SEBAGO PIG ROAST and all-club invitational 5/31/2014

OK, if I don't post about this now I'm never going to - we had an incredible All-Club Invitational and Pig Roast a few weeks ago at the end of May. It was WONDERFUL. We used to have an Open House around this time but with City of Water Day spreading from the original event located on Governor's Island to the all-borough blowout it is now, including an all-day public event at Sebago, we've decided that that's our open house. Better timing anyways, the water is still pretty cold in May and early June (especially after this year's winter) - by July, when "COW" day comes around, falling in the water, as sometimes happens to beginner paddlers, is not a bad thing at all.

So instead, this year in Spring, we did an all-club invitational, revolving around a fabulous offer from Paddling Chef Steve Heinzerling - at some point he'd invested in a pig-roasting box, and at one of our planning meeting deep in the darkness of that terrible winter we had, he said something along the lines of, "Hey, I have this pig-roasting box, why don't I roast a pig?"

And that's just what he did on May 31st, and it was SCRUMPTIOUS. There it is, just out of the roasting box.

The event was billed as a luau. I did make something like a couple of gallons of disappointing haupia (Hawaiian coconut pudding, it's supposed to be fairly solid, mine came out soupy); sides of rice and beans and plantains were more Cuban than Hawaiian but there was so much aloha spirit at the club that day, it was OK (and besides real luau food is hard to get for a reasonable price in NYC). And the pig's head is in my freezer waiting to be made into pozole so I'm not going to get picky!

We also had a LOVELY pre-pig paddle. It was a very windy day, only a small group of good paddlers decided to go for the race or the "long" paddle. Beginners were kept in the basin, but the nature of the all-club invitational is that it brings in paddlers with at least SOME experience. Few people being into "torture paddles", though, most of our guests decided to join in on the "medium" paddle, which was to Fresh Creek (first basin east of ours). I came along thinking it was going to be a so-so paddle, I'd been to Fresh Creek before and found it nothing to write home about, but either I went at a less green and lovely time of year, or the shoreline restoration I was later told has been going on there has been VERY effective, because it was much more lovely than I'd recalled. All in all, a wonderful day!
Click HERE for Flickr album! Sorry, uncaptioned!