DUBCAST #73: From Delmarva to Nuuk: Building Team Qajaq USA

A whirlwind primer on Greenland’s National Kayaking Championships—past, present, and (very likely) Nuuk 2026. Fresh from Delmarva, Dubside breaks down the events (races, rolling, ropes, harpoon), the divisions, how scoring works, and what it actually feels like to compete. He shares travel/lodging realities, costs, gear options (including Qajaq USA fleet ideas), and why “attitude over ability” is the only qualifier that matters. Along the way: stories from the beach in Qaqortoq, a lesson in patience from judging days, Nate Apgar’s mid-start mindset shift, and why the whole thing ultimately exists “for the kids.” If you’re curious about joining Team Qajaq USA—or cheering from home—this is your roadmap. #QUSANUUK2026

LINKS:

Delmarva Paddler’s Retreat

Find transcripts to our episodes on The Dubcast with Dubside website on Buzzsprout

The Dubcast with Dubside on Instagram

Transcript

ANDREW:
Hello friends and welcome!

DUBSIDE:
And you're listening to The Dubcast with Dubside.

ANDREW:
Today we're going to start off with Dubside filling us in on what this year's Delmarva Paddlers Retreat was like. So how was Delmarva?

DUBSIDE:
It was a very good time, we had a little different weather, we had to adjust for some heavy wind coming through, but we handled that. And so I gave a talk, one of the evening presentations, and we will now listen to the whole thing, you'll hear what I said. And so this is, I guess we'll call this episode number 73.

It's not a special guest episode, but it's not me in my studio talking into the microphone. So you'll hear me talking to my, talk to a crowd voice where I'm saying things too fast and jumbling my sentences. So the raw audio, but that's what it was like.

And I'm trying to encourage us to build up a Qajaq USA team to go to the competition next year.

ANDREW:
Yes. Now you may recall, we mentioned that a couple episodes ago, in the introduction to the interview with Mike Knight on kayaks and Native American flutes.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah, but we are now, after this past weekend, I've got about, I think a total of 11 people who would like to go to Greenland next year. Now that number may go down or up as things go. You know, a lot of people, they want to go, but the reality comes and they can't quite make it.

But then we still have more people that are probably interested. So we'll see. I'd like to take a strong contingent, strong in attitude, not necessarily ability, as I described when I talked to the crowd here.

And I should just tell you, Andrew, I had a chance to look at last week's episode, the interview with Rhonda with a video. It looks really good. Yeah, I was impressed.

We have nice footage in there. Good camera work.

ANDREW:
Yeah, I got got a lot of positive feedback about that.

DUBSIDE:
Well, if we if we need to make video content for everything, I suppose I could put a camera in my in my recording booth here. But you have to spice up or something besides just my boring face talking to a microphone for half an hour. But we'll see.

ANDREW:
Yeah, we should do some more video. And I have a lot more video interviews that we did when you were here this past June that I plan to get to eventually. So we'll be coming out with more of those.

DUBSIDE:
Well, at Delmarva on Sunday afternoon, as the bulk of the group left, I had people scheduled to come meet me at the one spot to do interviews. I got four interviews. I've got Tim Galloway, who you interviewed him way back when I got him talking new stuff.

And I got three other people. So those those will be coming up. And it'll be a while before those air because we've got we've got stuff from when I was out there on the West Coast.

And I've got stuff from Greenland this past summer. So we've got plenty of plenty of things in the pipeline.

ANDREW:
Yes. And a few other things I want to mention. We have content on our Instagram page, which I encourage everybody to look at and follow.

And a lot of that content in the future will be related to this upcoming Greenland trip. So if you want to follow along with the news about the Greenland trip, be sure to check our Instagram, which our social media director, Derry Walsh, has been managing, and he's been doing an awesome job.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

ANDREW:
Thanks so much, Derry, for that. Another thing I want to mention is that for the latest episodes, I've been publishing the transcripts.

DUBSIDE:
So you don't have to listen all the way through to find something. You just skim the page. That's pretty cool.

ANDREW:
Yeah. So you can find the transcripts on the podcast website on Buzzsprout.

DUBSIDE:
All right. And I wanted to mention, if anybody who listened to last week's episode about the fiberglass repair of kayaks, I will confess that I have still not done any fiberglass repair on the issue I have with the fiberglass kayak in my possession. I just stuck the Gorilla Tape on it and I'll probably just replace the piece of Gorilla Tape, which is getting kind of worn.

And that's the lazy way out. But that's full disclosure. That's what I did.

ANDREW:
Well, you know, you can get to it eventually when the weather starts warming up again.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah.

ANDREW:
I actually had one of those repair kits that Rhonda was talking about. If you remember, she said that she used to sell these repair kits with a resin that was activated by UV light. So it came with a little pen light that activated the resin and hardened it.

It's for small repairs and actually repaired a gash in my Illusion. I think I bumped it into a rock when I was out in the Broken Group. I actually used that and did a good job. I didn't have to do another permanent repair on it. So, yeah, a very cool kit.

DUBSIDE:
Yeah. Well, here is if you didn't make it to Delmarva 2026. I'm sorry—I’m so geared towards the year 2026 because that's we're going to be there next year. 2025 at Delmarva in Delaware at Camp Arrowhead. This was Friday the 10th of October in the evening in a presentation.

There was maybe 60 or 70 people there in the crowd you can hear. And this is me telling them all about Greenland next year.

DUBSIDE:

All right, I'm going to talk about the Greenland competition games, specifically next year. In Greenland, they have a national kayaking championship every year, and they've been doing that since 1987, and it contains, there's races in four different varieties, a long distance race, short distance race, portage race, and a relay race with a team of three people. And there is also, the long race is 15 to 20 kilometers.

And there is rolling competition done as both as team rolling and individual rolling. The team, you have three people, they all have to do the roll to get credit for the roll, and they also have harpoon throwing for distance and accuracy, and they also have the ropes competition. You may have seen us playing with that. It's called allunnariaqattaarneq in Greenland.

And so there are divisions for these with children's groups, starting from the four to six-year-olds, and there's the seven to nine years old. It goes on up through the teens. The 20 to 34-year-old category, that is the most competitive, which determines the champion. There's the 35 to 49, and the over 50, and there is a separate category for women and girls, and a separate category for men and boys.

There's also a separate category for internationals, people from other countries coming, so there's all these different divisions. And so during the day, they'll run, they won't run everybody all at once. It's all the different separate races, because they adjust the length of the race depending on if it's kids or adults or older adults, etc. 

And so out of the way of scoring the whole thing and accumulating points, they determine a champion. There's both a male's category champion and a female category champion, and the runners up the second and third place things, and there's trophies that go along with that. And this was all organized by Qaannat Kattuffiat, the Greenland Kayak Association, who set about to preserve the kayaking skills of their heritage, of the hunters from back in the day. 

And Qaannat Kattuffiat, in connection with connections to this event here, that led to the formation of Qajaq USA about 2000 or 2001. And Qajaq USA's mission is to, you can read the whole thing, supporting Qaannat Kattuffiat in their effort to preserve, study, promote the traditional traditions and techniques, etc, etc. 

So in the year 2000, they opened up the competition to foreigners as they came here.

Maligaq, you've heard his name before, was here in 1998. And so with that interaction, they said, okay, we're going to open up the competition so foreigners can compete. And so some years, a few people have gone. 

The first year was three people in 2000. And then other years, it's been more people. It's been as many as five or six people going at once, and as few as sometimes just me. 

I started going on a regular basis in 2006 or so. And before COVID, I was going every year. And so sometimes it's more people, sometimes less people. 

And there's other international folks, people from Spain, from Norway, from Denmark, from Canada. They've had some Japanese people go, people from Taiwan, etc. So it varies year to year. 

And so they rotate it from different cities every year. And Nuuk is one of the cities. So each of these cities, or towns, if you want to call them that, have a qajaq club. 

So it'll be Qajaq Nuuk or Qajaq Ilulissat and the competition is held in these various towns in the rotation. Well, Nuuk is the biggest city in Greenland. And Nuuk just last year completed expansions to the airport. 

So now it's an international airport and big jets can land there. So you no longer have to fly to the other airport places in Greenland, two of them, you can go directly to say Nuuk or other airports are coming as they build up the tourism thing. 

So this past summer, United Airlines flew directly out of Newark International in New York City to Nuuk for the first time ever, which dramatically shortens the amount of time it takes to get to Greenland and also brings the price down. 

So next year, they announced that the competition will be held in Nuuk. It was in Sisimiut this year. I was there this past July.

So next year, for the first time, you'll be able to fly directly to the competition site from the U.S. That's a big new offering here. So I am trying to put in a good showing for Qajaq USA, and I want to come next year with a solid team. When I say solid, I just mean a good, strong number of people to show that we are supporting Qaannat Kattuffiat. 

Now, they know in general that there's some activity going on in the U.S. There's something called Qajaq USA, but until they come and see it, they don't really get a handle on what's happening. So we have invited, time and again, Greenlanders to come, one at a time, or sometimes a few more. So when they come individually, it really opens their eyes. 

So we've had John Peterson come to this event. He first came in 2008, and John Peterson told us that it changed his life. To come thousands of miles away and see there's a group of people that are totally committed to understanding and learning about and appreciating his culture. He was amazed. 

He's been back here to Delmarva three or four times. He was at the SSTIKS event on the west coast. He was really, really impressed, and he's been a great resource. 

He's still involved with the kayaking competition. He's not there every year, but he really was amazed by our thing here. It was a great exchange. 

And so he told me one time, he said, the whole point of having the competition is for the kids. That's really what it's all about. And they gear it as like it's the Olympics. 

You know, here I'm with a gold medal and you've sold, you know, gold, silver, bronze, but it's really more like a family gathering, and it's really about the kids. You get the kids inspired to learn about their culture. And so amazingly, not every person in Greenland kayaks. 

In fact, most Greenlanders don't kayak, which was a surprise to me. They're very aware of their heritage. They certainly appreciate it and appreciate that somebody's doing it, but most of them don't really feel like getting in a kayak because the water's really cold and it's cramped and it's not really what they're interested in. As long as somebody's doing it, that's a good thing. 

So the first time I went to Greenland, I was infatuated with the rolling, among other things, and I had trained and gone through the list as many as I could get, you know, on both sides, the way it's done. There's a list of 30.

Back then, it was 30 different maneuvers and you do them on each side. And so I was getting up in the morning. The competition takes a week because you have four different races and the rolling, so you have seven days of one event each day, or sometimes it gets mixed up a little bit. They often fall behind schedule. 

But I was getting up at five o'clock in the morning, getting in my kayak and going out and going through the rolling list and then going to breakfast on days when there was races and other things, because I was going to make sure I had the rolls all, you know, solid and worked out. And so when it came time the day for the rolling, I got up at five in the morning, did my routine. Got changed back, went to breakfast, then I got suited up again. 

So I was ready to compete. And they decided that day that we're going to start with the, they weren't into like young kids weren't rolling. They had some teenagers who rolled.

So the first day they did the teenagers. And then they called out and they said, okay, now we're going to do the women. And they did the various age categories of the women.

Now you have a half an hour to do your routine. So if you've got five competitors, that's two and a half hours going by and they might have two judging stations, but still it takes a while. And then they went with the men. 

They didn't call us international people yet. They just said people stand by. And then finally, late in the afternoon, they got to international. 

Cheri Perry was there that year. So they had, it was one or two other people from the U.S. So they went and then, so Cheri went and they called me last and it was just about 6 p.m. when I finally got to roll. But you know, that was, it's their competition. 

It's their rules. You just have to follow along and do, do what they say to do. 

Now, some of you may remember Nate Apgar. He came, he started at, with us when he, as a teenager and he was, he was up in the New York area, went to the HRGF event quite a bit. When he was 25 in 2017, he made the trip to Greenland and did the competition. And so, you know, Nate's an athletic guy, you know, competitive. 

And so the first day they had the short distance race. It's what, three to six kilometers, depending on how you set up the course. So he's on the starting line. 

They're getting ready to go. And so he's, he's got his game face on. He's like, okay, it's a showdown. 

And the guy next to him looks over at him and says, they're seconds away from the countdown. The guy says, “Okay, let's have some fun.”

And he's taken aback. 

Oh, oh, oh, fun. So he realized he's got the wrong attitude. So he relaxes. 

They had a great race. They had lots of fun. And first, second, third, who cares? You know, it was, they were there celebrating the kayak culture. 

And then he readjusted his attitude and had a better time. There's a little bit of competitive feeling going on. The top guys are still worried about who's going to win. 

But you're supposed to, it's not the Olympics. You know, it's just having a good time. And so I was eventually, after going there enough years, in 2010, I believe it was, was asked to help with the judging. 

Now, this was a tremendous honor for them to ask a foreigner to help with the judging of the competition. 

A couple years after that, the other people from other countries joined. So there's a guy from Sweden named Mats Holberg. 

And Mats, like others, got really infatuated with the Greenland thing. And he practiced really hard. And he got into the rolling and learned all the rolls. 

I was showing him some rope moves, but the rolls was really his thing. And he worked on his forward stroke and his harpoon throwing. And so, I think it was 2015. 

So he's in Greenland and it comes to the day for the rolling event. And I was helping with the judging. I rotated in and out out. You know, it takes so long. They'll start off without me. And then they say, “Hey Dubside, can you come in and judge these people?”

And I'll work into the rotation and then I might go back out. 

So whatever they tell me to do, I'll do. Some years they've got it more or less covered. They don't need much of my help. Other years, I've gotten really involved. 

So I was in and out of the rotation at the judging booth. And Mats, like halfway through the day, comes over and says, “Dubside, they're not telling me when I'm going to go! And I don't want to get in the water and get too cold if I wait too long there. And I don't know if I should eat now because I don't want my stomach to be full.”

And I said, “Mats, welcome to Greenland." 

And left it at that. He did pretty good. He rolled like 270 something, which is the expert level. 

So he did all right. But you have to play by their game. 

And so when you're competing, it would be very helpful to have somebody to help you bring your kayak to the water or be there with your dry clothes when you're getting out or run back to where you're staying to get the gloves that you forgot. Just that little legwork would be so helpful just because you're nervous going there. I see nods of agreement from somebody who's gone there. 

So the Greenland teams, some of them are very large. They've got people, when the kids are competing, the adults are helping the kids. When the adults are competing, the women might help the men. You've got people doing this stuff. 

There's no requirement that you do all the events. You can just do a race or two, or you can just throw a harpoon. You can skip the ropes if ropes aren't your thing, or not even roll. 

A lot of people just do things here and there. The really competitive people will try to do as much as they can to get their best score, but you don't have to do anything. And so in fact, the Greenland teams, there are people on the team who don't even get in the water. 

They just help out. And another very important function of all the teams is cheering on the competitors when they get the medals, when they're finishing and starting on the races. And the Greenlands, they really get into this. 

They're screaming their lungs out. They really make a big thing out of it like that. So those people that might not even ever get in the water are just as much a part of the team as the rest of the team. It's all together like that. 

So for people who might want to go next year, we don't have a qualifying test. You don't have to be good enough and have this many points in the world. 

Attitude is far more important than ability. And we need people who just will help, might not even do anything, or maybe do one race or not. It's all fine. 

So the attitude I'm looking for is someone who has a genuine appreciation for traditional paddling and is interested in learning about it and respects it. And so a good example of that attitude is somebody who goes to Delmarva. So all of you qualify already, okay? You got that? It's attitude, not ability, right? All right. 

Now, two years ago, you might recall, we had Paninnguaq Korneilussen. Some of you remember that? And so she lives in Nuuk, and I was in Nuuk after I was in Sisimiut at a competition this summer. And I looked her up, and I went to her apartment. 

I actually did a short interview of her, which will be on my podcast. I think all you've got one of my little podcast guitar picks. “The Dubcast with Dubside”. You find it on Spotify or wherever. So I talked to Paninnguaq. I know you all like to call her Paniwak, but it's Paninnguaq. 

She says “Hi”, okay? 

And at the auction two years ago, there was an ulu knife that she was interested in. And you remember, we rigged it. We outbid her on it, and then we gave it to her, because that's what we do here at Delmarva. Any special guest who wants something, we make sure they get it without even having to buy it. In her kitchen, she has that ulu, and she uses it every day.
So I asked her about the big new influx of tourists in Nuuk. Even I can tell from the times I've been there before now, they've got a lot more people walking around with the cameras and doing the whole tourist bit thing. And I said, you know, how do you feel about that? And she said… I think I said, you know, “What's the most annoying thing?”

Because they realize that they need more tourists, but they realize that they're not quite ready with the infrastructure yet. 

So they're kind of, you know, jumping into it and working things out. And so you have lots of cruise ships coming to Greenland all the time. So she said to me what she's most offended by is tourists will come up, she's on the street with her kids. 

Tourists will come up and take pictures of her kids without asking her at all. And you can imagine, you know, I'm not in a fishbowl, you idiot, you know. And so that's kind of annoying. 

And so in a tourist economy, you know, you act very friendly to the people that come to see, and you know, that country, they're so nice. But I imagine a lot of folks, I can't speak for them directly, but in their head, they're thinking, you hurry up and spend your money, get back on your cruise ship and get out of here.

So that may be the attitude towards tourists. Now, when I go to Greenland and when I compete, I got my little Qajaq USA patch on, right? Now, I told this story last year, but it's such a good bit, I have to reinforce it, that last year at the competition, it was in Qaqortoq, south of Greenland, I was walking around with my Qajaq USA patch on. 

And a guy, as I said, not every Greenlander kayaks. So I hang out with all the kayak folks, that minority in Greenland, but there's other people, local people that are walking around. So this guy comes up to me, I didn't know him, hadn't met him before or anything.

And he says, oh, Qajaq USA. Yes. He says, “You honor our culture very much.”

And that made me feel proud, like we're doing something right. That's the whole point of Qajaq USA, for him to tell me that. So imagine going to Greenland as part of Team Qajaq USA.

Probably be viewed a bit differently from the typical tourists. Now, the teams in Greenland have team jackets. And on the auction the other night, you saw the Qajaq Ilulissat jacket, that's the kind of thing they wear with the team logo on it. 

We have yet to have Qajaq USA team jackets. So this is my suggestion. And I think I've got the board on board with it. 

So next year, we're going to have team jackets and we're going to look like a team. And people have asked that and I believe that's going to happen. 

This idea has legs. So going with team jackets. And so the point of that is, going to Greenland with a team jacket on, we stand out from the typical tourists. 

We're not just average people. We'll be viewed differently. And so, as I said, the attitude, not the ability. 

We're not trying to win the competition. We're just saying our presence there indicates to Qaannat Kattuffiat that we are serious about supporting them and they were coming to help, you know, them celebrate their culture. The tourists also watching will see

there's this Greenland thing going on, and there's people coming from the US, this must be a big deal. And the Greenlanders in general, we'll see, you know, the Qajaq USA, that's the image we want to project. And also, KNR Television, the Greenland National TV Station, has been covering the games.

And they are based in Nuuk. They’ll definitely be covering it next year. So, we want to look good for the cameras, too. Because they've been doing live coverage of the events.

It appears on YouTube, if you dig far enough, you can look and you can see me at the team rolling competition from last year, some on YouTube somewhere. That's the image we want to give next year, going there. 

So, if anybody's interested, let's talk some nuts and bolts here, okay? Air Greenland flies to Greenland from Copenhagen and Iceland, but not from the US.

So, you won't be flying Air Greenland, it'll be United Airlines out of Newark, New Jersey. The week of the competition, they handle a place to stay. You get to stay at the school.

The different teams, they'll give a classroom or maybe two classrooms for the big teams. And you get to stay at the school during the competition. It may not be your liking, these accommodations.

You know, it's mattress on the floor, bathroom down the hall. The shower is usually like the gymnasium, which is men's and women's locker room. It's not a private shower and you have to get the key from somewhere.

It works, but if that's not your thing, you might want to have to take care of your own arrangements which are gonna cost you. 
If you got the money, you can stay first class, no problem. Yeah, it just, I know for some people it's a question of how much it's gonna cost.

So, there is a, there are various, like what's it, AirBnB type of places. And so, I found one, the actual competition is held just down the hill from this house on the shoreline there. And this is the closest place to the Kayak Nuuk Clubhouse and where they stage the games at, that you can get.

The school, depending on which school they use, could be half a mile or a mile away and just the trek from the school down to the competition back and forth. You'll run that route three or four times a day. And going back and forth.

But this is very close. It's three bedrooms and they're double beds in each bedroom. So, it's only six people.

So, I'm hoping to get more than six people in. So, the disadvantage of staying in a house like this is, at the school, you get to hang with the Greenlanders all day long for a week. And you see them day and night and there's a lot of cool interaction there.

And some of them can speak some English. So, you get to know people and hang out with them. And that's really, really cool.

But so, depending on how we can finance this, this facility has Wi-Fi, which is not given in Greenland, a big plus. And there's also, remember, you're gonna be there for a week. This has a washer and dryer, another important consideration.

And a private bathroom. So, maybe we can arrange like, some of our team can stay at the school and some here. And this is still a staging operation area and then they can switch.

I don't know, we'll work out those things. But anyway.

And so, I have my podcast partner, we have reserved this for that time there.

Now, we can cancel the reservation. We have this reserved. And when I saw that it was called the Black House, you know I had to have it. 

So, food. Food in Greenland.

Food in Greenland is heavy on the meat. Very heavy. Now, if you're a vegetarian, you can find vegetables and things.

They're not real fresh and they're not real cheap, but you won't starve to death. But the meat is really heavy. They provide meals for the competitors during that week. Well, they used to. This year, there was some new big thing. They said, we're only gonna provide the dinner. We're not gonna do breakfast and lunch, which threw off my budgetary calculations quite a bit, but I dealt with it. 

So, one of the evenings, they'll generally make the national dish, which is called suasat, which is seal stew. So, seal meat and some sort of potatoes and onions.

And seal meat is an experience. You cannot legally eat any in this country because we can't import it. But it's, the only way I'd describe it is it definitely does not taste like chicken.

So, you also get to experience Greenland culture and you will probably get to sing the qajaq song or hear the qajaq song sung many, many times. And maybe I'll see if I can get people to sing the qajaq song tonight or tomorrow sometime so you can hear it. Because you wanna learn the qajaq song before you go to Greenland.

And you also have gift shops and tourist things. Now, the seal skin products, if you heard my talk just before lunch, before dinner, you can't legally bring these into the US, at least not yet, but they make all this beautiful stuff. But you can get carvings from reindeer antlers, caribou antlers, and lots of other tourist things, and T-shirts and things.

And then you can also go to the museums and see real seal skin kayaks. They don't, the competition, you never see any actual seal skin covered kayaks because it's so much work to do that. But in the museum, they have real tools that were used by hunters ages ago.

All right, so the date. They have not announced the date of the competition yet. So we're kinda guessing.

From recently, the last couple of years, it's sort of mid-early July kind of thing. So my best guess is, if you're taking time off, don't buy your plane ticket yet because we're looking to get maybe some group rates out of United Airlines. But to put in for vacation time, like the second two full weeks in July, although it's probably gonna go to a little bit past that, but you actually have to be restricted by, United Airlines is not flying every day.

So my best estimate so far is from the 7th to the 22nd, because that's when there's a flight on those two days there and back out of Newark. We're also in touch with Maligiaq, and we're gonna see if he wants to offer a trip. That was done in 2017.

Some of us went. A five-day expedition out in the Greenland Wilderness and then the competition. Kayaking in the wilderness. We had a blast, it was amazing. So that's gonna take longer, but we'll have to see who wants to do what, what the interest is, and how we figure out to buy the tickets, and we form some sort of package deal, all right? And you're probably wondering what this is actually going to cost. 

So figure it's sort of like the price of a brand new fiberglass sea kayak.

Like, on the low end, what's that, 3,000? If you want better accommodations, 4,000, 5,000. Like, 2,500, really cheap scrape, but you're gonna regret things you can't do there because you don't have the money for it. So in that neighborhood, 3,000 plus.

Does that sound about right? 

The way I do it, that covers everything if you can get yourself to Newark Airport. But I'm quite experienced at living very cheaply, so take that for what it's worth. 

If you're interested, let me know. And I've set up this hashtag. I really don't know how hashtags work because I'm inept at that stuff, but I set up this #QUSANUUK2026, and that's supposed to let everybody network with the information. I don't know. My social media guy is on that, so I'm letting him do that. Anyway, all right. 

So, Wayne Gilchrist was here in 2006, and Wayne started HRGF, Hudson River Greenland Festival, about 2003.

And Wayne was all in, was totally into learning all the rolls. He's a very athletic guy. I think he'd done gymnastics in his younger days, and so he was all over the ropes, and he took his enthusiasm, made an event.

The Hudson River Greenland Festival was a one-day event back then. He had it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. Came to Delmarva, and he was getting ready to go to Greenland, make that pilgrimage, really live out his passion.

And I think it might have been 2006 or so. He was gearing up for it. He had a wife and two kids.

He's a relatively younger guy, but two kids. And that spring, I guess, his wife told him that they were soon gonna have a third kid, which meant that the Greenland thing would just have to wait. So, he got a new job somewhere south, and he had to stop doing HRGF.

So, HRGF went dormant for a while until Uncle Dave, Dave Sides, revived it and turned it into a full weekend, and it's still going strong, and I think Dave is now running that event with lots of help, and it lives to this day. So, I had Wayne's phone number in my address book a couple years after he disappeared.

So, I dialed it up one time, and I said, “My name is Dubside, and I'm looking for Wayne Horodowich, and I'm involved in traditional kayaking”. 

And there's this pause there. I'm sorry, what did I say? Yeah, okay, yeah, Wayne Gilchrist.

So, I said, “I'm Dubside, and I'm looking for Wayne Gilchrist, and I've been involved in kayaking at Delmarva”. 

And there's this pause, and there's this, “I don't believe it”. So, I said, “You know, we're going strong. I've been to Greenland more times”, the whole bit. 

So, he said to me with a bit of a sigh in his voice, he said, “Well, I've been through skin cancer. I gained 30 pounds. I'm in no kind of shape for that kind of thing anymore, and, you know, life has just taken a different turn”. 

So, you know, what can you do? It didn't work out for him. So, probably about 10 years after that, at HRGF, which was still in full swing, Uncle Dave contacted Wayne Gilchrist, and invited him to make an appearance at Hudson River Greenfest.

Maybe not the whole weekend, but he'll come by on a Saturday afternoon, and we can have a little tribute to the founder, and voice our appreciation in person, you know. So, that was the plan. So, Saturday came, and we had a program that night.

We waited, and Wayne never showed up. And I would guess that he was ambivalent, and it was just too painful to come back and be reminded of what he was never able to do. And so, you know, his dream of going to Greenland just never actually happened, unfortunately.

So, obviously, what I'm saying is, you know, opportunities that come around may not come around again, and if you don't jump on what you can do at one point, it may be gone forever. Just, that's just the way it is. But, if you're interested in going next year, as I said, I want to put a good, solid team together, and make a good, strong appearance in Greenland.

You can let me know about that, and I'm not looking for a total commitment. So, just, if you're interested, and then we can keep talking.

QUESTION: 
Will there be a boat that we can use, or something like that? 

DUBSIDE: 
Oh, good question. Yeah, I forgot about that part, yes. Qajaq USA, I've been talking to Tony Schmitz, the president, and we're looking at ways to accommodate that, because I'm sure that's very helpful, people can compete.

So, various avenues. We're thinking that we could pay Maligiaq to make some skin on frames, and have it stored there. It's like the fleet in Greenland of Qajaq USA is an idea.

We could have, Tony said, well, Olaf, is Olaf here? Did he leave already? Who made the folding skin on frame? We could have him make some more of those, because we can ship those on a plane, or something like that. That's another idea. 

So, anyway, we're looking at that. So, hopefully, we could have three or four kayaks there.

We need to know who's going, and what size, and who really wants to compete, and those sort of things. But we're on that, because, yeah, that is a big consideration. If you take your own personal kayak and ship it there, it's going to be several thousand dollars to do that.

So, but we're on that. 

You can borrow a kayak from the Greenlanders.

They might give it to you seconds before the race starts, and I've done that some years. And sometimes, you get a lousy kayak, and your rolls look like crap. This past year, the one guy, his kayak was awesome.

I said, next year, can I borrow your kayak for the rolling? So, I'm looking to do that again. 

I've got a message out to Johan Wirsten of Rebel Kayaks.

Ask him, would you donate us a kayak, and ship it from Poland to Greenland for us to use in the competition? So, we've got lots of things. We're trying to figure that out. 

Having said all this, let me also reinforce. There is no requirement that you have to go to Greenland. All right? This is just for- Some of us can go.

If you can't go to Greenland, it's no big deal. It doesn't make you less of a person in the kayak community here. You can have long experience with traditional kayaking.

You can have tremendous influence and get a tremendous amount of respect without going to Greenland. Dan Siegel has never been to Greenland. Mike Hamilton has never been to Greenland, okay? Peter Gangler has never been to Greenland.

And they may never go to Greenland. That's fine. Doesn't matter.

If you can go, I'd like to bring you next year and let's put in a good show. Actually, the way I look at it is next year, we're all going to Greenland. Some of us are going physically to represent the rest of us that are going spiritually.

All right? And so my last- We're running into other people's time now. Okay, let's just move this along now before I- To go back to what John Peterson said, the whole point of having the competition, which is the whole point of Qajaq USA, which is the whole point- I'm sorry, which is the whole point of Qaannat Kattuffiat which by extension is the whole point of Kayak USA. The reason why we're doing all this is for the kids.

Thank you.