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To get a sense of my favorite skipper's 2026 Everglades Challenge, you could just watch this video clip from Nate "Natedog" Villardebo on repeat for 94 hours, 8 minutes, and 22 seconds. And a glorious sunshiney adventure it would be. You could alternate with the following video from Jahn Moresailesaid's pre-race delivery to Fort DeSoto for a little variety on the 327.07 miles.
Plus we severely under-packed electrons. The water ballast tanks, which help keep Zygote hiked flat against the wind and allow the carbon-fiber creature to move like a scalded cat are powered by a nifty Lithium battery that fainted on day 3. Which meant that my favorite skipper, TwoBeers, was obliged to sail at turtle pace. Likewise, the repowering packs for his phone, GPS, etc. gave him their best efforts and then said, "Go on without me, Comrade." Still, TwoBeers had only just finished building Zygote, and his stated ambition was to simply get the boat from St. Pete Beach to Key Largo.
At the risk of encyclopediaing this trip, TwoBeers' adventure went a bit like this:  Spotting Andyman and Natedog coming in Rabbit Pass, TwoBeers paused on his way out of Check Point 2 by Chocko Island so he could buddy-sail with them. Was he short of navigation? I ask. Nope, the tablet AND the Garmin were operational. He just wanted to hang out? Yeah. Plus Andyman lent him his extra paddle, since of course the pedal drive had busted 13 hours into the adventure. As it turned out, that nice long kayak paddle, a back-up to the pedal-drive, was still in the van. Oops.  Andyman and Natedog highlighted in red because their tracker lost track for a bit... The two boats, plus Crazyrussian on a catamaran, leapfrogged their way together all the way to Check Point 3. On the RaceOwl site, the three boat names often covered one another, nestled like spoons on the virtual map.  Watching from shore, I saw a distinct cowlick as the wind shifted and swirled just shy of the Cape Sables, and I imagined it was going to be an unpleasant sail through it. Gusty conditions (to 59 mph!) possible. I texted my intel. It's one of the nice things about this race, you can call or text or send smoke signals during the event.  I was, sadly, right about the cowlick. "Every time the place I wanted to go was 45 degrees off the bow, the wind came around on the nose. And piped up." "I went right up to shore at the capes," Jeff said. "The waves were so much less awful in there, but I had to short tack over and over. I can't wait to see my track. It must be 90 tacks I made." "Yeah," Andyman said. "It was so gorgeous for a while, and then it wasn't."  Zygote made it to the entrance to Flamingo, Check Point 3, first of the three, but did not enter the tiny pass. His tracking dot paused. I figured he was waiting for a favorable tide. So when I woke up at 5 to see he'd moved, but not very far, I was a little concerned. Maybe his anchor dragged, I thought. Then at 6 his dot was crawling again, only it seemed erratic. Hmmmm. At 630, I was actively worried. Twobeers appeared to be sailing AWAY from the checkpoint. Lack of sleep can do terrible things to a person. Not just to the racer, but to the ground control as well, to be honest. At quarter to 7, I did the thing: I called the Checkpoint captain at Flamingo. Hi, I said, hey, I'm a little concerned about TwoBeers. Could they see him? I was worried that my skipper might be losing his ever loving mind. I think I actually used that phrase, a nod maybe to Bones on classic Star Trek. Gil at Flamingo assured me that I was doing the right thing by calling. It was, he told me gently, too dark for him to see anything (damn Daylight Savings Time), but that he'd take a look as soon as he could. As we talked, Jeff's tiny blip on the map turned around and started creeping toward to Flamingo.  45 minutes later, an unknown number called: Gil made Jeff talk to me to assure me that he was compos mentis. My skipper sounded cheerful and still determined to get to the finish. Tom Ray, bless his photographer's eye, posted a lovely proof-of-life photo on Facebook. To the Finish Tuesday to Wednesday morning From Flamingo, the wind was out of the northeast at around 7, making it a beamy reach, and while both Andyman and Jeff tried for the eastern route, there just wasn't enough water. Being short on navigation power, Twobeers decided to shadow Andyman. They faffed around for a bit and then pointed their boats along the conservative southern route across Florida Bay.  Sailorking and Possum at the finish! SailorKing and Possum, leaving Flamingo at the same time, did not faff around, having already decided on the southern route. As Jeff said, "They slaughtered us." Without water in the ballast tanks, Zygote struggled to stay upright once the breeze gets up over 10. This is a fact that the boat had made abundantly clear to Jeff, but was much less obvious to his buddies Andyman and Natedog aboard their Highlander, Bubbles Up. Why was Jeff going so slow? What was wrong with him? A flurry of text messages ensued as the two boats poked across Florida Bay. Andyman and Natedog did not like the look of things. They were going to hover around Zygote. They told Jeff to anchor up, hop onto their boat, and come back to finish after a rest on shore. Jeff eventually demonstrated the ballast issue, filling a tank by hand while Andyman held the bowsprit of Zygote on the stern of Bubbles Up. With a full tank, Zygote headed off like a bolting quarter-horse, but, alas, had to dump ballast to tack and resumed moving at a glacial pace. So the two traveled as a caravan for a while, the sun slowly sinking in the west. At 8:45, as Bubbles Up nipped through the cut at Toilet Seat pass, Zygote missed the cut and ran solidly aground. Andy hopped off his boat and came over to help push Zygote off the bank, but to no avail. The tide was rushing out.  Like Max Smart says, "Missed it by THAT much." On shore later, TwoBeers admits he suspected that his friends had deliberately put him on the hard. They swear it was a mistake. In any case, the options were few as the stars came out and the tide continued to ebb away. Jeff waved his friends along, left me a voice mail, got out his MRE and prepared for a hot meal before settling into his sleeping bag. He was asleep before he could finish preparing his "Beans and Chili." At five, I woke to the muted ping of a message on my phone: Jeff was on the move. It was only 8 miles or so from Toilet Seat to the finish. I was really happy to punt on the variety of rescue mission measures I'd been cooking up with Jeff's bevy of friends: Moresailesaid's call for Bob's inflatable to be deployed, Steve's offer to zip down to Marathon and maybe borrow a boat, DSea's suggestion of sailing one of the EC boats down to Toilet Seat and assess my favorite skipper's acuity, etc. etc. Meanwhile, Zygote was enjoying the light morning breeze, sliding northeast up the Florida Keys. I tracked the little dot as it came through Baker Cut into Buttonwood sound, and then...kept going. Good lord, I thought, is he going to Gilbertson's for a breakfast burrito?  I called him, and he answered, chipper as a cricket. Hey babe, I said, are you going to tack? What, he said. I can see you and you're going past the finish. I'm coming up on marker —is it 92? I'm like 20 miles out. You aren't. The boys said I was. Well, I said, I promise you are not. Are you on starboard, with both blue sails up? Ye-esss. Okay, I'm looking RIGHT at you. You need to check over your shoulder at the black schooner and the big cell phone tower. Pause. Oh, yeah. I'll be right there.  Zygote landed at quarter after 8 on Wednesday, to a chorus of cheers and bleary fist-pumps. The assessment from nearly every finisher: this EC might have been the hardest one they remember. I concur. Thanks to everyone for the phone calls and messages of support and congratulations for Twobeers! It never fails to amaze me. We are fortunate beyond words.
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 North Atlantic Ocean, FLORIDA? Really? While my favorite skipper, TwoBeers, is on his single-handed adventure race down the west coast of Florida, I have some time to reflect and, more importantly, observe. That's actually the essence of shore crew: we watch. And get ready to deploy whatever needs deploying.  Saturday, Day 1: The Everglades Challenge started this morning (well, it started years ago, but this year's race began today at Fort DeSoto Beach), which means that — what day is it? Saturday? STILL? — I have a few chores to squeeze in between checking on my racing friends. For instance, our building contractor (addition to the house. Long story. No, I don't know when it will be done.) told me I needed to visit a certain restaurant and, let me quote: "Check out the tiles in the men's room. I think they are exactly what you want." I have been known to invade these boyish strongholds, sometimes as a lark, more often by mistake, a few times out of expedience. The taboo is strong, but it's not unbreakable. So alrighty then.  I betook myself to the busy restaurant, ordered some soup to go, and after casing the establishment and gauging lines-of-sight, I told the counter staff about my quest. They laughed and said, it's the same tile in the women's. Saved from sketchy lurkage, I visited the tile and crossed one thing off my list. Later, hunched over my bowl of açaí sorbet (you don't know what you are missing), I wrote a blog about the start, and then idly hit refresh on the tracking sites for a while before embarking on the second round of packing: This Time It's Overland. Clothes for me, clothes for Jeff—not forgetting shoes for himself, because THAT's a rookie move—the food I'd rather not rebuy for the next few days, beverages, blah blah. The usual accoutrements of a family vacation, plus the supportive gear for the boat trailer (a recent Facebook marketplace deal, which means also a bit of a wildcard in terms of roadworthiness) and our matronly creeper van.  On the race tracker, the gang of boats went from one big blob of overlapped names to a slightly more stretched out list: as one might expect, a couple of catamarans worked to the lead early, with Spawn (Go Moresailesaid! Go DSea!) right there in the mix. Not too far behind, Zygote was hanging tough, and as the breeze faded, on came the paddlers. The race is unique in many ways, though the idea of racing a 20-foot-long beach catamaran against a racing kayak against a roto-molded trimaran against a...well, it boggles the mind. No, there is no handicapping. It's a mad dash. Anyone can win the event overall, though each boat is also scored in its division. At ten at night, with the first couple of boats tagging Check Point 1, I got a text from Jeff. His tracker placed him near Stump Pass. "A f#@$ the pedal drive broke." Another unique aspect of this event is that you can double up your propulsion: sailing and rowing, for example. Plus, you can pump and ooch and scull, all of which is frowned upon in traditional sailing competitions. Zygote was built for solo sailing, and since rowing presents a real navigational conundrum (where are we heading?), Jeff worked rather hard on installing a pedal drive. It's a nifty contraption, with a belt (not chain), and a flexible driveshaft, and a two-blade propeller. He pedals while sitting on an inflatable seat, giving himself a magisterial view of the horizon ahead, as well as extra boat speed that helps when needed. It worked great, until, evidently it did not.  Still he looked pretty cheerful as he checked into Check Point 1. Sunday, Day 2: Oooh! bonus! Daylight Savings Time. Suddenly it's dark at 7 in the morning. Sarcastic enthusiasm! It's a drive to Key Largo, and the traffic is only going to get worse. Mid coffee-brew, I get a text from my good neighbors with a photo. Somebody is dumpster-diving at the construction site, they thought I should know.
Wrestling with the boat-trailer, I consider the long history of scrappers: rag and bone men, mudlarks, people who recycle cooking oil for car fuel. It's a respectable if not very respected job that does good in the world. Before driving his overladen truck to the next spot, the scrapper introduces himself as Keith and we part company maybe both reassured by our shared humanity.  Messages start dinging on my phone before I reach to the highway. I do the thing where you look at your phone at a red light and decide whether anyone needs a real answer or if they can wait until I stop to check the hubs of the trailer. They can wait till I can check the hubs. It's an uneventful drive, mercifully. Almost no maniacal driving incidents (I did avoid Miami, which helps my odds), and the forest fires from last week were extinguished, perhaps by the rain from last night. Navigating by intuition: even though I really enjoy the southern old Route 41 trip across the Everglades, randomly (is it? is it ever random? Is it the Burnt Toast Theory?) found myself tootling along 75 Alligator Alley. A gorgeous day, and the hubs of the trailer stayed out of the hot zone. Yay! It's such a relief to get to the aqua road dividers of the Overseas Highway. I've gawked at 4-foot-long iguanas basking along this stretch into the Keys, but thanks to the recent cold snap, and perhaps to my better driving impulses, I don't spot a single one. Jeff calls as I'm passing Gilbertson's Resort asking me about the timing of the tides at Caxambas Pass and Indian Key Pass. Another unique feature of the event: outside communication is permitted, even welcomed. We can't meet them and resupply the racers, but we can talk to them about the weather et cetera.  I send him the tide info from the safety of a parking lot and then joyfully make my way to Jim and Cheryl's house, where I stow the Marketplace trailer, bless its twenty-ton heart. Anchored for the night at the quirky little resort, I find some supper with race mom Paula Paddledancer, and sleep the naps of the righteous. Each time I wake, I fumble for reading glasses and my screen to check on my favorite skipper and the host of other ducklings out on the water. Monday, Day 3: Overnight, Jeff has had a good sleep in the boat outside Indian Key pass, waiting for the right tide to help him into Chocko. After he STILL had not pressed his okay button when I woke at 230, I just called him. What a pleasant surprise to have him pick up on the first ring with his usual greeting. Clearly sleepy, but cheerful and moving about, my sweet TwoBeers is ready to chat. Normally (based on a dozen previous Challenges), Jeff is judicious in how much of the adventure he shares with me. Considerate of my worries, he might only later dribble out the alarming tale of how this bad thing happened, or how he managed to snatch safety from certain danger. So when he says, yeah, I tacked once with the ballast tank half full. I suppress my natural expression of alarm. The boat did great, he announces, it heeled to a point — and there I am on the high side! — but then it stopped. Good design. I don't even ask how he un-buggered that situation. Then he mentions how much water he pumped out of the hull. He pumped until he got tired and there was still water in there. The boat was feeling sluggish, he tells me, and going downwind, he caught the first water over the bow. I hold my tongue. We know there's a leak. It wasn't much of a leak, according to his pre-race discussion. I'd held back from nagging him yesterday about checking on it. To set the scene, when TwoBeers says he stopped bailing before the boat was empty because he was tired, that's — a thing. There's not a lot of quit in the man. I take a deep, calming breath: I'll be sure to remind you to pump it out, I say. Yeah, he says, good idea. Then he narrates through what he calls a "twirlybird death spin," when Zygote doesn't have enough way on to steer, but the tide causes the boat to pirouette slowly — a 360 degree spin — before another bit of wind comes along. He uses such phrases as, "whee!" and "here we go." Does my laughter have a slightly hysterical edge? Pshaw! How was supper, I ask. Oh, he says, I had a beer and I drank a breakfast shake and just fell asleep. I might turn and burn at Chocko he tells me. Or I might anchor out and get some more shut-eye. This is heartening news. Shows his judgement is good despite having (she counts on her fingers) less than 6 hours of sleep in the past 31 hours. We say goodnight, and I snuggle back under my air-conditioned covers. Day 3: Monday after sunrise A beautiful day in the Florida Keys. There is nothing quite so tropical as a sunrise down here, where the boisterous morning wind is soft with moisture and the white coral dust is as dry as chalk on my flip-flopped feet.  More anon...
A boat building project like Zygote seems to move so slowly—months passing with only the mold finished, seasons of laying carbon fiber, months of sanding and gluing, and endless weeks of sanding and painting, long long days of bolting on hardware—and then, capering about like a squirrel on crack, the project is—must be!—done enough because the day is here. The Everglades Challenge, an unsupported adventure race that starts at Fort DeSoto in St. Pete, FL and finishes 300 or so miles later in Key Largo, FL begins at 8:30 on this coming Saturday, March 8. It's the event at which my favorite skipper (known in this race as TwoBeers) has been aiming all of his time and energy in building this new single-handed OH Rodgers-designed carbon-fiber sailboat. Video and commentary courtesy Jahn "Moresailesaid" Tihansky. For all the dangers I perceive in the venture of taking a small boat out onto big water for 300 miles—THIS TIME SOLO!—I'm happy to report that my favorite skipper is not a fool. I'm grateful that TwoBeers had a Plan A (sail Zygote!) for the 2026 Everglades Challenge, plus a Plan B (sail a borrowed Hobie TI!), a Plan C (hop into Spawn and make it three men in a boat!), and a Plan D (bring a friend!).  And now that the pesky water-tank troubles are patched up, she said with a grimace... Water tanks on Zygote, for those who want to hear my explanation, appear on either side of the barky as well as below the deck. Each tank can be filled and emptied separately, and serve in place of a moving, breathing, complaining crew member. So instead of requesting that his crew hike harder, TwoBeers flips a switch and the windward tank fills up with around 400 lbs of righting moment. When things get a bit nautically frisky, 400 lbs of water in the lower middle tank will encourage the lively Zygote to simmer down. In an ideal world, and onboard the battle-tested Spawn, the water tank system performs as designed: it holds water, vents air, and can be emptied in a twinkling. On Zygote, up until a couple of days ago, the tank dribbled like a Great Dane at a bowl of water on a clean kitchen floor. According to Jeff, the tank filled in 4 minutes, but emptied itself in around 6. That math don't quite math.  Jeff is sitting on top of the starboard tank. The small square at the back of the tank is the release flap. Photo courtesy of Jahn "JT" Tihansky. Zygote's dribbling was caused, Great Danewise, by loose flaps. The rapid-release trap doors at the back of the top tanks did not seat firmly enough to hold water. I have it on good authority that it has been remedied. We live in hope and cross our fingers.
So here are our variously reliable links to track the progress of the racers. The WaterTribe website gets overloaded with spectators, but it's got the logos we've come to rely on, and can be widened to show all competitors in all classes (kayaks and paddle boards, catamarans and monohulls, etc.) or narrowed down to one class or an individual competitor. https://watertribe.com/Events/ChallengeGMapper.aspx The Garmin InReach site only shows a single boat's position. In this case, TwoBeers. https://share.garmin.com/N9OY8TwoBeers The RaceOwl site is quicker to load than WaterTribeand shows the boats minus their logos. It might be a bit slow on the uptake but it's a good choice to track the gang. https://www.raceowl.com/EC2026 Click on one of the photos below or an html address above to get to the tracker of your choice.
Thanks all y'all for coming along on this adventure!
Okay, okay, I know. What world are we talking? It might be a wide world of sports, but that's still a tiny globe compared to everything else. And sailing is a minuscule sporting world, compared to other sports. Never mind how each specific class of boat makes it a smaller world yet. But still. A world champion. It's actually his fourth world title, but I am here to tell you the thrill does not fade. When you're on the podium and the national anthem pipes up? Waterworks, baby. So my favorite skipper has been racing the 2.4Meter class for a few years. The boat looks like a classic America's Cup yacht that got hit with a shrink-ray.  Jeff is in the water, wiping algae and what-not from his boat, as well as giving his neighbor Alain Dubuc's boat a scrub as well. When at the wheel of the 2.4Meter, (figure of nautical speech: the boats are rigged to have either a joy-stick style tiller or foot pedals for steering), the sailor is like an iceberg, with the majority of his or her person beneath the surface. Water rushes by at just about eye-level. This little yacht has a heavy keel for stability. It runs about 14 feet long. Which makes it roughly the length of a classic VW bug. Or, if you prefer, twice the distance between dartboard and tosser. I mean thrower. Or is it shooter? The point is that the 2.4M is not big. And, fabulously, the vessel permits people with physical challenges to compete on a level playing field with able-bodied folks. Which expands the wide world of sailing in the best of ways.  A tight bond has firmed up the North American contingent: sailors compete and train in the winter in Port Charlotte for the Can-Am series, as well as continuing the practice over the summer in Toronto. The Canadian-American gang clubbed together to send nine boats to Lake Garda, Italy this year for the Inclusive World Championships. Lake Garda. This is a jewel of a lake, set among the dramatic Italian Alps.  View of the racecourse from the clubhouse at Fraglia Vela Malcesine. Honest to Pete, this place is almost sarcastically gorgeous.   And we have the great good fortune of having generous friends in cool places. Annukka and Mike lived above Lake Garda for years, and having known Jeff from Etchells sailing, they gave us keys and excellent driving directions.  A person could get used to this morning coffee view. Naturally, Jeff did his sailing homework: not just lots of practice, but also making sure that the practice might parallel the conditions expected on Lake Garda: namely, breezy, chilly freshwater sailing at altitude. According to all predictions, the wind runs down into the valley in the morning and then sweeps up into the hills in the afternoon. It's a pattern that makes the place Mecca for hang-gliders, foiling Moths, windsurfers—all the high-octane wind-driven boats. Which brings us to the universal truth of all world championships: "It's never like this here."  Coming back to the dock after a long day's racing. Sailing under sunny skies, Jeff came out of the gate strong, with a wire-to-wire lead in the first race over the nearly 60 boats on the line. Lake Garda never offered howling windy days, but a dry suit (as Jeff learned on the practice day) is recommended. For those keeping track at home, the series had 11 races scheduled (ten sailed, thanks to strong-willed race management) with two throw-outs. Making the match (and the math) even more exciting. ("One plus four, drop the 57, carry the..."  While waiting for the afternoon winds to fill in, oh, look! Another capresi salad and the local white wine. After a day or two, one of the other competitors approached Jeff on the dock and spoke with Germanic frankness, "I Googled you." I take that as highest praise from a competitor in 2025. Being Googleworthy.  Jeff, Tony, and Julio making repairs at dawn. Mr. Linton claims that fate holds the cards at events like these. You prepare as best you can, but winning is equally a matter of everything just lining up. And so it seemed: despite the various bumps in the road (our Thursday flight cancelled so we arrived on Sunday, the container of boats showing up only in the nick of time on Monday, that broken headstay on Day 2, the U-flag starts that caught Jeff once for a 57th place finish, etc.) things worked out. We and our luggage (sorry Julio, about your stuff vacationing solo in Dublin!) arrived alive, the boats turned up undamaged, the broken headstay happened in light air on race 3 of the day, and Jeff is good at calculating the math of finishes.  Did it hurt that we earned the grudging approval of this sister? Never underestimate the power of kindness and shared snacks on public transport. I learned that from fairy tales. It was all over too soon. The gang packed all their toys back into the container they bought (a purchase that should mean I can paint a mural on it!), enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of closing ceremonies, and made plans for the next one. And then some of us betook ourselves to Venice. About that, anon...   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.
 Roman Emperor Hadrian ruled from 117-138. One of the things he's remembered for is the wall* that he had the Roman army build across the top of England. *Classic "Build the Wall" strategy: the alleged purpose was to keep the barbarians out (didn't work btw) but in practice, very useful in keeping the Roman army busy and out of Hadrian's hair.  So the wall is around 1800 years old, and stretches 73 miles from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. The Roman fortifications included a steep ditch to the north of the wall, and, every mile, a milecastle where troops were on station, and between each milecastle, two watchtowers. For some of those miles, of course, the structures no longer exist—Imagine having a neat stack of beautifully quarried blocks just SITTING there century after century. Of course the rock was repurposed by the locals.  Why, you might ask, is she telling us this? Because since I was a young reader, I have wanted to visit Hadrian's Wall.  Using a big birthday as an excuse, I packed up my kit and betook myself to Corbridge, a little bitty village in the heart of Northumberland in the north of England.  The bridge over the river Cor. I went solo—a decision for which I was profoundly grateful on Day 2 of my walk, when the unending descents and ascents of slippery rock staircases were certainly NOT on the menu when I'd tried to lure my friends to come along.  John and Allison from York, trail friends, climbing a slippery slope.  There's a lot to unpack for me about the stretch of doing something quite new without companions. It was profoundly rewarding to—like any 2-year-old will say—accomplish this myself.  I hiked around 28 miles across three days.  I lost count of the stiles, the stairways, the sheep, the suspicious cattle. It's a polite walking culture in the UK, and I was not the only solo woman on the trail. I slept soundly in very pleasant accommodations (Thanks Joe "Puma" Froehock for the recommendation of Mac's Adventures!).  Mac's Adventures comes with a neat-o phone ap. Yes, that orange blob is me, side-questing. Conversations were struck up. Vistas were admired. Inspiration for book two was discovered. Complaints and old-man noises were made. I checked my heart-rate kind of a lot. Shelter was taken during the inevitable rain (ask me about my Tyvek rain skirt!).  Sandwiches involving watercress were eaten al fresco with sheep as audience. KT tape became a trusted pal. And it was over all too soon. Knock wood my physical plant and my pocketbook will allow a repeat. Maybe the Cumbria Way walk. Or a bit of the 670-mile-long South West Coast Pathway? Jeepers. Wait, the Pilgrim way to Lindesfarne—ooooh.  This hike was sandwiched between a few days in London and Newcastle. Not enough armchair adventure? Find me @amysmithlinton on Instagram for more about the trip.
 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...
 The 2024 Everglades Challenge is off. Around 77 boats pushed off Fort DeSoto beach this morning at 7am (or before 8, anyhow—not all boats were chomping at the bit). This is the annual dash from St. Petersburg, FL to Key Largo by human-powered small craft. The 300-mile course traverses the Everglades and has an 8-day time limit. My favorite skipper, AKA TwoBeers, and his crew Jahn "Moresailesed" Tihanksy made a graceful transition from sand to water. After nearly a decade of complaints about the spotty SPOT coverage, we switched to a personal tracker that seems to be tracking more reliably. Garmin InReach. Hurrah! And Team Spawn even got it working the first try! So far (five hours into the event) the WaterTribe site is glitching, so here's another option if you want to track at home... RaceOwl is the site. Click on the photo below to get to the event tracking page.  Fingers crossed for a pleasant event for all the sailors, paddlers, rowers, and those of us on the shore!
 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  Ah, February. The shortest month. Around here, it feels like the real start of the year, as if January was just a trial run. After taking a practice stab at the year, we line things up and set sail. Literal sail, actually. In February, there are no real free weekends. If we are not racing together on the Flying Scot, my favorite skipper is competing with others, and if it's not a regatta, it's prep time for the Everglades Challenge. Because that's the time of year it is.  Mr. Linton went to Lauderdale with the fiercic37class.org/schedule/ic37-winter-series-lauderdale-cup/e IC37 team New Wave (they prevailed! Yay!). https://ic37class.org/schedule/ic37-winter-series-lauderdale-cup/ We made our pilgrimage to Lake Eustis (and the Oyster Troff) to race our mighty Scuppernong at the Flying Scot Midwinters (illness prevailed! Ugh!) theclubspot.com/regatta/NlXOS3p10P/results  The Classic Moth Midwinters, which my favorite skipper and I host, launches Saturday. Hoping for delicious weather for my porch-light pals.  And in between times, whenever the schedule allows, while I've been working on book promo and (oooh!) writing the next one, Mr. Linton fixes up the Spawn of Frankenscot. The Spawn of Frankenscot is a sloop that Jeff built to a design OH Rodgers and he specifically dreamed up for long-distance coastal adventure racing. In 2014, Jeff and his crew Jahn Tihansky first pushed off the beach in St. Pete and hurtled down the coast to Key Largo in the annual Everglades Challenge human-powered race. www.watertribe.com/events/evergladeschallenge/ Our team of doughty Spawnsters has done very well for a decade: they hold various records in the 300-mile long race, and even, in 2022, won the 1200-mile extended version of the race known as the Around Florida Challenge. www.amysmithlinton.com/blog/and-just-like-thatthe-racers-came-home But with the start of the new year (in February, natch) comes refurbishment for Spawn. What needs replacing in a mothballed sailing sloop after a year? Thanks for asking!  This year the biggest piece of new gear: a new storm jib, made by himself with help from Rod "Rappin Rod" Koch using Masthead Enterprises machines. The wires that hold the mast in place (shrouds) got refreshed. All of the velcro that attaches the storage and sleeping quarters (what looks to me like a conestoga wagon tent affair) got replaced. The bearings froze in the sliding rowing seat, the repair of which gobbled up an afternoon seasoned with solvent and elbow grease.  Even with an extra day in February this year, whelp, it's flying.
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