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March, 2007
MaCKRO Paddler Profiles: Bob Martin & Richie Bartlett
By Paula Lunt
Race partners come and go like canoes for most paddlers, but for the team of Bartlett and Martin, 2007 marks fifteen years together.
Bob Martin got his start in paddling back when he was a kid visiting his uncle’s camp on Lucerne Lake. He was just five or six years old, but the paddling experience left its mark on Bob and by the time he was eighteen (1968) he was heading down the Kenduskeag Stream for his first race.
Bob had started working for a canoe manufacturer in Hampden named Rivers & Gilman while in high school. There he was known as the “mold man” prepping molds, assembling boats and doing repairs. He was able to buy his first boat while working there, plus several more. At one point he actually owned 62 canoes!
As the years passed, Bob raced with a variety of people, mostly doing just the Kenduskeag; then in the 1980s, he started racing with his son Free. Free, who was ten at the time, raced the Jr/Sr Division with his dad. They raced against some cousins who were in the same division, but always got their butt kicked, as they paddled the old Royalex down the river. It didn’t take Bob long to make the swap to Kevlar and let their talent unfold and beat those cousins at their own game. Soon Free was too old to race with his Dad in the Jr/Sr Division, so Bob started racing with his daughter Charley. Charley paddled with her Dad for four years throughout the whitewater season before she, also, got too old for the division.
With no more children to paddle with, Bob took up solo paddling. Back in the day there were a lot of good C1 paddlers who were quite close in talent, and Bob stayed in the C1 division for many years. He remembers racing his first C1 race on the St. George in a boat he bought on an IOU. After finishing third, one place behind the guy he was buying it from, the owner of the boat was having second thoughts on selling it to him! He also remembers being the fastest boat overall in the Souadabscook while paddling a C1 and holding the title of fastest C1 paddler on the Souadabscook for six years in a row. In 1992 he started paddling C2 again, this time with Richie Bartlett.
Richie and Bob were hunting buddies and while Richie didn’t have as many paddling years behind him as Bob, he had the love of paddling and the desire to do the best he could. Actually Richie never picked up a paddle until he was 31 or 32 years old, but when he finally found someone to paddle with, he knew he was hooked. He tried a variety of race partners, but never found the right one until Bob.
Today they paddle all the whitewater races together and have even paddled the St. John River twice together. Both enjoy paddling for paddling and taking in what Mother Nature has to offer. Their favorite river is the Souadabscook, but their favorite race is the Kenduskeag Stream Race. In 1992 and 1993 they were the fastest canoe overall and in 1998 they set the current record for fastest C2 long in a time of 2:03:40, beating the previous record that had stood for 27 years.
Will they be retiring from paddling any time soon? Probably not. Bob says he hopes to paddle until he dies and well, Richie - he’s just too sociable to ever leave us paddlers!
Bob Martin lives in Dedham with his wife Ida. He retired from the railroad, Springfield Terminal, in July of 2004.
Richie Bartlett lives in Newburg with his wife Shelia and son Hank. He retired from dairy farming in September 2004, but still works in the farming world.
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