Noah and Dad Head to Westport

Noah didn't have as exciting a summer as Aaron so we decided to head over to Westport to do some fishing in the big ocean for a late birthday present.   We went out on a smaller charter boat (High Life) that was highly recommended by one of our neighbors who is a big fisherman.  There were only six people including us fishing off the boat.  We both hit our limit on rockfish (sea bass) pretty quickly.  Unfortunately, it was a slow salmon day, and the boat only ended up with six salmon.  Fortuunately, Noah caught three of them!  And, they were the three biggest fish of the day.

We'd entered the daily fishing derby and when we got back to the dock we found out Noah's fish was in the lead!  The winner typically wins a few hundred dollars so we had high hopes.  Sadly, somebody from one of the other boats brought in a 14 pounder ten minutes before the cutoff and our hopes were dashed.  Overall though it was a great day of fishing.  We brought back a lot of poundage of fish!

Aaron and Dad head to Florida!

Aaron and Steve headed to Clemont, Florida for the 2017 US sprint kayak national championships.  There was a fairly small group of paddlers from our club so we rented one large house to hold everybody.  Steve did most of the cooking for the all the kids and coaches and nobody died.

We managed to borrow boats from another club since the travel distance was so far.   Steve didn't have the best races (feet didn't fit borrowed boats didn't fit too well; and, a lot more competition this year) but Aaron had better results.  He and partner Jake were 2nd overall in the K2 1000 meter event and Aaron was 3rd overall in both the 200 and 500 meter sprint events and made the final in the 1000 meter event.  Those results were good enough to get him picked for this year's US Olympic Hopes team headed for the Czech Republic to race the best junior paddlers from all over the world.

As might be expected for August in Florida, we had some stormy weather.  We had to finish early one day due to a big thunderstorm with winds strong enough to blow the tops off of a couple of our canopies.