Join the Board (24th June)

Do you love the canoe club and wonder how you might help out to ensure that it stays great?

We are currently seeking a membership director, a secretary, and members at large.

Come to our next meeting to check it out:

Our next board meeting is on 24th June at 7pm at Amigos Cantina (back room).

Meet and mingle with your board members at 8pm.

Recreation Division Group Paddles

Meet new people and become a more confident paddler by coming out to one of our group paddles. They are led by a trained staff member. Be ready for an easy and fun hour or two on the water.

Thursdays at 6:30 pm and Sundays at 10:30 am

Canoe Courses

The mini canoe courses will be operated by Outdoor Experience and will include 2 separate 3 hour lessons with certified instructors in a still water environment. These will be offered on a first come, first served order based on capacity and availability of the instructors.

More information at our website:

https://saskatooncanoeclub.org/panopoly/courses/scc-mini-courses-0

Additional canoe and kayak courses are available through our supporters with various discounts:

https://saskatooncanoeclub.org/panopoly/courses/other-courses

Upcoming Club Trips

Churchill River Whitewater Festival - June 27/28-July 1

This year we have two options to get out to the festival, a group leaving early Thursday June 27th and one leaving early Friday June 28th (given enough interest to leave Thursday). We’ll be driving to the Devil Lake boat launch north of Missinipe and paddling to Barker Lake which is roughly a 3 hour paddle with one portage where we will set up base camp for the weekend.

Check out this link or go to Churchill River Canoe Outfitters’ website for the itinerary for the weekend. Please reserve your spot with the club by completing this form and paying $35 to cover gas expenses. You will then need to purchase your own festival ticket (Limited amount).

Experience with whitewater is a plus but not necessary. Experience with smooth moving water is mandatory (a.k.a strong enough current to “ferry”). This trip is being organized by Tyler Kallio tyler.will.k@gmail.com

Fred Heal Day Paddles - June 16, July 13

This summer we will have several day trips from Fred Heal Canoe & Kayak Launch (near Beaver Creek) back to Saskatoon. This trip is an approximately 20 km (3-5 hour) paddle to Saskatoon. You will be amazed at the bird, animal and plant life found along the way. We will carpool to the launch and use club’s canoe & kayak trailer to haul our boats. Depending on the number of participants, we may need volunteers to drive their vehicles to Fred Heal Canoe & Kayak Launch, and need someone at the end to drive the drivers back to their vehicles at the launch to complete the shuttle.

Trips start at 10:30 on Sunday, June 16, and at 10:30 am on Saturday, July 13.

To register or for more information for the June 16th day paddle contact Bryan at Bryan.S@saskatooncanoeclub.org

To register or for more information on the July 13th day paddle contact Shay at Shay.S@saskatooncanoeclub.org

A Blind Adventure from Outlook - July 19-21

We are partnering with The Blind Adventurer Foundation to offer a unique paddling trip from Outlook to Saskatoon July 19-21. We are looking for SCC members who would like to pair up with a visually-impaired paddler for this once-in-a-lifetime trip. You should be comfortable in the stern of a canoe and ideally you would join us for the pool training session (June 12, 8-10pm) and the trip itself (July 19-21), but please let us know if you are also able to help out with either one or the other.

If you know a visually impaired person that might be interested in coming on the trip, please invite them. Thanks to a grant from the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund, we are able to offer free SCC memberships for visually impaired paddlers and will have some perks for the sighted volunteers as well. For more information or to sign up, please call Ron at 306-665-0388.

(Your Trip Here...)

Proposals for club trips are always welcome. Contact the Recreation Director with your ideas to lead a club trip. If you have always wanted to learn how to plan your own paddling trip, but are unsure where to begin, keep an eye out for our upcoming sessions on how to run a canoe/kayak trip. There is more to making a trip run smoothly than just paddling skills. Our experienced staff and volunteers will share tripping tips and advice to get you well on your way to planning your dream adventure.

Marathon News

We are a month into the official season and group paddles are getting more pleasant with the warmer weather. It’s also close to race season and many paddlers are well into their training already.

Club members competing in North American Triple Crown circuit

Two club members competed in the General Clinton Canoe Regatta in Cooperstown, New York, which is the first of the 3 annual Triple Crown races, and did very well. Graham Smith and his NY partner Shane MacDowell came 5th overall and Edith MacHattie with her MI partner Rebecca Davis came 1st in women’s. Congratulations! We also have another club member Ivan English training hard to compete in the Yukon Quest this month with his partner Mike Vincent from Regina.

Local race schedule

Our first SK points race of the season is coming up in a few weeks; see the list below of local (and semi-local) races for the 2019 season:

Lumsden Race – June 15, Lumsden SK

Saskatoon Races – July 13-14, Saskatoon SK

Three Island Paddle & Music Festival – July 27, Hanging Heart Lakes, SK

The Pas Canoe Race – Aug 15-18, The Pas, MB

Marathon National Championships – Aug 24-25, Sudbury, ON

Eagle Point Classic – Aug 24, La Ronge, SK

Saskatoon Rec and Rookie Race – Sept 15, Saskatoon, SK

Qu-Appelle River Race – Sept 22, Craven, SK

Guest coach for July race weekend clinics

Exciting news! The Marathon Division is bringing in guest coach Rebecca Davis from Michigan to conduct clinics for the July race weekend (13-14th). Rebecca is the daughter of Bruce Barton, a former Olympian paddler who is well known in the marathon world, and niece of Greg Barton, Olympic gold medalist in kayak. Her cousin Andy Triebold is the Marathon Champion of North America. Rebecca has been paddling and racing marathon canoes ever since she could walk and holds many firsts and record times in races in North America and across the sea, plus she is currently the women’s C1 champion of North America.

Please stay updated with the SCC Marathon website and/or Facebook page, as the most current information will be posted there on all things related to Division club members.

A Note From The Boathouse Supervisors

Hello! We want to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves. Shay’s off on a canoe trip at the moment so this is Bryan. We are both experienced canoeists and kayakers, and we’re here to help you, the members, and to make things easier for our volunteer executives. As mentioned elsewhere, we’ll be leading group paddles on Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings, including some group paddles from Fred Heal Canoe & Kayak Launch back to the boathouse. We’ll also be doing a fair bit of equipment maintenance and repairs. If you see a kayak or canoe that’s in need of some TLC, please let us know and we’ll take add it to the list and get it fixed up as soon as we can. If you have questions or need help with the equipment, please just ask whenever we’re in the boathouse. If you need any paddling advice or tips, just ask, we’ll be happy to help. Please don’t be offended if we see you paddling and offer our suggestions that we hope will make your paddling easier and safer.

The river is currently low, but the slow current means it’s generally pretty easy to get as far upstream as the train bridge or beyond. You might run aground on the sandbars a bit more than usual but the current is quite manageable. However, do be aware of changing conditions - the peak flows (from snowmelt in the eastern slopes of the Rockies, via Diefenbaker Lake and the Gardiner Dam) usually reach us in the latter part of June, but levels fluctuate with releases from Gardiner Dam.

We’ve been posting notes on facebook about group paddles, equipment issues and so on, so if you don’t already, follow the club on facebook to stay up to date.

Bryan Sarauer

Shay Crawford

staff@saskatooncanoeclub.org