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When last we left our heroes, they were ankle deep in epoxy and carbon fiber, building a 20-foot-long adventure boat for the 2026 Everglades Challenge event next spring.  My handsome skipper and his talented boat designer pal OH Rodgers had agreed to a plan and constructed the mold for the hull, the deck, and the tanks, as well other bits and bobs like the centerboard trunk. They stocked up on two-part tropical epoxy (it cures slower than regular epoxy), yards and yards of carbon fiber and fiberglass, plus rubber gloves. And they made stuff.  Consider a brief metaphor for boat-building: Imagine being at a supper party, where you've idly dabbed a finger into the puddle of melted wax at the base of a candle flame.  There's a thin line, thermodynamically speaking, between wax that scalds and the stuff that's too cool to adhere to a fingertip. You're pretty good at this, however, and you've managed to make a smooth watch cap of wax for your index finger.  Now your quest becomes how and when to remove it. Wait too long and it's brittle and will crack into messy fragments. Go too soon, and the wax pulls and distorts. In a nutshell, that is what it is to build a boat from a mold.  So when I suggest we take a moment to celebrate the good news was that each of the boat's components successfully parted company with its mold, I mean it.  A breath in silence, if you please, to express our gratitude to the genius loci of the boatyard for this not inconsiderable success. A hearty thank-you also to the gang of friends who helped. What's next on the project? Summer vacation, actually. The hull and deck are stacked atop one another (but not yet attached) and trussed like the cargo box going into a tramp steamer.  But instead of going abroad, the boat has been hoisted like a particularly large piece of stage scenery into the very rafters of OH's barn. Both of our intrepid builders have summer vacation plans, and the shipyard will shutter up for a few months.  And what of the weighty and unwieldy molds, such as the team spent so much time and energy creating? They too hit the road for the summer: friend Tony Pocklington has carted them off so that he might build a sister vessel to Jeff's. Twinsies!  So while the boat hovers in the literal wings, TwoBeers idly plans the mechanical details and specs of the water-ballast pumps he's hoping to install once the boat-building season comes back around.
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 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.
"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.  The Everglades Challenge has begun. Which means that for those of us watching from home, it's click-click-click time as we hit the "refresh" "reload" or "regenerate" buttons on the various tracking websites. https://raceowl.com/EC2025/RaceMap4 https://www.watertribe.com/Events/ChallengeGMapper.aspx https://share.garmin.com/N9OY8TwoBeers
Here are a few snaps from before the start. And a couple from after the start... Crossing fingers and knocking wood for a safe and pleasant event for all the Challengers and their folks!
 Défi des who now? Why French this morning? No earthly idea, and the coffee has not yet hopped me up to a level that might provide a theory. In any case, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: it's EVERGLADES CHALLENGE TIME! And what do we know? First, the 300-mile-long unsupported human-powered race starts on Saturday, March 1, 2025 at Fort De Soto Beach at 8:30 am. The fleet of around 100 or so adventurers on small boats will push off the high tide line and twinkle over the horizon for parts south, like actual magic. Seriously, an inspirational and astonishing sight.  They stop first to check in at Cape Haze Marina on Florida'a west coast, then dip into the Everglades's little hometown of Chokolaskee, then to the glamorous Everglades National Park in Flamingo, before finishing (we should all be so lucky!) in Buttonwood Sound in Key Largo over the next week or so.  Our favorite team is of course the mighty Spawn of Frankenscot, a home-build, OH-Rodgers-purpose-designed 22-foot sloop that features a carbon-fiber mast, big water ballast tanks, a bowsprit, dual rudders, and a team of seasoned adventurers: TwoBeers and Moresailesaid.  Moresailesaid (Jahn JT Tihansky) and TwoBeers (Jeff Linton) ready to take to the waves.
 This photo screen grabbed from WaterTriber Gil Hidalgo; the team touching shore in Flamingo. Not pictured: the large salt-water croc native to that dock. A lot of folks are clicking "Regenerate View" during the event, so delays are expected. If unwelcome. A second tracking map, called "Race Owl," is often a better resource for seeing the whole gang of racers. An observer may need to convert Racer Numbers back into names on this site, but alas, perfection eludes us all. https://raceowl.com/EC2025 or click on the map below.  Finally, as ground control, I have the Garmin InReach site on speed-dial. Does anyone else remember speed-dial? Or has it got over the bar with quaint antiquities like "telex" and "Linotype"?  This photo from--perhaps Tom Ray? The team looks to be going toward Chokoloskee in about 2021... The Garmin InReach is a personal locator the size of a bar of soap that's set to ping every 20 minutes or so with darn-near-magical exactness. Which means a justifiably nervous shore crew can keep a sharp eye on things by watching the InReach's website. That link is https://share.garmin.com/N9OY8TwoBeers or click on the map below.  My Spawnsters bags are packed, their plans are made (and writ large, as my friend Robin might say, in Jell-o), and our on-shore resources are on notice: T-two days and counting....  Aaaaaand they're off. Knock wood.
Without a lot of folderol or fancy-dance, allow me to present an update from the magnificent boatbuilding center of our universe: west central Florida.
When last we left our team of my favorite skipper and his boat-designing buddy OH Rodgers, they had finished much of the hull of the mold and were departing for diverse sailing venues. Sailing done, they returned to the forge and got right to it. Using the same plywood + strakes technique, they created sides for the boat's mold. OH, with a bit of extra morning at his disposal, whipped up the mold for the centerboard trunk.
The construction project looks like a sled, or a boat, but this is in fact a mold, so it becomes vital to make what looks like the interior of the hull (but which is in fact the outside of the boat-yet-to-be) SUPER smooth.
Nobody wants that cupcake to get stuck in the baking tin.
So a day or two of putty, sanding, and waxing ensued.
As well as yet another shopping spree. (yay local economy!)
This time, it was Fiberglass Coatings in St. Petersburg, Florida. Where 8-ounce e-glass, some sheets of plastic foam divinylcell, and epoxy resin —the tropical, slow-cure kind—followed Mr. Linton home.
There was also a mail order to Miami for...tah dah! 50 yards of carbon fiber.
Not that we need the refresher, but when fabricating something like a boat, a pool, or the body of a Nascar vehicle, fiberglass has been the material of choice since the 1950s. And by "fiberglass" I mean actual glass fibers plus a polymer resin. The glass fibers are woven into a cloth (which was briefly in vogue as a home-decorating option. No wonder we have so many allergies.) The fabric is solidified by the resin, while the polymer is strengthened by the fiber. Fast forward to the early 1980's when carbon "whiskers" or fibers started to substitute for glass fibers. Carbon is lighter and more rigid, making it ideal for things like racing car parts and boat hulls, plus (bonus!), carbon fibers are not natively irritating like glass, which is why it's also great for human prosthetics and sporting goods. And of course it's dead sexy. 
At this point the build really begins.
Jeff first cut out and pieced together the foam core that would be sandwiched between layers of fabric. And numbered those pieces so that they could be reset within the mold. Then he pulled them out and stacked them to the side. 
At long last: the outermost layer! Jeff smoothed 8-ounce fiberglass cloth over the mold, making sure it was quite flat to the waxed wood. The fiberglass (white) is sturdier than the carbon (black) when it comes to abrasion and sharp impacts. You know, as one might encounter on an oyster bed in Florida Bay.
So on top of the fiberglass goes a layer of carbon fiber fabric. Both fabrics went on dry. 
That white stuff under foot is traditional fiberglass, while the black fabric is carbon.
The fabrics are woven loosely enough so that they can turn a bit of a corner without distorting.
Like a good Little Black Dress, the tailoring should be exquisitely simple and fiendishly expensive.
With the two layers of fabric in place (and held there precariously with blue painters' tape), Jeff called in his brother.
Brother John is a skilled carpenter who has been busy rebuilding his house after the hurricanes, but he cheerfully gave up a day of progress to help get the foam core "buttered" and placed. A generous dollop of resin was first squeegeed onto the fabrics, soaking, say, the floppy bottom slice of bread in a syrupy layer of condiment. Then the crunchy structural middle of the sandwich: the foam. To make this part work, OH showed John how to mix the resin into a thicker putty, and John commenced applying it to the foam. The process is a bit like setting tile: you grab the tile, apply tile cement to the underside, and then flip it into place. Only this "tile" is the size of a big unfolded pizza box, the surface is drippy wet cloth, and the adhesive is resin that cures at an alarmingly rapid pace. 
Our heroes constructed a giant open-face sandwich quickly, setting core from bow to stern. Another layer of carbon fiber cloth finished the sandwich, with resin generously squeegeed on top.
This was no panini, however lovingly grilled by fine Italian craftspeople. Instead, our tasty treat finished its day with the 7-Eleven treatment: getting hermetically sealed in plastic. Air pockets are the enemy in most resin situations. And an efficient way to make sure the goopy stuff is driven deep into the layers is to vacuum bag it. Imagine someone sitting on a Wonderbread-and-peanut-butter sandwich inside an unlocked Ziplock bag. 
Only with a vacuum rather than somebody's butt. OH recruited a pair of shop vacs to get the job done, along with a big roll of Visqueen (think industrial cling film). Note that bit of line curled in the stern of the boat: it's deliberately placed as a route for air to escape.
The gang allowed a day or two for the resin to kick in vacuum conditions.
Supervision and quality control around the boat works provided by Pearl the wonder cat.
OH laid up (layed up?) the centerboard trunk, which looks like a bit more fiddly a job in terms of tailoring. But he's got the practice and probably didn't want to watch the guest-builders struggle. 
Fast forward a few days and the very good news is that the hull was successfully decanted from the mold after nerve-wrackingly careful application of wedges. Oh the sound of that egg-cracking...
We hope the mold also survived the surgery—rumor has it that this boat will not be an only child. Next time: molds for the deck, the sole, and the three ballast tanks.
It was bound to happen.
The 2014 Sailing magazine profile of the first of these experiments: the highly modified Frankenscot.
That sweet skipper of mine left the house early on a wintery Thursday morning, announcing, "I'm going on a shopping spree!" "Ooh, where?" says I. "The lumber store!" Lumber for a new creation. 
After more than a decade of thrills and spills racing the Everglades Challenge, my favorite skipper has decided to up the ante.
What shape, you might ask, would that TAKE? I mean, 300+ miles along Florida's west coast on an unsupported human-powered adventure craft of his own making—what could be yet more exciting than that? Here are a few of the highlights of that trip: sharks, sinking, salt-water crocs, jumping fish, sunburn, various exotic snakes, lightning strikes and squalls, sleep deprivation, boat butt— How about doing the race solo? NO, not this year. On the first Saturday of this March, the same TwoBeers and Jahn Tihansky (WaterTribe name: Moresailesaid) will onboard Spawn headed to Key Largo from St. Pete Beach. But YES, TwoBeers is currently working in concert with OH Rodgers (aka Ninjee) to build a barky suited to single-handed adventure racing, to launch for the 2026 Everglades Challenge. 
Ooooh! architect at work!
TwoBeers and Ninjee have been scheming and dreaming about this for a while.
Among the design criteria: it needs to be quick, but not hazardously overpowered. It needs to be kindly, but not a tub. A shallow draft that's both rowable and sailable, and light enough for one person to launch from the high tide line of Fort DeSoto Beach... And sure enough, a design is drawn, thanks to Ninjee. TwoBeers goes on a lumber shopping spree, and it begins. They make a mold for the hull, ingeniously reproducing the drawn lines from the plans in 3-D with 1x2s. Clever pre-high-tech technique. 
They create a sturdy base from 3/4 inch plywood and 2x6s. It's heavy like gravity is heavy.
Using the 1x2s to replicate the curves of the drawing, they can then make "stations" or ribs.
Now, THAT looks like a mold.
Once the ribs are set, the next step is to layer strakes of 1x2s into the nascent hull mold, and screw them into place.
Now, to make a smooth and finished mold ready for fiberglass or (ooh!) carbon fiber, Jeff applied long narrow strips of very thin plywood (Luan, for those who like details) onto the strakes on the diagonal.
Then a second layer goes in at the opposite diagonal.
This all gets—in the colorful parlance of the boatbuilder—screwed and glued.
The process repeats to translate the drawing of the boat's sides into three dimensions.
How much wood would a woodchuck—wait, never mind.
Again with the plywood strips, this time longitudinally rather than on an angle for the sides, which are referred to here as patterns.
And then...we all wait, as the glue sets.
Just kidding.
The glue set that same day, more or less. But OH and Mr. Linton have been swept away from the boat yard on various sailing adventures, not the least of which is Jeff's upcoming 2025 Everglades Challenge. When next they meet to build, there will be finishing touches to the hull mold, then they'll build additional molds: centerboard trunk mold, ballast tank molds, and a deck mold.  73 hours after pushing off the beach in Fort DeSoto, TwoBeers and Moresailesed arrived safe in Key Largo, completing their 2024 Everglades Challenge. It's been 10 years since that first expedition, when it was the original Frankenscot. These days, with Spawn having been designed FOR this event, I'm less worried about the team arriving alive. But stuff happens, which is why they have 2 hand-held radios, 1 Velocitek electronic compass, 2 smart phones, 1 tablet for navigation, 2 safety harnesses, a packet of paper charts, a personal emergency beacon for each sailor, and 1 personal tracker on the boat.  16 times this year before finishing, they pressed that OK button on their tracker. The Garmin InReach proved itself definitively 4 metric buttloads better than the SPOT personal tracker. SPOT, having but the 1 job, did not track my person. Garmin InReach did, every 10 minutes—without drama, attacks of the vapors, or random skips. Thank you Garmin. I don't think I am going to stop mentioning that for some years.  27 is the number of times the water pump was deployed. This is higher than normal for the trip, and weren't the fellas glad to hear the cheerful little battery-powered pump kick on! Each of the wide wings of Spawn contain a water-tight compartment that ballast the boat. The little pump pushes water into a tank as directed; the tank empties by way of a round port and a vent. It's like having an extra crew hiking on the high side—a big fat crew who doesn't eat, complain, or cut into the supply of beer. It's been handy when the boat is on a long tack, but this year, they found themselves flipping the switch a lot. Even with a quarter-tank of leverage, they maximized power whenever the wind permitted.  13 times in the course of the 300-mile adventure, the wind slicked out. Meaning the Gulf of Mexico or Florida Bay or whatever body of water was like glass, showing absolutely no air movement. Which is not so great for a sailing vessel. Like in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "Day after day, day after day/We stuck, nor breath nor motion;/Idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted sea."  2 is the number of oars aboard. Luckily, Spawn was built for glassy conditions as well as sporty ones. My favorite skipper has outfitted the barkey with long sweeps and a sliding rowing seat. They were able to buck the tide at Stump Pass with help of those long oars. It also kept them moving when there was no other power available. Other WaterTribesfolk during this year's challenge converted their sailing vessels into b&b's or Ronco pocket fishing platforms. Unluckily, the team was out of training for rowing.  9 out of 73 is the estimate for the number of hours the Spawnsters rowed or row/sailed during the event. The number of miles is unknown: high math and calculations of tidal flow are beyond us at the mo.  20 is the number of minutes for the rowing watches. That is, first one guy rowed for 20 minutes, then the other guy rowed for 20 minutes. They did this for a perhaps 10 miles off Sanibel, plus many passes, plus just "for a while" off the Everglades. Rowing machines takes on a new meaning. Meanwhile, the kayaking division of the WaterTribe was rubbing hands in anticipation of beating records without having to battle winds and waves. Alas, the tide...  1 is the number of times Spawn took breaking water over the bow this year. While heading toward Everglades City, a Karen on a crab boat decided it was time to teach a sailboat a lesson about using the channel. With headlights on hi-beam, the 35-or-so footer charged at them in the narrow channel, veered across their bow at a prodigious clip, then cut back so that their wake shot green water across Spawn. This while Spawn was hugging the right side of the channel! Like an 18-wheeler swerving into oncoming traffic and then passing on the shoulder. Were our intrepid sailors sporting their drysuits? Were discouraging words bantered about? Did cooler heads later agree that this was yet another reason not to carry rocket-launchers? The crab boat was not sorry, btw.  1 is the number of waterspouts spotted by the team early Monday night. Just as TwoBeers reached for his phone to take a photo (I know, I know, calm down! We are all allowed to evolve and grow, people!), the tornado-shaped whirlysnake slithered back into the cloud bank over Cape Sable, leaving the rowers without even a puff of air to help them along their way...  1,000,000,000 is the number of stars shining over Florida Bay late on Monday night of this year's challenge. A few days of clouds and haze cleared, giving way to an astonishment of spark far from the loom of artificial light. The on-the-water portion of Team Spawn rarely wax poetic, but they reported that the night sky was indeed magnificent.  3 meals of fried chicken were consumed, along with 3 breakfast shakes (2 strawberry-banana and one––so healthy!––Fruit Loop flavored) 3 oranges (but not avocados) and 2 bags of homemade beef jerky 4 or so boxes of Kind and granola bars 2.5 baggies of chocolate bark (pairs well with rowing), and 1 energy-pill jar of mixed jelly beans and Hot Tamales 1 single can of Mountain Dew (on dawn on Tuesday, when the wall was about to be hit) 4 mugs of instant ramen noodles (checkpoints 1 and 3 were the Noodle Kings and Queens) 2.5 jars of trail mix 7 1-liter-bottles of water, frozen and then melted 8 bottles of Gatorade and 1 bottle of sundown beer per day. Leaving, naturally, 2 beers on arrival.  2 is the number of large sharks Moresailesed and TwoBeers spotted in Florida Bay. Large being over 4 feet long. 1 a jumper whose splash may have startled our aquanauts out of a solid, head-nodding, drive-over-the-rumble-strips snooze at the wheel.  35 is the number of people who texted or called in the last 30 hours of the race. Thank you for checking in!  754 is the number of times Bookworm clicked refresh and reload on the most excellent RaceOwl race tracker. And not just for me to watch my guys. There's MadMothist, Sailor King, AndyMan and NateDog, Jarhead, Yarddog, and so many more whose progress I checked. It's the sort of tick that will cling for a few days, when I bolt up from deepest sleep and continue to monitor the progress of the racers.  1 is the place our Spawnsters ended up. Officially, I believe Chief awarded them the title of "Slowest Ever First Boat to Finish." Still, on the dusty white beach at the Pelican Resort in Key Largo, the gang of welcomers included Matt and Jody Koblenzer of Key Largo from the 2.4 Meter Class, Keys Realtor and Flying Scotsman Jim Signor, and a few of the Tribe: the Chief, PaddleDancer, Mrs. Bump and Turn, Skip, Mrs. MadMothist, Possum, plus a nice vacationing couple from Alaska who know the R2AK and are checking out our southern-fried adventuring. I can't actually count the blessings. Thank you for following and cheering the fellas on and for giving me the excuse to tell this particular story.  Until next time, sportsfans...
 A clarion is a kind of horn. Have I heard it (like outside the dubious reality of a Ye Olde Rounde Table movie or two)? Yes. Yes I have. It has a deceptively bovine undertone, as when the annual beach launch of the Everglades Challenge is started by a blast on a conch shell.  Spawn at the dock in Key Largo. The Everglades Challenge--again? Yes, why not? My favorite skipper and his Spawnster cohort Jahn Tihansky have been hitting that beach off and on for the past ten years. They start at dawn on the first Saturday of March, pointing the bow of the boat across Tampa Bay and hurrying south. Familiarity has bred something that is not contempt, (we rightly fear hubris) but... anxieties have calmed with the years. A 300-mile unsupported adventure race looks daunting until a team completes it successfully more than half a dozen times. And after their BIG year, when they did the 1200-mile Around Florida Challenge--? Well, ten days of rations, sleep deprivation, cold fronts, and soggy clothing DOES put a 2-day adventure into its place.  The Around Florida track from 2022. Someone recently suggested that I should write about TwoBeers and Moresailesed's adventures on Spawn for my next book. Only tell it from my perspective. I don't believe I've ever had a different perspective on the event. In the "READ NOW" instructions for the event, the organizers spell the risks without ambiguity: "You could die." Even more than usual, they mean. When humans take to sea in small ships, it's intrinsically dangerous. The organizers repeat their warning a second time a few paragraphs later, possibly just because my anxiety responds well to a bell tolling.  Stop and enjoy these, do! So from my perspective, this is a more-than-usually worrisome event. Yes of course I could obstruct or attempt to gently dissuade my mate from his passion, but where's the win in that? Knock wood we should have a few adventures, all of us, before the curtain drops.  The thrill of success at the end of the Everglades Challenge. So from my perspective, I can aid and abet, organize the ground transport, and pack a bigger medical kit for them. I'll help them get to the beach, knock wood, watch them launch into the briny deeps, and knock it again, meet them at the finish. For 2024, I am low-key psyched to announce I will NOT be complaining about the SPOT. Instead of that spotty old personal locator, we upgraded to Garmin InReach. Nearly every person we know and many we do not know recommended it. And atmospheric conditions (not to mention nudge-nudge "solar flares") willing, we should be able to track our hero's path... As always, the WaterTribe site has a tracking map. It tends to glitch and lag, and you must select the right event to see what's going on. Here's that link: (Sorry it looks rough, my website host has been balking at letting me make it a nice, bougie-looking link.) https://www.watertribe.com/Events/ChallengeGMapper.aspx  On the beach in 2014...when it all started for TwoBeers and Moresailesed. Here is the Garmin InReach link. It shows only our guys, so it's less useful for checking on the race, but you know, nothing's perfect.
share.garmin.com/N9OY8TwoBeers The tarpon shot out of the water like a fleshy javelin, intent on gobbling a bait fish. Four shiny feet of muscle and eyeball, it landed all willy-nilly in the water a scant boat-length from Spawn. Then another silverking leaped and belly-flopped. Then another. And another. "Whoa," commented one of our weary sailors. "Yeah," replied the other. Just another day off Cape Sable.  TwoBeers and Moresailesaid brought their 22-foot boat, Spawn, safely to harbor in Key Largo on Monday, March 6 at around 6 pm –– after a 300-mile, 50-hour Everglades Challenge. They were first to finish, having worked through a pack of boats that started ahead on the course. The event is unique in many aspects, including the sometimes-fluid starting line. This year, for instance, the weather on Friday before the start was fairly gnarly, with an on-shore gale and a big surf pounding. In fairness, it was not awful by tee-time the next day, but as Moresailesaid has said, "To finish first, first you must finish." Of the 80 or so boats competing, only about 20 (including Spawn) chose to start traditionally, pushing off the beach at Fort DeSoto park in St. Petersburg. Others drove down the coast and put in where they felt comfortable.  Friday morning as the breeze was building... At checkpoint 3, a spot deep in the Everglades National Park notable for poor cell coverage and a resident salt-water croc who likes to keep an eye on the boat-ramp, Spawn had unwelcome congress with a manatee. Tethered to the dock, with the sail up while Moresailesaid went to check in, Spawn suddenly began moving to windward. Then there was a bit of gentle gyration until a quick-thinking TwoBeers raised the centerboard. The manatee mating frenzy continued apace, but without the non-consensual participation of the boat. Without a "yes," o manatee, it's "NO."  Departing Flamingo, our sailing heroes used their wiles and ways to get past their last forward competitor by splitting tacks around Joe Kemp Key. Instead of using the usual channel, the boys went east. Skittering along in the very skinny water, says TwoBeers, "Is not for the faint-hearted. There are lots of wading birds. You have to ask yourself, are they seagulls or are they herons? If it's herons, cool." Among the spectators on shore, eagle-eyed Rappin Rodney Koch called it: "No risk-it –– no biscuit." For around three miles, the team navigated by appropriate sea-birds. Perfectly innocent sharks minding their own sharky business were startled out of their wits, half-climbing, half-swimming to get out of the way of the boat as it whistled over the shallows. But the route cut off enough distance to put Spawn in the overall lead.  Rare action selfie just past Russell Key. Says TwoBeers of navigating that section of Florida Bay, "My socks were dry the whole way until the end of Twisty Mile. We had to get out and push the boat for the last 100 feet to get to the deep water toward Russell Key."  Smile or grimace? How much sleep did they get? A princely three hours a night! The conditions were favorable for the odd daytime nap and even a rough watch-system.  Did they run out of food? No! They enjoyed fried chicken dinner twice, plus plenty of granola bars and other snacks. At the dock, there was ample water and ––ahem–– two beers left in the cooler.  Why does their track have long time-gaps? Mostly because their SPOT tracker is not very good at its job, but also because the entire SPOT system (so we hear) went down briefly on Sunday night. And yes, FULLY AGREE, a Garmin Inreach is the better option.  How much rowing did they do? More than a few hours, TwoBeers admits. But it made the difference between first and fourth place when they were able to navigate in no wind and foul current, especially in the passes around Choko and Flamingo How long did it take? 50 hours. Saturday at 10 through Monday afternoon. Two full nights's sailing. It's not their longest trip (60 hours), nor their shortest (33 hours). On the eye-of-the-beholder scale, I give it about a four out of ten: They looked tired, but not wrung-out; raspy but not death-defying; creaky but not gimpy. Neither fell asleep in his dinner.  Beach welcome to Possum and Sailorking! Amy's favorite anecdote so far? Typically, I don't hear all the most "exciting" details for a day or two. My favorite skipper is a considerate husband and doesn't like to alarm me all at once. Still, I liked this, overheard over breakfast at Mrs. Mack's: "Yeah, I was glad to be going out Gasparilla in the dark. We could hear the waves breaking, but we didn't have to see what we were getting into."  What's it like at the finish line? The finish line is a pocket beach at a little 1950's style resort on Buttonwood Sound (the inside of Key Largo); the welcoming committee included Paula Paddledancer, the Chief, our dear Flying Scot friend Jim Signor, some extra WaterTribe shore crew, and a sprinkling of hotel guests who get a surprise floor show as the boats arrive amidst cheers and a random conch moo. Evidently, one of the liveaboards in the Sound has a conch and he's not afraid to use it.  And the big question, of course, is Will they do it again?
We shall see. Meanwhile, it's not a joke that Spawn is available for purchase. Turn-key operation. Proven winner. Complete Ultimate Florida program available! No tire-kickers please. |
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