Souey racers will face fast course

A year ago, top kayaker Kenny Cushman quickly paddled away from his pursuers in the Souadabscook Stream Race, only to find out that his front-running tactics came with a price.

Last year, you see, being first onto Hammond Pond meant clearing a channel for everyone else in the field.

Ice wasn’t … quite … out.

At least it wasn’t until Cushman cut a channel.

Cushman didn’t let that minor inconvenience cost him a victory, however, as he paddled to the day’s fastest time, 53 minutes, 13 seconds.

What a difference a year makes.

This year, racers won’t have to worry about running into a frozen roadblock. And that will be OK with paddlers when the 22nd edition of “The Souey” gets under way at noon from Vafiades Landing in Hampden, off Bog Road.

Between 30 and 40 boats have already registered, according to race director Tim Archer. Officials will take race-day registrations between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.

What paddlers will find is an 8 1/2-mile course on a technically challenging stream, race director Tim Archer said.

“The water’s high and it’s boiling in some places,” Archer said on Thursday. “It’s gonna be a really fun time, I think.”

Archer said that while next week’s offering, the Kenduskeag Stream Race, lets paddlers challenge themselves over notorious Six Mile Falls, the Souadabscook may be tougher, with almost six miles of falls.

“I think the Souey is probably as technical if not more technical than the Kenduskeag,” he said. “This is five or six miles of water that’s fast-moving water. There’s a lot of white water in it.”

The Souadabscook race is run in a little different format than some others in that paddlers leave the starting line en masse with the other craft in their division.

Observers cross the Souadabscook while traveling on Interstate 95, but they may get the wrong idea about the stream from that limited view, especially during the summer.

“It’s a nice piece of water in the spring,” Archer said. “In the summer it’s not much.”

Archer said racers will have one traditional mandatory portage, and he suggested that inexperienced paddlers may want to pull their boats out of the water one other time.

“[At] Crawford drop, that’s looking like if you don’t have a lot of experience on white water, you might want to consider portaging around,” he said.