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| Note mirror providing rearward vantage. Not good for seeing manatees..... |
The annual 300-mile Everglades
Challenge boat race was scheduled to start from Fort de Soto Campground north
of Tampa Bay, Florida at 7 am on Saturday, March 4, 2017. About a hundred of us were lined up on the
beach just raring to go, but when day dawned, the winds exceeded 24 mph and there
was a Small Craft Advisory in effect. The
Chief (aka Steve Isaac, the race’s organizer and self-described benevolent
dictator) announced that no participants would be permitted to launch from Fort
De Soto that day, but he added that in lieu of opting out of the race entirely,
we could wait around to see if the Advisory was lifted for the next day. This put us all into a state of shock, with
visions of a year’s worth of preparation being literally blown away. After some
thought, Chief told us that as an alternative, we could start at the same time
the next morning (7 a.m. on Sunday) from south
of Tampa Bay—and thus avoid the Small Craft Advisory.
I have a good recollection of all this
even though the thoughts running through my head at the time were pretty much
limited to “oh, hell, how am I going to get my rowboat to the other side of
Tampa Bay?” This seemed to be an insurmountable problem since my trailer was at
the finish line in Key Largo and my vehicle was at the Tampa airport waiting
for my lovely wife Ann to arrive in a couple of days. I eventually re-focused on the questions and
answers swirling around me, and I heard the Chief say something about starting
out at the Highway 64 bridge. I
apparently did not hear someone ask whether
we could use Checkpoint 1 at Cape Haze as the starting point, a question to which
the Chief apparently answered “yes.” All I could think of was still “how am I
going to get to the Hwy 64 bridge?”, which is about 7 miles south of the
starting line and 55 miles north of Checkpoint
1.
I discussed situation with Mike Finney,
a close family friend who had come to Fort De Soto to watch the start of the
race, and the two of us agreed that it all boiled down to finding a good Samaritan
with a boat trailer who was willing to take me and my RowCruiser to the south
side of Tampa Bay. I also spoke with TheJuice
(aka Druce Finlay), who pointed out on a map the areas where he thought we
could land near the Hwy 64 bridge.
I was still standing around in a daze
when a kind gentleman named Tom Glenze, whom I had met at the campground the
day before, came up to me and asked what I was going to do. When I told him that I was stuck with no vehicle
or trailer, Tom said he knew of a boat launch on the Manatee River north and
east of the Hwy 64 bridge. Angel of
mercy that he is, he then offered to take me there. And he very graciously did just that. Hooray—I was still in the race!
That afternoon, I launched my
RowCruiser (Class 2, human-powered, no sail) at the Manatee River, proceeded west
over to the Intercoastal Waterway, and came to the Hwy 64 bridge where I threw
out my anchor and spent a comfortable night sleeping on my boat. I was only interrupted once, when I woke up and
stared out at the water trying to figure out if the boat had drifted while I
was asleep. It had not; it was in fact resting securely on a bed of grass because
the tide had gone out. I promptly went
back to sleep, woke at dawn to a re-flooded flat, and waited for what I thought
would be the start of the race near the Hwy 64 bridge promptly at 7 o’clock that
morning. It was Sunday, March 5.
The day dawned—and I was alone. My first thought was “where the heck is everybody?”,
but at 7 am I was lined up all by myself and ready to hit the “Check OK” button
on my Spot GPS device, as required. I saw
SaltyFriar (aka Matthew Stalnaker) in his Class 1 boat (kayak plus sail)
passing under the bridge, so at least I knew I wasn’t the only one . . . .
At this point my wife called to say
that it looked as if all but about four boats were starting about sixty miles
down the coast at Cape Haze! I again wondered “what the hell??”, but this
didn’t concern me overmuch because I figured that with all the confusion
concerning the start of the race, some timing adjustments would be made.
And so I took off! What could possibly
go wrong? I was rowing and all was right with the world. Granted, it was a bit windy, but the
Intercoastal Waterway provided some protection and I was making good progress.
Then I hit Sarasota Bay. The winds were furious and the waves were big,
so a Small Craft Advisory must have been in effect there too. Since the wind was coming from the east and I
was going south, beam waves were going to be a problem, so I headed for
shallower water where the waves were dampened considerably. And there, right at the head of the Sister
Keys, I made a wonderful discovery: a very small protected channel running
right by the Longboat Key Center for the Arts down through Millar Bay alongside
White Key and Longboat Key. This nice little channel, so narrow that I could
nearly touch the sides with my extended 10-foot oars, was designed to provide water
access to a number of luxurious private homes, and it was relatively calm even
though big waves were crashing into a continuous stretch of mangroves just a
few feet away. I had complete protection
until I made a left-hand turn at a housing development somewhere near the Water
Club Association and Continental Brake Equipment. Then I was headed east, right into the face
of roaring winds and huge waves. Gulp.
I almost lost my nerve and headed back
to my safe channel, but I was making progress, with the distance between my
puddles (swirls made by my oars) being about three feet. Okay, maybe two feet. Well, that was okay—I had trained in the big
waves and winds on Keystone Lake in Oklahoma. If I could only keep some distance
between the puddles, I could be sure that I was indeed moving forward. All was proceeding relatively well until I
had to veer from my due-east course to angle south. My only real concern was to keep the wind
from blowing me into the concrete foundations of the housing development. The waves were hitting me from the side
again, but even though the boat rocked and bucked, no water came into the
cockpit, and besides, if I got into trouble, I could always turn tail and row
into one of the wide slips between the houses.
This thought gave me nerve and I continued along in this way for what
seemed to be just about forever, but in reality it was only about three-fourths
of a mile. When I saw another short
channel at the end of Longboat Key, I ducked in, and then it was just a brief row
across shallow water and smaller waves under the John Ringling Causeway back to
the protected Intercoastal Waterway. My
only regret is that I did not have my GoPro camera mounted on the bow of my
boat so I could experience the whole thing again later from the comfort of my
living room sofa!
I continued south through Little Sarasota
Bay and eventually past the Venice Jetty and the Venice Yacht Club and under
the N. Tamiami Trail bridge. At about 8:00 pm I landed at the Marina Boat
Ramp next to the Venice Train Depot and the Venice Area Historical Society.
There was not a soul in sight, only a sign that said “Do Not Feed the
Alligator.” Hmmm. With some interest, I cast my light around
and looked under the pilings holding up the walkway where I was planning to
boil some water to make coffee and heat up a freeze-dried meal, and I saw . . .
nothing. All good.
After some food and drink, I continued
under the E. Venice bridge and into the highly infrastructured channel that
passes east around Venice. This was the only boring part of the trip—here the
channel is banked by solid stone/concrete, with nary a place to land. By this time it was dark, and I kept my
lights cast on both sides, hoping at least to see an alligator. Nope.
There wasn’t any boat traffic either, for which I was grateful since the
large wakes and ricocheting waves created by powerful motorboats speeding up
and down the channel would have made for a very rough ride.
All was uneventful east of Venice and
down Lemon Bay. As I rowed by, I saluted
Stump Pass, which had been a big problem for me the previous year. I must have zoned-out, as I overshot the first checkpoint at Cape Haze by nearly a quarter
mile. I backtracked and landed on the
muddy beach at about 4:00 am Monday morning, eight hours ahead of the cutoff. Cool! I
had been rowing for about 21 hours, and I was feeling fine.
After securing the boat, I trudged up
the trail, and passed SaltyFriar’s boat, I think (this was the Class 1 boat I
had started out with at the Hwy 64 bridge).
At the checkpoint there was a note saying that I had to go to the
office. I did so—and there was the Chief
asleep on the floor. He quickly roused, and
we chatted about best route through the next crux point, Charlotte Harbor. This was fun and I was going to do it!
I proceeded south, keeping to the east
side of Placida Harbor, and fetched up on a muddy bank at Placida Park, where I
again made some coffee and had a bite to eat.
Continuing south, I held to the east bank of Casparilla Sound, and at
Boca Grande I headed southeast, directly into the wind.
My objective was the east side of Pine
Island, about eight miles away . . . . but my god, the wind was ferocious and
the waves were big! I pulled at the
oars. I was making progress. I pulled harder. I could do this. The muscles in my back were starting to
strain. I had only gone about two miles
when I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Or
at least I wasn’t going to make it with my back intact. After all, I still had a long way to go to make it to the race endpoint at Key Largo.
Then I noticed a string of what looked
like mangrove keys to my north, which turned out to be the tip of Little Cape
Haze. I turned the boat in that
direction and headed for some refuge, not sure exactly what I was going to do
when I got there. After pulling up the marine
map on my trusty GPS, however, I saw that the entire area was riddled with keys
and there was a protected channel winding among them that would take me east,
which was my objective. I figured that
this was probably the way the kayakers ahead of me had gone: east first and then drop south to Pine
Island.
So I continued on my meandering way
and finally at about 11 am on Monday, March 6, I decided to stop at Bull Key in
the Island National Wildlife Refuge for some R&R. I had been rowing for 28 hours and had covered
about 75 miles. I ate, set my alarm to
go off in three and a half hours, and lay down in the RowCruiser’s little
sleeping berth that my wife refers to as the “coffin”. It was warm, almost hot, and the sun was
shining in my eyes, but I pulled the hatch further over my head and dropped
happily off.
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|
The complete Florida rower--sun protection,
rearward
mirror, life vest with PLB as well as knife,
gloves, and kayak boots.
|
For the past eighteen
months, I had compulsively kept track of my heart rate and caloric burn with both
an Apple Watch and a Fitbit. I did this every
time I rowed, whether on the water or on the erg machine in my dining room, and
when I analyzed the data, I found that the two devices were generally within
15% of each other, sometimes one being up and sometimes the other. Upon analyzing a year's worth of data I found they were, surprisingly, almost identical in their calculation of caloric burn, with less than
a 1% difference between them. I didn’t bring
my Apple Watch on this trip but I was wearing my Fitbit, with the full
knowledge that sooner or later it would probably get ruined due to water damage
(and I was right). But I rationalized
that after eighteen months of round-the-clock duty, it was getting old--and besides,
some of its plastic covering was wearing off.
Therefore, in the interest of collecting “highly-valuable performance
data”, I’d be justified in buying a new one when I got back home. (Turns out that Ann was so certain my Fitbit
wouldn’t survive the race that she purchased one for me while I was gone and
brought it with her to Florida. As a
result, I only had to endure two Fitbit-less days....!)
According to my data, from the start
of the race at 7 am on Sunday morning until my first sleep at 11 am the next
day, I burned a total of 14,439 calories, averaging 515 calories/hour. That came to about 192 calories/mile, which
is above my usual training rate of around 120 calories/mile. I guess that isn’t
surprising, given the rigors of Sarasota Bay, Little Sarasota Bay, and my foray
into Charlotte Harbor.
And my sleep must have been good, since
my heart rate dropped to a low of 52 beats/minute right before the alarm went
off . . . .
Continuing to avoid the howling east
wind by following my meandering channel, I wended my way east. It was while I was rowing slowly along the
edge of a huge clump of mangroves that I ran across what must have been my
first manatee, although I never actually saw it. The only indication of its presence was a
huge, powerful sucking sound. A few
moments later, I heard the noise again, but this time there seemed to be about four
of them, all creating these loud, sucking sounds as they dove underwater. Hmmm. Hopefully
I wouldn’t run into one of them!
Upon reflection, I figured that the
sounds made by my oars must have been quiet enough to prevent the manatees from
detecting my presence—in other words, I was probably right on top of them
before they spooked. I briefly had the
thought that I should be more careful, and perhaps make more noise, but by then
it was too late. This time the sea literally
erupted under me, and I was immediately soaked when huge spouts of water shot
up all around me as if a giant were dropping enormous boulders into the sea. And then to my astonishment, the entire
boat—all 500 pounds of it and its contents, including me—rose into the air and rolled
about 30 degrees before finally settling back into the water.
Holy crap! What the hell? If I’d had been in a kayak, I’d have rolled. If I had gotten between a couple of these
monsters, the boat might have been crushed.
A flipper could have cracked the hull.
I have subsequently learned that Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) average 9 to 11 feet long and
weigh 440 to 1,320 pounds. They are aptly named sea cows, which is the way I
imagined them—like cows—slow, dumb, and HUGE!
I didn’t really know for sure what happened, but I surmised
that I had rowed over a manatee’s back and it tried to throw me off. Or maybe it surfaced to assess the
threat. In any event, for the rest
of the trip, I made a practice of slapping the blades of my oars on the surface
of the water every 3 to 5 strokes whenever I was rowing in manatee habitat. This made for slower going, but the manatees
now had my full respect and I understood that my rearward vantage point
prevented me from being able to see them at all. After that, I “ran across” no other manatees,
and I hope never to see one again! Except
maybe from a dock. Or a really big cruise
boat.
After surviving the manatees and proceeding
north for nearly two miles, I finally reached
a suitable spot to cross Turtle Bay. The
waves were not bad and the half-mile row went smoothly. Rowing south along the east side of Turtle
Bay, I rounded the last point, stopped to plot a route on my GPS seven miles
south and abeam of the wind and waves, and started off across Charlotte Harbor.
Curiously, my Spot device,
which keeps track of my times and locations, has no data for the first half of
the Charlotte Harbor crossing. My wife
noticed this omission and, assuming I had drowned, called my cell phone
repeatedly. This was about 6:45 pm, and by that time it was dark and I was well
“into it.” Although I heard the phone
ring, I was too terrified of the wind and the waves to take my hands off the
oars. It was all I could do to keep my stern lined up on the red light that was
flashing on a tower to the north. The boat
seemed to roll in all directions around that little red dot, but finally at
8:15 pm after about a 3-hour crossing, I was able to uncurl my hands from the oar
handles and hit the “All OK” button on my Spot.
I then rowed to a safe harbor and called my wife. She was none too pleased with my silence, but
once I explained the reason, she (reluctantly) acknowledged that she understood.
Continuing south, I passed under the
Pine Island bridge, and soon thereafter found a small (I mean really small) shoal with exactly one
mangrove tree. This miniature key was
only about 20 feet on a side, about the same length as my boat, but no problem—-with
my sleep-aboard RowCruiser, I could stop anywhere. It was now Tuesday, March 7, about 43 hours
from the start and 15 hours since my last sleep, and when I crawled into my
bunk, I had covered a total of 101 miles at an average speed of about 2.3
miles/hour. All I needed to finish the race on time was an overall speed of
about 1.5 miles per hour, so I was feeling very confident.
I again set my alarm to go off in three
and a half hours, and I dropped off immediately. My heart rate plummeted to 47 beats per
minute so I was sleeping soundly. When I
woke up at 5:30 am, it was light and I could see that the tide had gone out. This had the effect of making the shoal on
which I was perched quite a bit larger than it had been when I went to sleep,
and my first thought was to wonder if any alligators had decided to overnight with
me on the little island. But no, I was
thankfully still alone. I fueled up, deployed
my foam rollers to launch the boat, and took off for Sanibel Island.
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| Which way? |
As I rounded Sword
Point, I was again blasted with the full force of the east wind barreling down
the Caloosahatchee River. In retrospect, I really should have just rowed perpendicular
to the wind for the next two miles and been done with it, but instead I rounded
the point and turned east, the direction I needed to go anyway. Heading directly into the wind made for very
slow progress, so I entered a mangrove swamp at Jewfish Creek and looked at my
marine map in more detail. Turned out
there was a nice winding channel that would take me east to Glover Bight, from
where I could drop directly south and move along the protected side of Shell
Island and Jonathon Harbor to the Punta Rassa Boat Ramp, where my (still-wonderful)
wife was planning to meet me, having flown to Tampa from Oklahoma to more
closely keep track of me.
I decided to take this winding,
east-west channel, which was quite narrow and had many little twists and turns.
A wrong decision could have resulted in losing a lot of time trying to retrace
my steps, but I made good progress and finally came to the end, looking east
towards a housing development. There I
saw a flat-bottomed boat full of immaculate white-clad tourists moving slowly
west, apparently looking for manatees. I had the not-very-nice thought that it
would be fun to see one of those suckers (the manatees, not the tourists) tip that
little boat over, but that seemed unlikely, given the captain’s high vantage point
that was designed to afford a fine view of any sea creatures lurking below.
I dropped south, avoiding the
plentiful boat traffic going up and down the Caloosahatchee River, and at about
2 pm made it to the Punta Rassa Boat Ramp.
I pulled my boat up on a stinking muddy bank and scrambled through an
almost impenetrable tangle of mangroves to find my wife. Which I did! After catching up and taking a few photos, I departed
under the Sanibel Causeway and crossed San Carlos Bay. The wind had died while I was at Punta Rassa,
and the sea was dead calm. Just lovely. I hadn’t seen a calm hour in two years of
rowing the EC, and now I just knew I was gong to finish this race with ease!!
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| Heading towards Naples and smoke |
I continued south on the ocean
side of Estero Island under very pleasant conditions. At about 9 pm, 20 hours from my last sleep, I
stopped on a pretty little beach at Lovers Key State Park. 63 hours had elapsed from the start, and I’d
gone a total of 127 miles. Due to the
soaking I had received during the manatee encounter, my Fitbit was no longer tracking
all the time so there were a couple of two-hour gaps. But when it was actually recording, I was
expending about 470 calories/hour, which was somewhat less than the 515 at the
start of the race. This made sense as I
was now past the two cruxes, the wind had died, and the rowing was relatively
easy. I was still averaging over 2.0
miles/hour, so I was ahead of schedule . . . .
After another three and a half hours
of sleep, I woke up to a low tide shortly after midnight on Wednesday, March 8.
With my foam rollers in place to launch
the boat, I pulled hard on the stern rope, and it snapped. I went flying into
the water, my head lamp going in one direction and my handle and rope in the
other. Good thing I had my Sharkskin
upper on, as it provided instant warmth from the cold water. The rope and
handle were swept away by the swift current, but I could see my reliable Foxelli
USB Rechargeable headlamp about thirty feet down the shore with its light still
visible under two feet of water. When I
plunged my right arm into the water to retrieve the lamp, my poor Fitbit died
an instantaneous death. I tried drying
it, etc., but it never recovered. The headlamp,
however, worked perfectly for the remainder of the trip even though I had
neglected to close the charging port with the little rubber stopper designed
for that purpose.
Sloshing around in boots full of water
and feeling sort of embarrassed at this clumsy scene, I was reminded of those
tourists that I had envisioned getting tipped into the drink by a manatee. They would certainly have gotten a good laugh
at seeing me flailing around in the water trying to recover my stuff. And that, of course, would have served me
right about having such mean thoughts about them!
Along the Naples coast at about 7:30
in the morning, I met up with two stand-up paddleboarders (SUPS) in Class 1, Godzilla
(aka Jaime Smyth) and SaltySack (aka Richard Moran). I swung over to chat with
them and learned they had put in at Cape Haze.
But hey, I had caught up with them! After teasing them a little bit on
this point and admiring their equipment, I noticed a very inviting spot to slip
into for a short break near Clam Pass. Reaching the smooth sandy beach I had my
eye on only required rowing over some very shallow water at the entrance. I shot through with no problem, and to my
surprise, camped out right there was Michabo (aka James Hart). I learned that
he too had put in at Cape Haze—another one who, unlike me, had actually
listened to the Chief’s instructions! But hey, I had caught up with a Class 1
kayaker and two SUPS, all within an hour!
I stretched, made some coffee, and
then launched, making my way pleasantly down the coast to Gordon Pass, where I
ducked through to the Intercoastal Waterway and once again exchanged
pleasantries with Godzilla and Saltysack.
After a largely
uneventful day of rowing, I made it to Capri Pass, which is the start of a
critical eastern passage around Marco Island, “critical” because catching the
current in the wrong direction could mean a long layover waiting for the tide
to turn. But fortunately I could see the
water moving from the Gulf into the passage, and boy, was it a nice ride! Under the Collier Bridge and out into East
Marco Bay and then into the Big Marco River.
I stuck to my planned route and shot down Angelwing Creek to Goodland,
and at 10:10 pm I pulled into the beautiful Goodland Boating Park, which was by
this time well-past closed. I had gone
176 miles in 88 hours with an overall speed of 2 mph, still above my target of
1.5 mph. All good. After some more food and coffee, I proceeded
south to the 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge.
It was a lovely night with the lights
of Marco Island to the north and west, and I fired up Merle Haggard and Waylon
Jennings, rocking along in high spirits to Mule Skinner Blues. However, after
struggling for hours against the tide in an effort to keep my boat pointed toward
Indian Key, I decided to anchor for some much-needed sleep. So at about 3:50 am March 9th,
after 187 miles in 93 hours and with an overall speed still at 2 mph, I threw
my anchor out, got into my berth, and slept for about three hours. I was
comfortably above my target speed, so I was happy.
I pushed off at a little after 7 am,
and now the rowing was much easier. I
had lucked out and caught the flood into Chokoloskee. I threaded my way rapidly through the many
possible channels, following my pre-planned route into Chokoloskee Bay towards
the second checkpoint. It seemed the bay
was now at slack water and that the ebb tide would start soon. I was ready to ride it back out to Checkpoint
3 at Flamingo. I pulled up on the beach, and there to meet me was my wife as
well as the Chief, Whitecaps (aka Toby Nipper), and several other folks. I got out in high spirits, filled with optimism
that for the first time, I was really going to finish the EC. I hugged my wife,
shook hands all around, and the Chief told me what a great job I’d been
doing. A fantastic job. Hooray! Then he said “and now for the bad
news.” Uh oh.
As I stood there with my arms folded, the
Chief told me that I was actually behind schedule because Checkpoint 2 had
closed at 10:00 am and it was now 12:30 pm.
He explained that the race rules did permit one missed checkpoint, but
in spite of the fact that the race started a day late, the deadline for
Checkpoint 3 remained unchanged (the next day at 10:00 am) . . .and that I’d
never make it. Moreover, the deadline for the final finish was still Sunday at
7:00 am. Which I also would not
make. Whitecaps said the same. They repeated several times that I’d never
make it and that many good folks had quit right here at Chokoloskee. But it was up to me . . . .
I stepped to the side
and spoke with Ann about it—and decided to throw in the towel. All the enthusiasm that I’d had just minutes earlier
had completely evaporated. You’d think that the sheer fun of rowing through the
Everglades and Florida Bay would have motivated me to continue in spite of the
fact that I’d never finish on time. I’m
kind of ashamed that I quit. But there
is something highly motivating about a deadline and that’s the whole point of
the Everglades Challenge—can you make it to the end in the allotted time? Ultimately a casual row was just not
motivating enough for me. I think it
should have been, but it wasn’t.
And so I told the Chief that I was
done. Final distance was 202.5 miles in
103 hours, still at my overall speed of 2.0 miles per hour, and still ahead of
schedule.
