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Over here at Boatbuild Central, things are hectic. We are six short weeks away from the starting horn for the 2026 Everglades Challenge. (It starts at sunrise give or take on March 7 at Fort DeSoto Park in St. Pete, FL). The new all-carbon single-handed OH Rodgers-designed adventure racing sloop, Zygote, is—ahem!—coming to fruition. So much progress! We found a trailer, and fitted it to the barky. Zygote is now primed (it will be mostly white, despite my request for a safety-orange bottom paint).  The mast has been up. It's a carbon fiber A-Cat mast shortened from 30 to around 27 feet. Muchas gracias to Ben Hall for that!  Sails are on order. Thanks to Doug Fisher of https://dougfishersailing.com/  The rudder gudgeons are bolted and glued in place.  Am I reaching for zygotish metaphors? Maybe, but the boat's identity is ripening. Wha? To differentiate the new boat from the old, the old team versus the new, and who's on first, here's the lineup: In this year's Everglades Challenge, my favorite skipper, TwoBeers, will be racing on Zygote, while his erstwhile partner Jahn "Moresailesed" Tihansky and Dave "DSea" Clement will be racing aboard Spawn of Frankenscot. While checking the WaterTribe tracking map, understand that familiar cheerful green Frankie face will be attached to DSea and Moresailesed, while Jeff's Zygote program will be marked by an aqua square o beer. It looks like this tiny on the map:  If you like, you can click on the photo to link to the WaterTribe map site.
More details will follow as they develop.
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In 2013, my favorite skipper, WaterTribe name TwoBeers, first applied a Sawzall to a venerable Flying Scot and, working from the Cocktail Napkin of Doom, stitched together the fast and frightening adventure boat, Frankenscot.  Frankenscot won its division in the 2014 Everglades Challenge, finishing fourth overall in the 300-mile adventure race before retiring.  Its logo featured the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein sporting a Tam O Shanter as a hat-tip to the vessel's Scottish heritage.  Alas, retirement for Frankenscot was less, "going to live out his days on a farm" and more "pauper's grave." Frankenscot ended up in a thousand pieces and was buried in the county's landfill for fiberglass.  We pause here to salute the unnatural creature. With lessons learned from that first adventure race and the Frankenscot build, the team of TwoBeers, Jahn "Moresaileesaid" Tihansky and designer OH "Ninjee" Rodgers promptly started in on the next generation: aptly named the Spawn of Frankenscot.  This sporty sloop was built from scratch, and sailed safely and quickly for the next nine or so Everglades Challenges. It went through several interesting big modifications, including water ballasted wings, trial water foils, shortened rudders and the like. Spawn won the overall first to finish three times, and carried the team around the coast of Florida in the 1200-mile-long Florida Challenge. Its logo looks something like this:  After the 2025 race, my beloved TwoBeers said, "I'm thinking about doing a solo challenge." Okaaaay. "On a new boat." Alrighty then. Cue the third generation of OH Rodgers/TwoBeers collaboration. Designed to perform with sporty speed, but with a bit of forgiveness built in, the latest generation has been taking shape at the same mysterious laboratory that gave birth to Spawn.  The vessel is on track to be sailing in a month or so...  This barky shall be called the Zygote. Zygote son of Spawn if you will.  Quick bio review: a zygote is the result of two haploid cells joining up in a fertilization event.
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