The 2024 Blackburn Challenge in a Chesapeake Light Craft Annapolis Wherry
The 20-mile Blackburn Challenge gives participants the opportunity to test their rowing skills in open ocean. The initial Blackburn Challenge was a 1986 event to celebrate Howard Blackburn, a castaway Gloucester fisherman, who in 1883 rowed his dory for five days off the coast of Newfoundland to reach safety. Though he lost all of his fingers to frostbite in that ordeal, he later rowed solo across the Atlantic. Twice!
The annual Blackburn Challenge is just one way that Gloucester continues to honor its historic fishing community. The race is a clockwise circumnavigation of Cape Ann that starts in the Annisquam River. From there, competitors head north to Ipswich Bay, then northeast parallel to the shore until they reach Halibut Point. Finally they turn south down the eastern shore of Cape Ann to the finish, following the shoreline until they enter Gloucester Harbor.
John Carey ordered his Annapolis Wherry Tandem in 2018. Since building it, he has rowed in the Blackburn Challenge four times. We hope that reading his description below of his fourth circumnavigation of Cape Ann (Massachusetts) will give you some impetus to extend your own boating experiences.
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“Neli” (The Estonian word for ‘4’)
by John Carey
It’s 7:04 AM and the Captains’ Meeting for the Blackburn Challenge has started on time. I’m four minutes late. The crowd of people in the humid, stuffy Gloucester High School cafeteria is standing-room only. Everyone is here to row or paddle for a long time. Some lie prone on a board and paddle with their hands like surfers, except they don’t soon leap to their feet for a few seconds of thrill. This group’s “thrill” won’t come for at least two hours for some fortunate few. It may take perhaps five hours for others, depending on their boat, course, and fortitude.
Robert Blair, the race director and head of the Cape Ann Rowing Club, runs through the routine of weather and expected conditions. Then Blair discusses safety.
“The ultimate safety is YOU.” Blair points at the crowd and swings his arm. “We have a 100% safety record in this event, over almost 50 years of this race and we will keep it that way. You are all the key to keeping today safe as you make decisions on the course. I hope you all hear me… .” He intentionally pauses and that makes it a strong point. Then he elaborates:
“Each and every one of you must take care of one another in addition to yourself….you see someone who’s stopped, maybe having trouble?…STOP. Call out to them. If needed, stay with them and make a phone call to make sure we all stay safe.” Message received. Onwards.
Then he mentions fog. Clearly this topic relates to the prior one.
I’m glad I’m in my Chesapeake Light Craft Annapolis Wherry today. Though slow compared with racing shells, this design is long, sturdy, and has enough freeboard to handle a bit of inclement weather. This boat also glides with each pull stroke and release, if you let it.
CLC anchored me on their build-your-own kit after giving me a quick test-row at the WoodenBoat Show in Mystic, Connecticut in 2020. I chose the slightly larger Annapolis Wherry Tandem and I do not regret it. I have entered the Challenge four times and finished it three times. I’ve rowed with a partner once and twice solo. This year I am solo once again.
There are about 130 vessels entered in today’s Blackburn Challenge. The course starts with a thread north through the Annisquam River (you cannot say “up” or “down” with this “river”) and then—when you clear the sandy stretch of pleasure boats, both idling along and snoozing on their moorings—you “hang a right.” Then, just follow the coastline before hanging your final “right” into Gloucester Harbor and its beach. Simply remember to stay on one side of some Greasy Pole to register a finish.
I am afloat in the starting zone. “Bow number 126?”, I hear. My hand waves up. “I have you, 126…” The amplified starter’s voice travels across the water. The starting launch hits the siren for my class to start after the entire group is accounted for.
I shove off the dock and mentally start re-checking my gear, food, and water. Humidity is high, with close cloud cover, wind is minimal. Start to pull. Left hand over right, and squeezing off quick releases to get the boat’s run up. I whisper to myself to take it easy and enjoy. Breathe. And watch my course.
Other boat classes—faster ones—come close in astern and theoretically I am gaining on slower craft ahead of me that I cannot yet see. What’s crucial is to realize this does not matter. Consistent care with course corrections do matter, and I make them as best one can.
Though timed and full of competitive “racers,” the name of the event—”Challenge”—is no doubt intentional. Once Howard Blackburn accepted that his bare hands’ curved grasp on his wooden oars would have to freeze solid so that he could maintain his dory’s headway towards a chance at survival, something his deceased partner—Tom Welch—lying in the bilge could not or would not do. Blackburn was challenged by death or himself. It did not matter to him that in fact his fingers would eventually freeze solid and, afterwards, rot off as they thawed.
“One pair of oars had been lost overboard during the storms, one pair remained. [Blackburn] set them in the wooden tholepins and forced the claws [his frozen hands] over the handles. The dory was a gross sculpture of ice, ponderous as a barge to row.” (Lone Voyager, 15)**
Howard Blackburn’s story has to be a central part of a good Blackburn Challenge. His survival and the life that followed was the inspiration for the Challenge and the Gloucester community that embraces every bit of that connection. Howard Blackburn knew and accepted pain, loss, and love: his community continues to love him for it.
Howard Blackburn was about movement forward and a faith that it will end. One way or another. For me today it will most likely end with the bumping of Neli’s bow onto Gloucester Harbor’s beach. People will be there with wonderful food and a beer.
If you’re rowing or paddling this thing, you really should think about Blackburn’s winter row to Newfoundland or one of his solo sailing voyages later in his life to contrast with your “tough day.” Tape a laminated photo of him with his missing fingers (he retained his thumbs) as I do and all the worries or suffering you feel melts away at any given point in this trip.
Today, for me, it has been a great first half of a race. A race launch is checking off bow numbers at Straitsmouth. I’ve kept steady pressure on and rowed as efficiently as I can in Neli, moving her along comfortably with some boats that are designed to be faster.
The turn at Straitsmouth and past Whale Cove always brings heavier swells and more breeze. But this is the year a new phenomenon for me enters the game.
For the very first time, I experience real fog. Despite the constant pressure of the wind, the fog is strangely static and doesn’t visually blow away as I’d always imagined. In moments it surrounds my entire field of vision.
Fog may be a normal occurrence for anyone who spends time at sea. For first-timers, it is a disorienting, stressful, and darkly humorous way to go. Lobster pot buoys are the only navigational aids to maintain what I think is a straight course, but that technique lasts about thirty meters, when those buoys disappear. With no compass or handheld navigation device, I am left to the temptation to pull my cell phone from a dry bag and use a map app. I am glad I don’t at this point. I’m good. It’s really just adjusting to the process and the work. Next year—note to self—I’ll at least have a reverse-card compass mounted in front of me.
I estimate now that it took less than two hours to get to the fog, and more than two hours to work through the fog. Twice, I nearly hit shoals. There were also seals, popping their heads up near the outer island outcrops. There were other boats and SUPs criss-crossing my course. There was a dory that did get fetched up on the rocks—I heard their yelling—but their stout boat came off. I spoke with them later on. All of this was in a dream-state of pale white fog.
The breeze stayed steady at about 8 knots and the swells continued as in any other year. At one point nearing the Gloucester lighthouse, I do surrender to digging out my phone. I quickly discover I am in fact on the final stretch of the Gloucester Harbor jetty that will turn me into the blessed lee of the harbor. My mind and body are ready for the finish, somewhere up ahead. It’s been nearly 4 hours. I’ll just keep it going from here in this boat I built; ready for the race—and the fog—to end. Really. Four hours in the saddle is noticeable.
The pull through the foggy harbor is a bit long. The beach beyond the Greasy Pole is there, and people are cheering. I’m glad to see my dad, too, standing on the beach. A former sailor and naval navigation officer, he is far more experienced with ocean fog and risky conditions and is glad to see I have tasted it and stayed off the rocks. The Blackburn Challenge of 2024 is over, and next year awaits.
**For those unaware of Howard Blackburn’s story, order a copy of Joseph Garland’s authoritative biography Lone Voyager: The Extraordinary Adventures of Howard Blackburn, Hero Fisherman of Gloucester. It’s important. His biography opens with events that’ll make your toenails curl and then finishes with a grandeur and a celebration of life and a whole part of American history and its people.