HAMPDEN – Warm weather, average water levels, and a competitive field in Saturday’s Souadabscook Stream Race provided Ray “Bucky” Owen the perfect opportunity to reunite with his former racing partner.

Owen, a 64-year-old racing veteran, hopped back into the canoe with his racing partner of more than 12 years Saturday. The reunion with fellow Orono resident Dick Storch, 65, came more than a year after Owen suffered internal bleeding from his carotid artery after falling and awkwardly bending his neck while training for the National Masters Cross Country Ski Competition in February 2001.

Four days after the accident, the former commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife began to lose his vision and various nervous system functions began to falter. But treatment and vigorous training since then have brought Owen, who missed all of last year’s canoe races, back into competition for the 2002 canoe racing season.

“The training he has done to get back has been tremendous,” Storch said. “He’s a tremendous competitor, always going full blast and he’s just a very outstanding man.”

The two spent numerous hours training together for their comeback in Saturday’s 26th Souadabscook Stream Race, Storch said. “I don’t see any decrease in his ability at all now.”

“It was great to be out there today,” Owen said. “We carried 28 gallons of water into portage, but we said ‘to hell with it’ because we were so close and dumped it out when we got there.”

The two captured eighth place overall in a field of 53 boats with a time of 1 hour, 2 minutes, 25 seconds while using a 20-foot canoe – the longest canoe in the race. The pair was the only team entered in the OC-2 long class.

“The canoe we used was a little more forgiving for your mistakes when you’re not as precise in dodging rocks and big waves,” Storch said. “We’re not as young as we used to be.”

Storch and Young, however, were not the oldest competitors in the race. That honor fell to Orrington’s Earl Baldwin Jr., who will turn 78 in May. Baldwin finished in 34th place overall with a time of 1:15:24 and fourth in the short kayak division, behind division winner H.I. Hasey of Bangor, who finished in 1:04:05.

Baldwin was given an extra challenge when the skirt on his kayak broke before the race and his replacement didn’t fit properly, causing him to take on water throughout the race. But the man who has competed in 23 Souadabscook Stream races said there has been no secret to his perennially competitive appearances.

“I just paddle like heck and stay out of the rocks,” Baldwin said. “Take the shortcuts when you can, though today the shortcuts were more like longcuts with most of them turning out to be just mud.”

Another three inches of water would have made the stream and its shortcuts, victims of recent drought conditions, nearly perfect, Baldwin said.

Hampden’s Kenny Cushman, the only Hampden kayaker of the day, captured first overall with his time of 52:29. He finished nearly seven minutes ahead of the teams of Clayton and Paul Cole of Corinth and Groveland, Mass., and Jamie Hannon of Orono and Jeff Owen of Glenburn, who finished tied for second at 59:08 in their medium-sized open canoes.

Cushman returned to the stream for the first time since 2000 after missing the 2001 race with a rotator cuff injury, he said. Since 1995 Cushman has won six of the seven times he has competed in the race in his long kayak.

Jeff Owen and Hannon decided to join forces for the race the night before the competition began, Hannon said. The two had been looking to face off against each other in kayak divisional competition, but Owen’s kayak was damaged in competition the week before on the Passagassawakeag Stream in Belfast.

“We had a good chemistry and sprinted on the portage to finish good,” Jeff Owen said.

With a combined four White Water Open Canoe national championships between them, Owen (2000 WWOC kevlar division) and Hannon (1998, 1999, 2000 WWOC plastic division) took an aggressive approach to one of Maine’s top whitewater streams in their first collaborative effort.

“This is one of the roughest streams in the state with all of the drops,” Chief Barry Dana of the Penobscot Indian Nation said. “This is real whitewater. This is the one stream we get nervous about before we begin because I’ve swam too many times in this river.”

Dana and his wife, Lori, finished sixth overall and third in the two-man medium-sized open canoe division with a time of 1:00:09 despite completing the race with a hole in the stern of their boat.

The hole could have been created during any one of the many drops, ledge to ledge, in the stream, Barry Dana said.

“This race always seems to bring out a lot of extremely talented, good paddlers,” Storch said. “It’s a good tough course every year regardless of what the weather conditions are.

“A couple of years ago, we had ice and we had to get out and go around and today was just beautiful,” he added. “This is one of the top [races] of the year.”