East Tennessee’s paddlers find triumph and community in the water
This August saw several dozen boats enter the water for the Three Rivers Regatta. As the name suggests, this paddling competition takes place on three rivers in East Tennessee – the Tennessee River, the French Broad River, and the Holston River – and welcomes paddling craft of all sorts, from standup paddleboards to outrigger canoes. This is a major annual event for both the local paddling community and visitors to the rivers; Jim Brunton, a regular at the event who races kayaks and surfskis (a slimmed down sort of kayak), recalls seeing competitors from not only ten different states but also from Dubai and South Africa.
But there’s so much more to paddling in Knoxville than just the Three Rivers event. First of all, there are plenty more races, as Brunton will tell you, including a weekly race at Governor Ned McWherter Park with no charge to enter. “We race 34 races a year, every Wednesday night from when the time changes to daylight savings,” says Brunton. “We call it the Humpday 7K.”
The Humpday 7K has gone on long enough that Brunton estimates competitors have cumulatively paddled over 16,000 miles around Dickinson Island.
The big race local paddlers are really looking forward to, though, is the famous Chattajack 31 in (you guessed it) Chattanooga, a 31 mile race through the Tennessee River Gorge.
“Registration opens at midnight on April 30,” says Brunton, “and those of us in the know have our computers up and running, logged into the registration portal. You refresh your computer every few seconds, and as soon as it flips over and says registration is open, you register. I registered in two minutes.”
Registration for the Chattajack usually fills out within hours, and it has been sold out for months now. Brunton and fellow paddler Larry Hill – who primarily races on paddleboards – affectionately call the race “pandemonium.” Hundreds of boats take to the river – so many that the organizers have to stagger their start times to prevent congestion.
They both admit the race not the most exciting thing to watch, but being in the boat, in the water, says Hill, is the perfect blend of excitement and peace, physical exertion and mental relaxation. Though perhaps, Hill admits, that is just him being a self-professed “certified aquaholic”.
Paddling ultimately summons its adherents to the water, but there are many good things to be found on land as well – namely the friendships formed within the community. “This past Saturday, one of our members in our group up on Cherokee Lake held his annual ‘PBQ Party’, which is ‘Paddle Barbeque’, and it was open to all the members of our group,” says Brunton, referring to the Paddle Knoxville Facebook group he runs for the community. “We had a race, we had a barbeque, we swam, and everybody got to try out everybody else’s boats. It was a lot of fun.”
While the races are geared towards experienced paddlers, newcomers are always welcome. Members of the paddling community are eager to help anyone interested in getting out on the water, even lending out their own watercraft to first-timers. If you’d to give it a try, you can check out the next Humpday 7K this Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Riverside Landing in Governor Ned McWherter Park, or if you’d really like to see the pros in action, the Chattajack 31 is scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. on October 24.