Paddle the Fox: Canoe and Kayak Fun Race
The Paddle the Fox Canoe and Kayak Fun Race was held on Sunday, June 3. It continued the tradition of annual boating on the Fox River with help from the FRRL. Due to the cancellation of the Mid America Canoe Race, this event was put together by Aurora Township and the Aurora YWCA. We want to thank the following FRRL members for jumping in to volunteer on short notice: James N9UZC, Denny W9HI, Catherine KC9KJU, Bart KC9FQA, Keith N9YA, Frank KC9HRL and Kent W9NDW.
We were pleased to see the sun bright and early Sunday morning, despite weather forecasters’ gloom and doom predictions of rain. We all gathered at the VFW in Batavia, got our much-needed coffee and disbursed to our locations along the 6 mile stretch of the river. Our duties involved marking off boat numbers as they came past, notifying everyone of debris in the river, watching for boaters in trouble, and communicating this all via our radios using a net control person. In addition to directly helping the race organizers, others kept the communication lines open by rigging up various antennas.
The day went very well and included a variety of things to test our mettle: moving off the FRRL 2m repeater onto the OEM repeater and then moving back, warning organizers and preparing for an approaching storm, and reporting a canoe tipping over, after the portage. Not to worry--no one was hurt, but the paddlers decided not to finish the race. When confronted with what to do with the rented canoe, two women, who were race volunteers, hopped in and paddled the boat to the finish line. Unfortunately, they did not beat the rain, but they did arrive with smiles on their faces and cheers from the crowd.
Special thanks go to Eric, KC9FQV for alerting us to the impending storm, to James, N9UZC for letting us quickly QSY to the OEM repeater and to Kermit, W9XA for guiding us back to the FRRL repeater after the critical maintenance had been completed.
Again, thank you to the FRRL members who helped make this a successful community event. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Tobi K9TCD and Tom WB9CHY
Here are a few pictures from the 2007 Paddle The Fox Canoe and Kayak Fun Race:
(Photos: N9UZC, WB9CHY)
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