It’s been a wild several weeks in the markets and elsewhere. News flow has been fast and furious and doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon. This impacts stock and bond prices, as you’re no doubt aware, with major stock indexes down year-to-date, while bonds have picked up a little slack. Investor mood has gotten pretty dark. The “R word” is being discussed again and if the economy does dip its toe into the red maybe it goes down as the first “r” caused by everyone just needing to take a breather.
As always, I’ve been monitoring portfolios that I manage for clients and making tweaks where needed. Sometimes this has meant adding to stocks on weakness, but it’s always based on trying to ensure that your investments are of good quality and are in the proper proportions for your situation.
I could go on but instead I’ll flip the script this week with a personal story if you’ll indulge me.
A year ago I participated in a race down the coast of Florida from Tampa Bay to Key Largo, a distance of nearly 300 miles depending on your route. This race, the Everglades Challenge, has been going on for many years and is for small boats without motors. Think of sailboats that one or two people can drag along a beach, or kayaks that can be paddled.
The rules are pretty straightforward. Start from the beach and sail or paddle to Key Largo while passing through three checkpoints. No outside support is allowed, so you’re carrying all of your food, safety gear, and enough water to get you to the next checkpoint. You have eight days to complete the distance and many participants treat the event as intended: a challenge. But for others, including yours truly, it’s a race.
Of course it’s a race and why not? People like to test themselves against the elements and others to see what sort of stuff they’re made of. That sentiment and the desire to say yes to new experiences got me into the race last year and maybe the wildest four days of my life. A year later and ready for round two? Why not, let’s do it.
First let me back up a bit. Some of you know that I like to run ultramarathons, sometimes on roads but mostly on trails. I wanted to diversify a bit so I got into paddling, first standup paddleboards then outrigger canoes and most recently kayaks. I seem to be wired for “ultra” and that easily extended to the paddling realm.
Along the way I met an experienced ultrapaddler who showed me the ropes and, in many ways, taught me everything I know about paddling. He had done the EC, as it’s known, eight times and had several fast finishes including a record as a solo paddler. One goal eluded him, however, the blazing fast tandem record of 2 days and 20 hours (set by a team including an ex-special forces guy if I understand the lore correctly).
It took a different partner and I nearly four days to complete the EC last year, which was pretty good mind you. But cutting that down to maybe 2.5 days? Yikes, that sounded like an audacious goal! One of the issues with a race like this is the ever-changing conditions you have to deal with. Wind direction and speed. Tidal shifts. Darkness. Sleep deprivation. Hydration and nutrition. Manatees (that may sound funny but they can cause some issues in shallow water). Seemingly vast distances to cover by human power alone. And those are just some of the known issues.
After some consideration I said yes to the goal and we started training. We paddled a fancy 22’ racing kayak through the cold, the rain, the swells, the night, all to prepare to give this year’s EC our very best, not knowing what conditions we’d ultimately face.
As the calendar ticked down to the race start on March 1st we anxiously watched the weather reports. We’re basically heading south for most of the race so expectations of a north wind seemed auspicious. Sure enough on race morning we were able to fly off the start with semi-wild grins on our faces. How long would it last?
Our goal was to finish well under the prior record if possible. This meant keeping an overall pace of at least 5 mph after accounting for required checkpoint stops at 60, 160, and 215 miles, or simply getting out to stretch. So we planned to stop as little as possible.
Fortunately the north wind stayed with us for most of the first 24 hours. We took nothing for granted, assuming the wind could die or, worse, change directions, at any time. Maybe we spent an hour out of the boat between the first checkpoint, quick stretches, and having to bail water after getting swamped while riding waves half a mile offshore because we didn’t have our spray skirts on. This persistence allowed us to cover over 120 miles during the first 24 hours, slightly better than the math said was possible. We thanked the weather gods many times that day.
But the good conditions continued. The second evening found us at the second checkpoint in Chokoloskee, a small “town” after Marco Island and the last outpost as we progressed to the Everglades. The time was about 6pm and we’d covered nearly 160 miles at that point. Apparently this was a blazing fast arrival time. We wanted to get in and out quickly but an updated weather forecast seemed ominous and slowed our departure.
Our beloved breeze from the north was expected to build through the night and get nasty, potentially turning our overnight 40-mile run in the open Gulf into a string of opportunities to flip. We had almost no moon, the air temperature was cool, and there wouldn’t be many places to hide based on our intended route. Flipping a kayak in open water is always possible but was definitely something we hoped to avoid. In what would prove a theme for most of our race, our persistence and insistence on not taking anything for granted paid off. The north wind picked up but the conditions were fine overall.
I remember this section fondly from my first EC last year. This is where I first experienced bioluminescence and calm and balmy conditions that carried me through the night. This year was more intense but we had a great time. We watched a rocket trace the sky. The night was so dark that the stars looked like diamond dust on a black canvas.
Sleep deprivation was starting to take its toll, however. For me, the stars started presenting as wisteria vines dangling from celestial trees. It was hard to tell where the dark water stopped and the black sky began. We were still functional but cracks were beginning to show. We stumbled into three sandbars in the middle of nowhere. I was finding it difficult to keep my paddle strokes in time with my partner’s (he was up front steering via foot pedals). Our goal for this leg was Ponce De Leon Bay, a main entrance into the Everglades at about 200 miles into the race. We’d planned to enter by about 8:30am, the 48hr mark. Impossible to miss by day, we were so far ahead of schedule that as we approached the bay at maybe 3am, we wondered if we passed it and were now heading around the cape of Florida.
This was one of those times where trust is critical. We trusted each other but we began to mistrust our technology. We had some earlier issues with our GPS but had a backup and our track was clear. We simply needed to reset our minds and not overthink our plan. Plan the work and work the plan, so to speak. Ironically, after covering so much distance so quickly it came down to simply not getting there yet. A short while later we left the lumpy but not unfriendly Gulf and paddled into the Everglades.
The Everglades. Last year I mentioned in my post how I felt almost let down because all I saw during the day was mangroves and headwinds. This year the dark night obscured the massive mangrove forests. We didn’t stop to point our lights into the darkness surrounding us – probably a good idea! I’m sure I was imagining those crocodile heads floating on the water as we passed.
Sunrise found us still in the Everglades (it’s so huge – maps don’t do it justice) but rapidly approaching our final checkpoint at another far-flung outpost, Flamingo. It was maybe 9:30am and my partner, after all the hours steering and working the GPS simply had to rest. We were both hallucinating but his were more pronounced and daytime seemed to amplify them, which isn’t good. We agreed he’d sleep for an hour while I cleaned up the kayak which badly needed it.
At this point we were nearly there. Roughly 30 miles remained but this is when the weather gods reminded us of that oldy but goody: ain’t nothing free. We had to travel east across Florida Bay from Flamingo to get to Key Largo and that’s exactly where the wind was now coming from at about 20mph.
Rounding that corner and heading east into the wind was certainly a challenge, and perhaps it was a fitting end to our race. What might have taken us 6-7 hours in good conditions took nearly 11. We’d head from one string of mangrove islands to the next for shelter, take a bite and a drink, and then repeat without leaving the boat. Endlessly.
We were both exhausted. Fortunately my partner getting some sleep helped keep us on our GPS track. Florida Bay is very shallow for long stretches and narrow channels are marked but confusing – navigation isn’t as simple as “just head East and you’ll get there”. In addition to the headwind we were also fighting the tide, so finding any deeper water, even a few feet deep, was critical to maintaining speed.
My hallucinations were gaining control. We could have ended up in Cuba if I were navigating. I was disassociating from my activity. At times I saw myself in sort of a split screen where whole thoughts and dialogues took place while I hammered away with my paddle. For a time I wasn’t entirely sure what we were doing. Were we on another training paddle? Wait, who is this guy in front of me? Was he the one who taught me about all this paddling stuff, or wasn’t it Kenny Chesney? At one point I “woke up” to a burning lower back. My paddle stroke rotation had rubbed my back raw and it was on fire. At the next mangrove island I fiddled with my back pad but it was really no use. My skin was aflame but the only thing to do was to throw some Vaseline on it and try to lean forward while paddling. We had to get home and crying about it wouldn’t get us there any faster. Still… ouch!
The bay spread before us as the water depth increased and the sun set. Unfortunately the wind strengthened and drove waves into us head-on for the next couple of hours as we clawed our way toward tiny lights growing in the distance.
As soon as the sun went down my hallucinations seemed to turn on fully formed. Geometric shapes lined hillsides of translucent water that seemed like snow and smoke. I found it harder to keep my paddle strokes in time. For a while I felt like I had no paddle but used my hands to match my partner’s strokes. I may have been out of sync but I was working harder than ever, feeling the pull of each stroke like those ice climbers who race up frozen waterfalls, except that we climbed for hours not minutes.
Eventually we made it to the Keys and the calm that comes from being done. We felt exhausted but elated finishing the race at 9:22pm after 2 days and 13 hours of paddling, covering roughly 260 miles from Saturday morning to Monday evening. This was hours ahead of our ideal time, and hours more ahead of the tandem record. The next paddlers took about two days longer to finish and more took longer still. Also, apparently I’m the only paddler to have completed the race without sleeping – sort of a dubious distinction given the last few hours of the race.
In the end this year’s EC was one for the record books and that, plus the experience itself, is something I’m proud of and won’t soon forget. Not a bad way to spend a long weekend.
- Brandon
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