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And Right Back to Work...

3/16/2025

When last we left my particular hero, Mr. Linton was setting off on a sailing adventure among the alligators and what-not. Happily, he and his buddy Jahn were safe and successful on this latest Everglades Challenge, and have since returned to shore.

This never being a foregone conclusion, insert respectful pause here while I explore my gratitude.

Because himself, after catching up on sleep, did not pause for longer than a moment.

After returning home and washing and packing up the gear and the boat, TwoBeers waded right into the river of work that is boat-building.

Having made the hull, he went right at the rest of the boat.

In any mold-built operation, having a mold handy just in time is key to getting things done. This has meant Jeff stops by Home Depot for another load of plywood on his way to OH's place every few days.

Space is always a challenge. It takes room and ventilation to build a boat; I think the equivalent of boat-building is making and decorating a big batch of fancy sugar-cookies, where every inch of counter space is covered with some potentially messy yet vital part of the process.

Many cooks will not spoil the sloop.

To make this boat, you'd need molds for the 20-foot long hull, a cockpit sole (the sort of flooring inside the boat, at around 18 feet long), the deck (which keeps the splashes out of the front of the boat, and is around 10 feet long), and water-ballast tanks.

For those keeping track, know that the centerboard and rudders are a project for another season.

The cockpit sole vacuum-bagged and curing.

In the interest of conserving real-estate and effort, Jeff and OH built a single mold for both cockpit sole and deck.

These bulkheads, later combined with beams and stringers, will help keep the hull in shape.

They slipped that mold right into the project as it lays—a hull mold with fiberglass and carbon already done a few weeks back—and went to work on the cockpit sole.

The sole will sit maybe 8 or 10 inches up from the hull, allowing for floatation, strength, and running space on the barky. When finished it will rest on bulkheads and stringers.

The team settled bulkheads temporarily in place so everything fits as it ought, and then used the same program of sandwiching a piece of foam between layers of resin-soaked carbon fiber to lay up the cockpit sole.

Here's the deck, which will fit over the bow of the boat.

After it cured, they pulled the sole away from the mold (muscles!), stacked it, and commenced making the deck.

Oddly, the next day, they discovered a square foot or so of deck where the sticky resin did not "kick." So instead of baking itself into tough, crispy goodness, one random section remained sticky and limp. The cure was to cut the spot out and patch it.

Patched.

Why did it happen? Perhaps a bit of the resin didn't get thoroughly mixed with the accelerator—the tiny channel of liquid at the bottom edge of the can, perhaps.

Repairs were the work of mere minutes.

Imagine a layer-cake made of dreams, black carbon, and plywood: the hull mold is on the bottom, with a hull on it, with the decanted sole on top of that, with the sole-mold now holding the deck icing on the top.

The whole cake o dreams has been, as I type, hoisted into the rafters to make room for the next thing.

Look! In the sky! Is it a bird? A plane?

Water-ballast tanks were next on the punch-list.

For this, Jeff used 1/4 inch masonry board, a slightly more flexible option than plywood, to make the mold. It's fought a noble fight, has the masonry board, but is beginning—after making forms for the stringers and a box-shaped water tank—to return to the dust from which it was made.

A water-ballast tank. One of a pair.

When construction is complete, the water tanks will be integral to the hull.

On Spawn, the water tanks are part of the praying-mantis aspect of the boat: when on the trailer, the water tanks fold up.

What is the point of water-ballast tanks? Keeping in mind that sailing is a dynamic balance between two fluids: air and water. Air flows over the sails, creating lift. Water flows over the centerboard or keel, also creating lift.

To maximize the amount of flow, sailors work to keep the mast pointing up and the keel pointed down. We use our body weight for this, but as a solo sailor, my beloved skipper will not be able to have me scootch out a bit farther.

Instead, he'll flip a switch and pump saltwater into a tank and multiply the power through the magic of leverage. Without the companionship, but still.

Vacuum ahoy!

A third water tank will appear in the middle of boat, and is designed, I am sure you're glad to know, to permit the skipper to tell the boat to simmer down when things get a little too—let's say—lively.

I picture Fred Flintstone putting one big foot down to slow his roll.

Important construction note: wherever the boat "sees" sunlight, my favorite boat builder has applied a coat of traditional e-glass fiberglass. Carbon fiber, for all of its charms and beauties, does not like UV.

Carbon also hates a sudden impact, such as might occur in conjunction with an oyster bed or—heaven forfend!—should someone drop a bottled beverage onto it.

Fiberglass, however, is fine with careless bottle treatment, scoffs at scuffs, and tries to resit the sun a bit better.

Thanks for the helping hands, gang!

Next steps: reinforcing the bulkheads and glassing them in, as well as inserting stringers so that the structural grid of the hull is complete.

6 Comments

So They Said...

3/5/2025

8 Comments

"I wasn't going to tell you this," is how it starts on shore after the 2025 Everglades Challenge.

"We were going pretty good off East Cape Sable and we took a puff. I mean a PUFF, but the wings saved us."

I try muting my facial expression. It's standard procedure in a police interview and I suggest, best practice for marital story-time.

"Yeah, so the boat heeled over—but only until the wing got into the water. It works! We didn't go over!"

Hurrah! I am genuinely happy to know it.

The Spawnsters had a mostly uneventful zip down the left bank of Florida, finishing in 38 hours or so, with I am very happy to report ZERO flips, ZERO negative interactions with powerboats, and absolutely no communication skips from the Garmin InReach personal tracker.

Unlike so many others this year.

Several pals needed to be plucked from the water by the Coast Guard. Others limped or were towed to shore some leagues shy of the finish line. Everyone seems to have achieved dry land in decent health (knock wood!), though one theme on the beach seemed to be what kinds of hallucinations were had.

Nearly everyone spotted trees where no trees grow.

One sailor reported seeing a second thumb poised above the screen of his GPS; knowing that it was not his actual thumb, he still couldn't unsee it. Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.

Another saw a stilt castle out in the dark, like a fishing shanty but constructed along royal lines and thought to himself, "Who in the world would want to build that out here?" Nobody would, buddy, nobody.

One nodding skipper found himself haunted by a wall appearing and then reappearing in front of the boat; after the first couple of shouts of alarm, his young crew said something along the lines of, "Okay, Dad, it's not there."

Hallucination or no? "Well, I was seeing an island, but I didn't want to say, 'Hey, there's an island.'" TwoBeers said. "But then Jahn goes, 'There should be an island up here,' so it all worked out."

Moresailesaid and TwoBeers blazed a trail through the brand-new Milton Pass during daylight before hitting Checkpoint 1, Stump Pass, with extra style points. Not only did they carry a spinnaker in, Moresailesaid signed Spawn in and turned back around in a handful of minutes. Why the hurry? If no other reason than they didn't want to get stuck in traffic.

A screen grab from John Bell's Facebook post of Spawn entering CP1.

Checkpoint 2, Chokoloskee, offered its usual dreary charms on a Sunday morning: foul tide and a strenuous row and a notably long stretch of deep, slippery mud between where Spawn bellies up and where the sign-in box is located. Moresailesaid is in charge of checking in, leaving TwoBeers to hold the boat as he crane-foots through the muck.

Another Facebook screen grab, this time from Brian Weber of Moresailesaid tiptoeing into Choko.

Later arrivals to the checkpoint sailed right up to the grassy edge, hopped onto hardpan, and were in and out in mere moments. Luck of the draw.

Spawn reached and left Checkpoint 3, Flamingo, around 6 pm on Sunday, skipping the usual cuppa noodle treat in the ongoing interest of expedience.

The breeze was nearly ideal: West North West in the mid-teens, insuring not just good sailing, but sufficient water for navigating Florida Bay.

With what they call an "educated send-it," our team ignored most of the traditional routes, using the loom of Miami's light pollution to slalom through the many unlit sticks and rocky limestone bars. They took their furthest Northern route yet along the top of the Bay, passing the famous Crocodile Dragover and Tin Can channels.

As a measure of their sleep deficit, after lurching into view, sailing bare poles in a rare on-shore blow at the Pelican Cottage finish line, it took our favorite Spawnsters nearly 40 minutes to secure the boat to the dock.

Photo credit: Ann Tihansky, cheering squad queen!

The heroes were moving at roughly the pace of, oh, inchworms? Some kind of larvae.

Just barely yanking enough executive function together to stow sails and secure knots, but showing remarkable good cheer when handed their barley beverages and shown to the showers.

Fast forward a couple of days of big meals, storytelling, and naps. The two had planned to sail Spawn back North. They've hoped for years to have time to poke around and explore some of the natural wonders that they usually speed past, plus maybe bug some fishes. Alas, the weather did not continue to cooperate, and so Spawn folded back up and returned home via trailer.

The results? This year's Challenge was a fast race for the team, but not their fastest. They were the second boat to finish, after the Tornado catamaran. They were the first monohull.

Best news: they survived and are scheming next adventures.

8 Comments

Mild Mannered Year

3/3/2025

10 Comments

Not going to tempt fate, but it's true that some years are feistier and more fierce than others for the Everglades Challenge. But whether it's grueling by effort, by patience, by boat mishaps or by by extraordinary weather--this is a challenge.

From on-shore, I have had nearly no complaints about lag-time on the tracking map. Are we just grown accustomed to the skippy service or is it—ahem—better? My team has stayed in touch, the Garmin inReach continues to impress me with its solid performance at locating and tracking, and the fellas have even (gasp!) texted and sent photos.

Saturday, despite the late start at 8:30 rather than 7 am, sent the fleet merrily streaming South with bit of breeze out of the west/north west-ish quadrant between 5-10 knots. It's a wide range as the fleet includes kayaks, catamarans, small monohulls, and more.

I suppose most of us shore crew flicked at our screens, toggling between RaceOwl^ and Garmin->

Possibly having a treat with friends.

Or trying to gauge the weather.

While meanwhile, the Spawnsters kept the foot pegged to the floor by whatever means they had available.

That's what rowing Blind Pass looks like on the tracker.

When they had bars of service, they called in, gave me their situation and sent photos.

And now, from the finish beach, I have resumed my click-click clicking.

Until at 10:50, they loomed into the near distance, wove through the moored boats in the dark, and pressed the OK button one final time for the event...