted together.

And in between them you can even see the iron drifts that fasten those logs side-by-side, which would've been driven in from the outside through one log and into the center.

In the 19th century as oystering becomes the main product of the Chesapeake Bay, the way of catching oysters was with tongs from a small canoe or skiff.

And so, log canoes were vital to this oyster fishery.

The first log canoe races were simply done with oysterman's boats just on a weekend or holiday.

Over time people started acquiring these boats as pleasure boats as well.

As boats began exclusively racing, and this started happening by the 1880s or 1890s, we started building boats just for racing and increasing the size of the rigs.

Taller and taller rigs that made absolutely no sense for going out on the oyster grounds.

As we add more and more sails, it takes more and more people not only to handle the sails because you'll need one person on each of those sails, but to simply to balance out the boat.

A lot of these crew are simply there as human ballast.

Because log canoe racing is a tradition that's been preserved on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

It is a local boat type and you don't find these boats elsewhere and you don't find these races elsewhere.

Some of these log canoes actually date back to the 1880s, 1890s, early 1900s.

Some of the ones that are sailing today have rather old early origins.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL: We just got Persistence out of mothballs about two weeks ago.

Not a lot's happened since she's been here, but we'll be all right.

We'll get there.

We've got eight days until racing.

So, if we had two months to work on the boat before our first race, we'll probably do a more extensive thing.

So, you'll have to be careful with that.

MAN: Yeah, these are... Persistence is not a museum piece.

She's a race boat.

MICHAEL: I know, right.

We're getting her up to museum quality.

(chuckles) My name is Michael Keene and I'm current skipper of log canoe Persistence.

This is our third season to race with this team and with me as skipper and we've all come together and really have gelled as a crew.

So, with the log canoe fleet, we have a trophy that we vie for that's called the High Point Trophy.

We have nine weekends of racing.

Whoever does the best on average of all those races gets the High Point Trophy.

Last season was great.

I would say definitely a winning season.

We won several regattas, but I think in the end we, I, choked.

We ended up in one of the races that we had to win at the end of the season.

I ran the boat aground and tore the rudder off.

That pretty much sealed the deal that we wouldn't win this season.

Everything's a struggle.

I can't steer like that Cole.

COLE: Well, this will be better for you.

MICHAEL: We were within two points of winning High Point last year.

We're definitely going out to do our best.

I try not to think about or really focus on High Point.

There are a lot of trophies in the log canoe fleet.

PETE: Island Blossom has been the reigning champion for a number of years and it's really the boat to beat.

The past few seasons, the Persistence has been challenging the Island Blossom for that championship.

We'll see the season whether Island Blossom is unseated.

CORBIN: I'm never nervous about the competition.

I have faith in the boat.

I have faith in our crew.

We have won 16 High Points in the last 18 years.

(rippling waves) (soft tone sounds) CREW MEMBER: All clear?

MICHAEL: We've had an interesting season.

Right now, we're on a high note.

We won our last regatta.

CREW MEMBER: You guys ready?

MICHAEL: With two firsts and a third.

Three great races, three great sets of trophies that we're racing for this weekend.

So, imagine this tomorrow, two more degrees but more wind.

CREW MEMBER: Yeah, I love it.

MICHAEL: Good.

We might be sitting in third or fourth for the season, something like that.

Not exactly where we want to be, but we'll see what happens this weekend.

♪ ♪ CREW MEMBER: Oh, yeah.

(laughter) So much better.

MITCH GRIEB: Well, it's the Governor's Cup weekend, so everybody's kind of excited and plus we have more boats than usual.

This is the one that everyone likes to come to.

CREW MEMBER #2: It looks like the weather that was more threatening earlier in the week is going to hold off.

As far as I know, and based on what I see on the forecast, we're going to go.

I saw 93 this morning and I thought, wow, that's actually not too bad.

PETE: We are always looking at the weather and sort of sizing up the situation and trying to figure out what sails we need to carry to take best advantage of this because we're out there to win.

MICHAEL: We have everyone?

OWEN: Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

MICHAEL: We are good to go.

Got water.

Beverages.

The drive.

OWEN: Do we have bacon?

Whoo!

I'm Francis Schauber and my wife and I own Mystery.

We can beat the whole fleet if we sail an excellent race, but it's been hard to do here the last couple of years.

This is a home waters of most of the skippers down here, that makes a big difference.

MICHAEL: The log canoes follow an old starting sequence.

There's three guns, one at 10 minute, one at 5 minutes, and one at the start.

PETE: The canoes have a starting line and it is between the race committee boat and a yellow buoy.

(foghorn sounds) There is a lot of jockeying because there's usually one best place to be at the start and only one canoe can be there.

FRANCIS: And that's what they're doing now.

They're crowding around trying to get ready to go.

Jimmy, how much time we got?

JIMMY: 120.

FRANCIS: A minute 20.

JIMMY: And Mystery is coming down this way.

FRANCIS: There's the gun.

Beautiful start Mitch.

She's moving too.

PETE: This morning we sailed one race, but there were actually two trophies being sailed for, the Covington Trophy for boats built before 1917 and the Harrison Cup for boats built after 1917.

FRANCIS: Look at the Mystery go.

She is flying right now.

JIMMY: She is.

FRANCIS: ♪ ♪ CORBIN: A lot of times in sailboat racing, it's just the start.

If you can get a good start, you have a lead on the competition right away.

And that's what happened today.

MICHAEL: We got second place today in Persistence.

We played it relatively conservative at the start.

Got to keep in mind that we're racing for a whole season.

FRANCIS: We lost him twice.

We might have gotten first place.

PETE: We have a breezy afternoon out here.

As you look out on the river, you can see whitecaps just starting to form.

In these wind conditions the skippers are making a decision.

They have the safety of their crew and frankly, the potential breakage of equipment to keep in mind.

CAPTAIN KEN: When the wind picks up to this level and becomes as gusty as it is today, all sorts of bad things can happen.

MICHAEL: Where's our bailing bucket?

CREW MEMBER: Race Comitte Flying Cloud here, withdrawing from the race.

PETE: We've got Island Blossom towing right in front of us here.

They have not put sails up.

Curious.

They are a competitive boat.

CREW MEMBER #2: Save it, save it.

Get up there, get up, get up.

(submerging water sounds) PETE: Mystery has capsized.

Folks are really struggling.

So that would be the Billy P. Hall.

MICHAEL: We tried to put all three of our sails up and I could not control the boat with the helm.

It was too much wind.

And in the meantime, the starting sequence is just like going down.

It's like one minute to start and we're just floundering around.

So, these log canoes are very traditional.

We're not looking at gauges or wind speed or anything.

So, we're all very attuned to what the wind looks like on the water.

You know, it turns dark...

So, we knew we were reaching our limit.

It became apparent to get the jib down.

It wasn't safe.

I couldn't control the boat.

PETE: Persistence in the lead sailing without a jib still.

And that was the finish.

(background chatter) CAPTAIN KEN: The race committee doesn't call the race.

It's up to the individual skippers to make those decisions.

And so, that's what the other skippers and I were doing.

We were looking at the conditions, seeing how well we were able to handle the wind as well as the gusts and see whether we could make it around the course without hurting anybody or breaking anything.

And in my case, I decided that it wasn't worth it.

So, as we always say, discretion is the better part of valor.

OWEN: There was some carnage out there today, and that's part of the game, we all capsize.

But if it doesn't light you up and get your adrenaline going, I don't know what will.

PETE: This was a tough afternoon.

No two ways about it.

I expect virtually every one of these crews will be doing everything they possibly can to get back out tomorrow because tomorrow is the Governor's Cup.

JOHN: The Governor's Cup was established at the Miles River Yacht Club in 1927.

It was established by public subscription gathering enough money to buy a big silver trophy, which was supported by Governor Albert Ritchie.

PETE: It was to inspire people to convert their log canoes from power boats back to sailing.

JOHN: With the advent of speed boats, much public attention was diverted to motor.

The function of the Governor's Cup race was to revitalize log canoe racing.

PETE: Not only did it succeed in doing that, but after a few years, people started building new log canoes for the first time in a generation.

MARK HERGAN: The wind is 11 to 12, I would say right now.

It's coming out of the north, so it's coming right down the river.

So there's definitely a funneling effect there at the mouth of the river, so we probably get some gusts.

So, we're a little nervous about that.

Yesterday, we broke our sprit, which is basically the boom on our fore, our forward sail here.

So then, last night we had to go back up to Chestertown to our workshop, used a lot of epoxy.

Fran finished it up this morning with adding layers of wood to it, and then I don't think the epoxy's all going to be dry this morning.

So, he called me a few minutes ago and said, could you just take the duct tape, like we're doing here, take the duct tape... And we're just going to wrap it up, so no one gets wet and it'll dry as the day goes on.

MAN #2: Today, is the Superbowl for the log canoes.

The spectator fleet today will be pretty huge.

MAN #3: That buzz gets passed down generationally.

Oh, it's the Governor's Cup weekend.

Everyone wants to come out and see it.

It's just a great tradition, within the realm of a great tradition of log canoe racing.

FRANCIS: And since it's a one-shot race, it's anybody's ball game, so nobody ever knows who's going to win.

MICHAEL: This is our day.

We want to win this race.

CAPTAIN KEN: After yesterday and all the gusts and the heavy wind, everybody was a little bit nervous to see what it was going to be like.

Started off pretty sporty out there.

MICHAEL: The wind was cranking.

There were big waves, white caps.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

I didn't know if we were going to sail with one sail or put more horsepower up, put all three sails up.

When it came time to start putting sails up, our competition put all the sails up.

So I said, well guys, we're putting it all up.

It was a true race.

We were attacking back and forth and trading leads, and it was anybody's race.

(cheers and applause from crew) COMMENTATOR: First place winner of the Governor's Cup is Persistence.

(cheers and applause) MICHAEL: Whoo...

Governor's Cup, what a race it was today.

CREW MEMBER: Ready?

One, two, three.

(Michael splashes) MICHAEL: Got a great crew.

I used to trust them until a couple of minutes ago when they threw me overboard.

COLE: Yeah, you saw it coming a mile away.

OWEN: We got a dogfight recently with Island Blossom, I think we're nip and tuck right now-- points wise, we've won two regattas in a row and we hope we can continue that momentum into August and maybe take the title.

CORBIN: I took over Island Blossom in 1999.

So, I guess that'd be 24 years.

You have to pick sailors that are better than yourself.

You want to come on board Will or you want...

When we couldn't race the Governor's Cup, we were, yes, disappointed, but you know, there's always next year.

As far as where we are in High Point, I think we already have it locked up, even if we capsize twice.

♪ ♪ MICHAEL: We're pretty relaxed going into the last weekend of racing.

Two races today and as far as the season, that's all that's left that will count toward the whole season.

But there's other seasonal trophies that we are racing for today.

COLE: Mark, 11 o'clock, Mike.

MICHAEL: We have second place for the season secured.

And I don't think there's any way we can actually win at this point.

DOUG FRAZEE: I mean, it was really hairy.

There's big gusts and a lot of boardsman got swept overboard and the canoes have to stop and haul them back on.

Island Blossom, unfortunately capsized.

We would've had them either way.

CORBIN: When a boat capsizes, it's several people's fault.

It's not just the skipper.

CREW MEMBER: It's your fault.

It's always your fault.

CORBIN: Several things have to go on at the same time.

We had a good season.

Well, first of all, the boat is fast and every year we make it faster and faster.

So, each little improvement helps it go fast.

And the second thing is just the crew that keeps coming back for abuse.

COMMENTATOR: And this year's winner of the High Point Trophy is Island Blossom with Corbin Penwell.

(cheers and applause) CORBIN: Carl, come up here.

Will, come up here.

(inaudible), come on.

These guys have been with me 24 years.

(cheers and applause) This goes to them.

I'm going into retirement.

(crowd says oh) Maybe a semi-retirement.

(cheers and whistles) PETE: Nobody really believes that.

And nobody knows what semi-retired means.

We're not ready for him to go away.

(laughs) MICHAEL: So, we hope he's going to be at the helm quite a bit next year.

And we know that whoever he puts at the helm will be just as tough as he is.

CREW: Whoo!

CREW MEMBER: Hands in the air!

(cheers) MICHAEL: We're the current caretakers of the log canoes and we hope to continue the tradition.

Our program with Persistence is bringing in young people and keeping them going, while keeping all of us older season folks involved as long as we can because it's good for everyone.

PETE: In a way, by participating in log canoe racing, we're ensuring that this tradition is perpetuated and we get to be part of something larger than ourselves.

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Major funding for racing rivals was provided by... With support from... And Easton Utilities.

♪ ♪