What Stage Again? Ultimate Florida Challenge Update

As Rappin Rodney predicted, it POURED all morning while the fellas put Spawn on the trailer.

It's a 1200-mile human-powered adventure race, and when Spawn finally docked in St. Mary's, Georgia at midnight on Thursday, March 10, it was time for the Tampa Bay 22 sloop to hop onto the trailer and pass the human batons over to the Winonah canoe Miss Patsie. 

Stage 4. Fort Clinch to Cedar Key: the paddling and portaging leg across the top of Florida. 

But first, while Moresailesed and TwoBeers slowly de-rigged Spawn so the creature can be trailered back across the state, they recounted a few of the many tales of the sail from Key Largo to Fort Clinch.  

​As many of us noticed, Spawn chose to take advantage of the Gulf Stream, that warm and mighty river inside the sea.

​For skiers, imagine the Gulf Stream is a magic carpet lift (For non-skiers, think: magic carpet), which conveys boats north and east up the right-hand side of Florida.

From my mostly dry perch among the wet gear, pre-packaged food, canoe paddles and whatnot.

The river diverges from land, flowing toward Europe –– as if the magic carpet lift would eventually feed you and your rental skis out onto a double black-diamond slope. It's key to remember to exit the lift.

So after a slumbrous night of recovering from Stage 1, the team bolted for the magic carpet ride.
​

TwoBeers doing his homework earlier this year –– scouting routes with the king and queen of Key Largo, Cheryl and Jim Signor, who cheerfully ferried us through the many ways to get from Buttonwood Sound to the Atlantic.

TwoBeers and Moresailesed blasted through the back of Key Largo and achieved the Atlantic at Elliot Key, and were rewarded with a splendid 24 hour's worth of off-the-wind coursing. 270 miles in a single day, which is dang zippy.

They ran their dual-headsail rig: a jib and a screecher, and, as best they remember, a reef in the mainsail. 

With a lively 15 knot breeze nudging them from their starboard quarter, the miles flew by. It was so civilized (especially in comparison with the upwind slog of Stage 1) that they were able to keep a watch system, whereby one sleeps while the other sails the boat.

And somewhere off Palm Beach, while one was sleeping, the time just slipped away. Rousing the sleeper from time to time to check that the heading was correct. It was the correct heading, but at a full gallop (18.6 or so was the top speed they recall; before their Tactick electronic compass sighed and passed away), well, that's how they went "to the Bahamas," according to Moresailesed. 

Slight exaggeration. They never actually SAW Walker Cay. 

More than 40 miles offshore, the sleeper awoke, checked his navigation, and called for a turn, posthaste! I am very glad to report that after the shenanigans of 2019, the boys generally go for a "chicken jibe," which is to say they tack.

The difference between a tack and a jibe is fairly academic as far as navigation goes, each being a roughly 90° turn –– until is isn't. As anyone who has tried to carry a poster board in a windstorm knows, the wind wants to grab things and fling them about.  

To tack, a boat turns so that its nose points through the wind. To jibe, a boat turns away from the wind,  presenting the boat's stern to the breeze. When a boat is traveling downwind already, one would normally jibe to change directions.

But things can happen on a jibe, especially when it's dark and the sailors are tired, and they are a long way from shore. A sheet can catch on a cleat, a sail loads up, and next thing you know, the boat is ass-over-teakettle (that IS the technical term) and there's a lot to do.  

Prudent (cluck cluck cluck) sailors sometimes choose to do the slower maneuver of turning not 90°, but 270°. Even so, it took two tries to get Spawn tacked around and scooting back toward Florida.

Two tries. Back to Florida. Oy vey.   

St. Mary's River at night. The darkest Turner painting yet.

TwoBeers reported that while they had seen any number of turtles offshore on the west coast of Florida, they barely saw a single fish on the east coast until they got to Fernadina Beach.  

At Fernadina, it was a veritable SeaWorld, with dozens of porpoise (including baby porpoise –– parpooses?) busily feeding off the big fishing pier. 

Coming out of Checkpoint 1 on Saturday, they bore witness to Andyman and Natedog accidentally colliding with a manatee with a tremendous splash and fuss. The sea-cow, not the men.

Later that same night, Spawn snuck up on a congress of manatee doing whatever manatee do in the dark.

Manatee are not natively warlike, so there were no vengeful repercussions. Nevertheless, adorable sea-creatures displace a literal ton of water when startled, and it's always dramatic.

Andyman and Natedog at the EC finish in Key Largo. With wee bottles of Kracken to celebrate their escape from the clutches of what they called "the devil's waves."

In the notoriously overcrowded waters of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, our sailors were pleasantly surprised by the dearth of poorly-driven and compensatorily overpowered powerboats. Nary a near miss to be seen.

Knock wood the price of gas has a silver lining.

Row row row your Spawn/ Gently up the stream/ Verily, Verily, you will need more steam.

After their champagne day of making 270 miles, Spawn came up against a line of weather and had no place to hide from it. One squall after another with enormous blasts of wind and nearly continual lighting ("Though it never came down. The lightning just went from cloud to cloud," my favorite skipper said, wonderingly.)

The sailors got drenched, of course, and they agreed that they got really good at reefing the main ("I don't even need a flashlight." TwoBeers said.) And then shaking the reef out again when the squall passed, leaving only a whisper of wind.

 "It was the most heinous night of my life. And there was nothing to do but <intensifying invective> bear it."  Moresailesed pulled a rueful face. "On a big boat, you can always go below, but on Spawn, you are just THERE. We couldn't even put ashore. "  

At the time, the boat was off a wide, sandy beach with no handy inlet to inland waterways. Even with the storm wind gone, the water-state stayed wild and wooly. "I'm never going to need to see New Smyrna Beach ever again." Moresailesed declared. 

TwoBeers chimed in: "Yeah, it was brutal. I mean, I built this boat, but I don't know how it stayed together. You'd go off one wave RIGHT in to another."  It would become a theme, this statement...

We all share a collective silent moment of appreciation for Spawn holding together regardless the conditions. Good barky! 

Pruny fingers.

Arrival! Thursday night just before midnight at St. Mary's public boat ramp.

Aboard Spawn they had front-row seating for a SpaceX rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral.  I'd texted them an alert after our dear Henry "Oh Henry!" Picco told me about  the launch.  Of course Henry, being a local, knows that NASA barricades off some portion of the waterways at launch-time. Being a good friend and shepherd, he checked to be sure Spawn would keep clear of the no-go zone.

Nothing like an international incident to slow a racing program.

Spawn did not get the text, and thought at first a blimp was on fire. "The cool thing is that there's a crackling sound after the sonic boom." TwoBeers observed, to which Moresailesed said, "Yeah, but sometimes there's debris, and we were really close to that launch."

​Did they get a photo? Nope.

And, by the by, did they mention the electrical fire? "It never was a fire. It just smoked a little, and we disconnected the battery from the water pump." 

There IS a fire extinguisher on the boat. I packed it myself.

The team is taking another night to regroup, tank up on sleep and hot showers, and wait for the anticipated weather-bomb to blow through.  According to forecasters (now THAT's a job!), Florida temperatures are expected to dip into the 30s over the weekend.  

Good thing Moresailesed and TwoBeers have a lot of warm work ahead of them, paddling upstream.