On The Beach with Spawn

Like the doomed characters of the Neville Shute novel, On the Beach, we find ourselves on beautiful white sand, hoping against nuclear hope.  

And like some of those doomed characters, we are carrying on.  

In our case, this means starting a salty, arduous  –– but did we mention epic? –– and rather lengthy human-powered adventure race around the state of Florida. 

By "we," of course, I mean my favorite skipper, known by his WaterTribe handle TwoBeers, and his trusty crew Jahn "Moresailesed" Tihansky will be sailing/rowing/paddling around Florida, while I ("BookWorm" natch) shadow them by road, towing the other boat from the air-conditioned comfort of an automobile.

​
​It's astonishing and humbling to see the crowd of dreamers on the beach each year.

And though it should not surprise me, not every competitor looks like a marathon runner.  

It occurs to me that these events –– the Everglades Challenge particularly, is a sort of last-chance opportunity for anyone with dream.

Of course to finish, and perhaps even simply survive the effort, the dreamer must have some kind of fierce determination. But not, as it turns out, the physique of an elite, youthful athlete.

Huh. Lessons learned.

The fleet will swarm the water tomorrow (Saturday, March 5) at sunrise. Some will be going to first checkpoint (they are racing what's known as the Ultra Marathon), some to Key Largo (Everglades Challenge), and a select few all the way around the state (Ultimate Florida Challenge).

There are a couple of ways to follow the progress of the three fleets.  There's the WaterTribe tracking site, just be sure to select "Ultimate Florida Challenge" rather than "Everglades Challenge" if you want to see what our team Spawn is doing.   

Likewise the RaceOwl site will track the various gangs.  On RaceOwl, Spawn is known as 3662. 

And finally, to pinpoint our fellas only, the SPOT locator site is unwieldy and difficult to use, but it doesn't get the volume of users and only occasionally bogs down.