The Clarion Call...

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