I was in very good spirits when we pulled into the Saltwater Barrier. I still had an endorphin buzz so I wasn't hurting that much physically. Plus, I knew that the odds of something going wrong at this point were pretty slim so we were almost certainly going to finish the race. Audra and my mom and dad and one of my aunts was there, which made me feel good. I actually cracked a couple of jokes, one about being so good with a single blade paddle that I could write my name on a grain of rice with it. We busied ourselves ditching extra food and gear to lighten the boat. We also started putting on the sprayskirt that covered the entire boat. At that point, there was just a light breeze so I thought the waves in the bay would be very light and that we wouldn't need the sprayskirt at all. So, we only buttoned it down in the middle of the boat, only covering about half of the open area.
The one of the girls who had been sick was laying flat on the concrete, trying to rest and recover as much as she could. Her boyfriend, another racer who had to pull out early in the race because of mechanical problems, was there trying to encourage her.
There was another boat pulled into the checkpoint that we had leapfrogged all the way down the course. They were laid up somewhere on the bank resting. They were another tandem unlimited in our class, so it felt good knowing we were probably going to finish one place higher in the class.
After messing with gear and food, we were ready to go. The girls pulled out and a couple of minutes later we sped out of the checkpoint feeling strong and ready to finish.
We pulled up alongside the girls again and paddled while before the girl who'd been sick started feeling bad again. At this point, I didn't think she was going to get any better unless she took specific action. I had no idea what she'd been doing to fight the sickness. I didn't know how much water she'd been drinking or if she'd taken any kinds of pills or anti-nausea medication or if she'd eaten anything recently. I decided to ask about these things. None of us were really thinking clearly at that point having been up for over 24 hours and exercising strenuously in the humidity and heat nearly the entire time. I asked if she'd taken anything and she said she hadn't. I asked if they had an kind of anti-nausea medication. They had some Pepto tablets, but they were stowed in a bag that neither of them could reach from the seats. She hadn't been able to keep any water or food down for some time. Drawing from our experience being nauseous early in the race, I told her that I thought she should take one of the Pepto tablets and sip a little water then gradually increase the amount of water she was taking in to fight the dehydration, which was the likely cause of the nausea in the first place. They agreed to try it, but we had to pull over so they could get to their medicine bag. Luckily, there were some houses next to the river and most had docks extending over the river where we could pull up. No sooner had we pulled up to one of these docks that she started puking. Normally, I gag when I hear someone vomiting, but for some reason this time I was glad to hear it. It sounded cathartic. I also believed that she had been fighting the urge to vomit for some time and now she could start getting better. I knew she'd feel a little better afterwards in any case. When she finished, she found the Pepto tablets, swished some water and took one. When she felt well enough, we set off again. I tried to remind her every now and then to sip water and to try to gradually increase the amount to test her stomach and to try to recover from the dehydration. She never got sick again and she did recover enough to keep going. I have no idea if anything I did helped at all. She was probably just in one of the cycles a lot of racers experience where you go down with illness and then come back. What I do know is that she is one tough chick and I had a lot of respect for her to tough it out and keep going like she did. And, the other girl, paddling in the stern, had been working hard the entire time, which was a feat in and of itself.
The river here is calm with almost no current. The banks are lined with tropical-like vegetation - elephant ears, palmettos, wild canna lillies and hyacinth. A lot of people like this area of the river because it is so different. I liked it too. We would see pairs of orange eyes every 200 yards or so, either near the bank or crossing the river in front of us. By now, I was fairly used to the alligators and did not feel threatened by them at all.
Our main concern at this point was finding the entrance to Traylor cut. Several miles downriver from the Barrier, the river forks. A wide channel goes off to the left and leads into the bay eventually, but it is longer to the bay and empties a mile or so further west than the mouth of Traylor cut. Taking the wide channel will add considerable time to your finish. Traylor cut is the fastest way to the bay and to Seadrift. The biggest problem is that the entrance is small and overgrown with foliage, so it is very hard to see, especially at night. The cut itself averages only about ten yards wide. I had the mile marker on my chart, but by now the mileage was so far off my GPS was worthless for telling us when we were close. We could only estimate. We had both done the Barrier to the Bay race a month prior, so we were familiar with the area, but then it had been easier because we were paddling within sight of many boats so we could just follow them in. We flashed our headlamps into areas we thought could be the mouth, but it never was. We paddled slowly, looking hard for the entrance. As time went by, we all had our suspicions that we had somehow passed it. At that point we knew that we were not thinking clearly, so anything was possible.
Finally, the wide channel of the river veered off left and the overgrown entrance to Traylor cut was straight ahead. We had found it. We paddled in, relieved. The cut was almost too narrow to travel side by side, so we let the girls, and their light, go ahead of us. We had been warned that mats of water hyacinth had grown thick and covered the entire surface of the water in some places. We made a plan that whenever we came up to one of these mats of hyacinth that Robb and I would go ahead and try to cut a channel for the girls to follow us through. We came to the first one and we passed, picked up as much momentum as we could and dove into the plants. Within seconds we stalled and came nearly to a complete stop. Almost immediately the mosquitos swarmed us. The girls had followed in our wake and nearly rammed the back of our boat. "Keep going! Keep going!" I shouted. Robb and I started hacking furiously at the plants and water to pull ourselves through. The mat was about twenty yards deep and eventually we made it though, sweaty, dirty and tired. "Goddamn!" I panted, "I hope we don't have to go through too many of those." The girls pulled back in front to light the way. Then we came upon another mat of hyacinth. Robb and I pulled ahead again, tried to pick up even more speed than before and plunged into the plants, hacking furiously with our paddles again. This time the mat was not as deep and we made it through without slowing too much. The girls followed right behind us, but I'm afraid we didn't really do much to help them. No channel opened up behind us; the floating hyacinth close right back up behind us, so they had to pull through just as hard as we did.
We encountered several more of these mats of hyacinth and each time we had to work hard to make it through. A couple of times we came to a complete stop, but most of the time were just slowed enough for the hordes of mosquitos and flies to attack us. Once, I had seen a pair of orange eyes near the bank in front of one of these mats, so stalling out in that area made me nervous of gator attacks. We hacked our way through one mat and when we cleared it into the open water Robb started shouting, "Stop! Stop!" I shouted back, "What? What?" We slowed to a near stop and he turned to tell me that a six foot gator crossed less that three feet in front of the boat.
We paddled with the girls through the remainder of the cut until we saw some slight wave action and the river widened and we could see the mouth and the wide open bay beyond. The bay seemed so expansive and wide open compared to the enclosed river we had been on for all of these hours. I was relieved to be finally in the bay. I'm at home in the bay because of all of the time spent fishing around Port O'Connor, not far from Seadrift and Guadalupe Bay where we now were.
Robb and I had several plans for crossing the bay; each one dependent on the conditions. If the bay was calm, we'd make a straight line for the point. This was a diagonal line across the bay and was the longest and most exposed route across the bay, but it was also the most direct and fastest way to the finish. If the bay was really bad, we would cross the bay immediately at the narrowest point to get to the far shoreline where we could turn into the waves instead of taking them broadside. Plus, at the far shorline the water was fairly shallow, so even if we capsized we'd be able to stand and reenter the boat much more easily. The third option, if the bay was moderate, was to track the south shoreline from the mouth and cross at a wider point further down. The south shoreline would be protected from the prevailing southeast wind and thus the waves. The exposed crossing was longer than crossing directly from the mouth of the river, but not as long as the diagonal route.
I had expected the bay to be nearly flat as glass since there had barely been a breeze when we left out of the Saltwater Barrier. But now that we were out in the open, the breeze picked up and the further we paddled away from the mouth of the river and into the open bay, the bigger the waves were. We realized pretty quickly that the wind had picked up and we were dealing with a moderate to bad bay. The girls were nervous about the waves. Our original thoughts of racing when we got to the bay were forgotten. I felt confident in picking a line across the bay. I turned the nose of the boat partially into the waves so that we wouldn't be taking them broadside. This would make our line across the most exposed part of the bay longer, but I thought would reduce the chance of a capsize. We didn't head straight across from the mouth, nor did we head at the long diagonal toward the point. We sort of split the difference. I told the girls to get their boat on the downwind side of us. I though maybe our boat would shield them a little from the wind and the waves. The waves weren't that high, probably averaging 18 inches from trough to peak, but that's high for the tippy racing canoes we were in. Robb and I were managing well and absorbing the waves with ease. Plus, I was energized by the salt air and being so close to the finish. A few times spray would come over the gunnels and into the boat, but we never took on a lot of water. We ran our electric pumps a bit to get some of the water out. I called out to the girls, "You guys are doing great! You're going to be fine! We're almost across!"
Eventually, we did make it across and I turned right to track the shoreline about forty yards out. We were still taking the waves, but at least we were close to shore and shallow water where a capsize wouldn't be disastrous. We worked hard, pulling our paddles and fighting the wind. I looked off to the right over the tops of the waves and I could see the yellow moon rising and reflecting on the water. I was completely at ease and I felt like I was at home. Eventually we came to the point marking the entrance to the barge canal and we made our final turn to the left into the final stretch. It's a little over a mile from this point to the finish line at the seawall.
When we came around the point, the bay opened up even wider and the lights on shore were confusing. The wind was howling too and the waves might've been even bigger. The wind was blowing straight toward the seawall, so we were going to be travelling with the waves hitting us broadside the entire way. Not good. Plus, the water at the point was very shallow, which makes for even slower going, so my idea was to angle out into the waves a bit, actually going away from shore for a while then angle back in toward the finish line with the wind and waves at our backs. I meant to communicate this to the girls, but when I turned to look for them they had already turned left into shore and were already far away from us and out of earshot. I thought to follow them, but I figured that the water would be even shallower closer to shore and slower.
The lights on shore from that distance were very confusing. As I had been advised, I memorized the shape of the bay here, so I knew that it made an "L" shape after we came around the point. But the lights were making it difficult to tell which side of the "L" we were heading toward. We paddled hard, stabbing into the waves, as I squinted and tried to see the finish line. I couldn't see the girls' boat anymore. I thought they had grounded out and were forced to walk with their boat and that they were now behind us.
I had decided even before the race began that I wanted to paddle my boat across the finish line, not walk it in as I had seen others do in photos. So I stuck to my plan and headed into the waves. We kept digging into the waves and pulling without any real gauge of our progress or speed. I called out to Robb, "Can you see it?" "We should be close!" "No, I can't tell where it is!" he shouted back. We kept paddling. Suddenly, I looked off to my left and there plain as day, as if it had just emerged, were the lights of Seadrift city park, the metal-roofed pavilion and the finish line. "There it is!" I shouted. I made a left turn and we headed straight in toward the wooden steps that marked the finish line. Then I could see the girls' boat under the lights. They were paddling hard and were even with us. I could see people standing on the seewall, but we were still too far away for me to make out who they were. Audra, my Mom and Dad called out, "Boat number?!" Robb and I both shouted, "8321!" as proudly as we could. As soon as they heard us they cheered loudly and ran toward the steps. I knew it was them for sure and my heart leapt.
I slowed down my paddling to try to make the moment last longer. Memories spanning the year leading up to this point came flooding back - the newspaper article about John Stockwell, Roger Zimmerman and Zoltan Mraz that had inspired me, reading everything I could find in print and on the internet about the Safari, making contact with other racers and asking questions on the message board, the countless hours of preparation, the long practice runs, the discouraging moments when we fell out of the boat while training, refinishing the boat, rigging it, locating all of the gear and preparing, preparing, preparing. I also thought about Audra and how much she had supported me in this crazy endeavor. She even agreed to be our Team Captain, which is a hard and crappy job and she had embraced it and done it well. She's not at home in mud and dirty water, but she braved it anyway; for me. I thought about all of the time I had taken away from her and how she almost never complained aboout how much time or money I was investing in the Safari. Somehow, she understood that this was a borderline obsession of mine and she knew me, most of all, and she knew that this was something that I was going to accomplish no matter what. Now, to see her running down the seawall toward the wooden steps and the finish line to meet me made my emotions well up. I had worked so hard to get ready, I had done everything I knew to do and I had worked hard and suffered for almost three entire days paddling this boat over all of this water to reach this one moment that I had known would be so sweet. And it was.
For the final couple hundred yards, I guess the race between us and the girls had been back on. I had lost track of them, for one thing, and assumed they were behind us. For another, I didn't give a damn about beating them at that point. We had bonded during the time that we paddled together and I had developed an enormous amount of respect for them and the way they fought through adversity, to say nothing of their raw athletic ability and conditioning that made them our equals in the first place. Honestly, I thought it would be fitting for us to come across the line at the exact same time, in a tie, but there was no way for me to communicate that to them in the final moments. As it turned out, they were as wily as ever over the last stretch and they had actually picked a better line closer to shore than we had. They might've nosed over the line just before we did, but it was close enough that the race officials gave us the exact same finish time of 68 hours and 50 minutes, listing them at 22nd overall and us at 23rd, which I thought was great.
All things being equal, I was in decent shape at the finish. I even had enough energy to help carry the boat up the steps and onto the grass. I saw others stagger in who had to have been near death. So, I was fortunate. My Dad handed me the Eskimo pie and Dr. Pepper that I had asked for and pointed me to a cooler filled with iced down beer. First, though, I hugged Audra tightly, looked in her eyes and told her, "It's over, sweetheart. It's over and we did it."
congratulations. i would not have wanted to do that, i don't think, but you should be proud for having completed that (and for having such a GF/TC).
Posted by: desertboy | September 04, 2008 at 08:31 PM
Your room will provide fascinating views of the animals as they stroll past on their way to the nearby watering hole. http://outfitters.morewrite.com/2008/08/08/sky-adventure-hang-gliding/600/days-racing-odds/
Posted by: Days Racing Odds | September 07, 2008 at 12:55 AM