Everglades Challenge Addiction

March 02nd, 2017

Finish in eight days or less and not DIE!  This is the goal of the Everglades Challenge (EC) which is right around the corner, commencing March 4, 2017. A physically and mentally grueling 300-mile expedition style adventure race for small vessels, whether sailing, rowing or paddling, unsupported, down the Gulf Coast of Florida from Tampa Bay to Key Largo is not for the faint at heart.

Sometimes when we lend a helping hand to others, it changes our path. Flashback to 2014…lifelong sailor, Linda Wright served as ground crew for one of Randy Smyth’s many EC runs. She quickly learned what was involved as she drove to each of the three checkpoints to follow Smyth along the 300 miles of coastal waters, ready to lend a hand only if he had to drop out since pre-arranged outside support is not allowed. As it turned out, Smyth shattered his own record by finishing in just under 36 hours and was the first boat to finish out of more than 90 that started. On the ride back home, Wright was inspired to attempt the Challenge in 2015. After much thought and discussion, the Weta Trimaran was tops in her mind as the vessel to handle the rigors of both the Intracoastal Waterway and open Gulf waters. After borrowing a Weta for some test sails, she purchased one and began her preparations and training.

While the stock Weta has many great features for the event, Wright and Smyth looked at ways the platform could be optimized for a more comfortable and efficient passage. The stock mast was reinforced to support two reef points in the main, a jib track was installed on the foredeck and the forestay was moved forward onto the sprit to allow for a self-tacking jib. Smyth designed a complete sail plan to provide more efficiency throughout the wind range. Also, to accommodate a route that features a great deal of extremely shallow water, Wright and Smyth built a dagger rudder to further improve flexibility in course options. After a year of preparation, Wright was ready to begin the 2015 Everglades Challenge. With butterflies in abundance, she set up camp at Fort DeSoto on the north side of Tampa Bay and worked on last-minute details. Getting off the beach at the start would be a major challenge for 105 pound Wright. One of the requirements is that competitors must launch from above the high tide line with no outside assistance. Anything used to facilitate the launch must be taken on the trip. Her solution was to lay a makeshift runway using Tyvek house wrap. Fortunately, it worked!

Wind conditions at the launch were mild on the protected beach, but the forecast for 18-20 knot winds was accurate out in the middle of Tampa Bay where there was a strong incoming tide opposing the wind. Wright had reefed the main prior to departure and had a speedy ride across the Bay and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Other competitors were not so fortunate as they headed across toward Sarasota Bay with steep rolling seas on the beam. There were a number of capsizes and roughly 12 people that needed assistance which resulted in the Coast Guard terminating the event after only two hours. Clearly, some were not sufficiently prepared!

Since Wright was farther ahead and not aware of the cancellation, she continued on her journey for 62 miles. She successfully navigated the shallow Stump Pass by observing that a local fishing boat was taking a different route than the buoys indicated …typical of the shifting sands found in many of the passes along the west coast of Florida. She arrived at Cape Haze Marina, the first checkpoint, only to find out she was done with her quest. It was now time to start preparations for 2016.

While the early termination of the race was disappointing, Wright learned many lessons and applied them for 2016. The rig was performing well, but Wright couldn’t help but consider the benefits of adding a rotating mast to provide even better performance and make it easier to reef the main. Smyth just happened to have a broken mast from a A-Class Catamaran collecting dust in his shop. After hours of work, the former 30’ mast was transformed into a 20’ mast and the deck layout was further adjusted to accommodate a rotator. Current Fleet Captain at Fort Walton Yacht Club, Wright’s home base, said “it looks kind of stringy”.  

Since the EC can be treacherous in many ways, proper supplies and gear are imperative. Required items include a SPOT GPS tracking device, personal EPIRB, strobe light, and VHF radio. Wright protected all electronics with two layers of waterproofing. For navigation, her two iPhones were in Lifeproof cases and then put into a Dry Pak bag that could be strapped to her leg for easy viewing anywhere on the boat. In order to save cell phone battery power and ensure quick and accurate location data in areas with no cell phone coverage, she would link the cell phone to a stand-alone Bad Elf GPS via bluetooth and view her location on the Navionics charting app. With two cell phone/GPS pairs, she could always charge one pair with her lithium battery packs while using the other pair for navigation. She kept a compass, watch and paper charts safely tucked below as a backup in case of a complete loss of electronics.  In addition, Wright would wear a drysuit for all but a few hours of the trip. Staying warm and dry was a high priority. Since adding layers inside the suit for the chill of night is difficult, she added layers outside instead. A military surplus parka liner followed by a Frogg Toggs rain suit added warmth and cut the wind chill. For the rare times she stopped to sleep, she put a closed cell foam pad on the net to block wind from below and crawled into her sleeping bag inside of a Gortex bivvy sack. On the occasions where she took short naps while hove-to, she had a home-made bivvy sack made from Tyvek to shelter from wind and water.   

Wright estimated she had around 100 pounds of gear, including enough food and water for seven days. She had replaced the stock hatch with a larger one to make it easier to store dry bags below the deck and much of the cockpit space was filled with bulky items in a large dry bag. She kept a five pound Danforth with 100 feet of dyneema rode in a mesh bag on one of the nets. It was deployed via a line running to the bow ring and back to the forward beam. A bridle arrangement with a shock-absorbing cargo bungee kept the boat settled on the anchor. When she wanted to heave-to to reef sails, change clothes, eat or nap, a blue plastic handle from a roll of U-Haul wrap was attached to the screecher blocks and used as a socket to hold the tiller hard over to keep the boat from sailing.

A three and a half gallon bucket in the cockpit would serve as her galley and storage for a Jetboil camp stove. Meals consumed over a 24 hour period typically included one MRE, a self-contained, individual field ration used by the United States military, one ration per day of her own concoction of Raman noodles, quinoa, lentils and rice that she “cooked” in boiling water in an Esbit thermos. The rest of her food included apples, power bars and various trail mixes that could be easily consumed while sailing. Since what goes in must come out, a one gallon blue bucket served as housing for toilet paper, a female “funnel” and Wag bags.

After all this, was there anything that she missed in her preparations? Time will tell…

Well, as it turned out, all of her hard work paid off. Wright said there was incredible beauty and some fantastic sailing conditions along the way, but there were also many potentially trip ending “challenges”. Winds ranged from calm to 30 knots and temperatures were between 50-80 degrees.
 
Day one started easy with a reach out of Tampa Bay and down the coast through Stump Pass to the first checkpoint located in a marina in the Intracoastal Waterway. The real challenge came after leaving Checkpoint one. As darkness fell, and with no moon to help light the way, she had to negotiate a newly-installed bridge with somewhat questionable height (even per the bridge-tender) that was very close to her mast height, followed by an unlit railroad bridge that had been partially removed.  After the blinding lights of the first bridge and short distance to the second (un-lit), she found herself unable to find the opening and about to hit some concrete rubble. Fortunately, a fishing boat was nearby and after she pulled along-side, they quickly offered to bring her through the opening. This sort of fortuitous support is allowed and Wright gave thanks that there are still a lot of good people in this world.  

After sailing over 100 miles since the start of the race, she finally anchored at 2am for much-needed sleep. Later as the sun rose, the breeze quickly picked up which made it extremely difficult to pull the anchor up out of the very sticky bottom. Nothing would make the anchor budge, so she finally sailed over it. Success at last, but she would later find out the hard way that the shank was bent.

At the end of day two near Marco Island, she had sailed almost 48 hours with only three hours of sleep. It was time for some real sleep in a protected bay. Again, anchoring in the darkness, she discovered the anchor wouldn't hold (due to the bent shank), so the boat dragged across the bay and finally came to a stop among some mangroves where she tied up and slept.  In the morning, while sitting aground at low tide, she was greeted by a frolicking family of raccoons that had come out of the mangroves to sift through the mud for breakfast. Fortunately, they were not used to humans and kept their distance. Later, as the tide rose, getting out of the bay proved to be extremely difficult due to strong headwinds and current. Wright attempted to paddle out, using foot straps to steer the rudder from the bow, but there was too much windage and current. She made it across the bay to the channel, but was going to have to wait for tide and wind to slacken. As luck would have it, a good samaritan came along and towed her out …more good people in the world!

As a result of her very late departure, the next leg to checkpoint two consumed much energy battling strong headwinds and lumpy, current-driven seas at night among the shoals off of Cape Romano. She hove-to twice to reef sails and broke a jib hank in the process. Later as she neared the pass leading into the checkpoint, she hove-to for a nap while waiting for the tide to change in her favor. Her erratic courses prompted concern on the part of the race committee, so they queried Smyth …his response, “she’s just trying to write her name in the Gulf”!    

Arriving at Chokoloskee (checkpoint two) in the middle of the third day found Wright utterly exhausted and facing a forecast of 20 knot headwinds for the remainder of the race (over 100 miles). At this point, she was deeply discouraged and started to contemplate the possibility of dropping out as many others had. The advice of veterans of the race has always been to sleep on it before making a decision. A hot shower, recharge of batteries, good food at the Havana Cafe and a good night of sleep despite the mosquitos made for a more positive prospective the next morning. Wright noticed the wind was consistently dying down at night and shifting to a more favorable direction. Yes!  There was a way!  She removed the screecher since it would no longer be needed and late in the afternoon of the fourth day, headed out on the falling tide to an outer island where she could wait for the wind to abate at nightfall. The tactic worked as she was able to nap and fuel up while waiting for the tide to rise and the wind to fall. Finally! ….A glorious night of sailing on a beam reach that lasted well into the morning. At one point, while approximately nine miles offshore, conditions were ideal in a world devoid of any evidence of human habitation. Later in the morning, the wind “switched on” and rapidly built to 25-30 knots. While still making five knots to weather, Wright decided discretion was the better part of valor as capsize potential along a very remote section of the Everglades was high. She headed in to find a protected anchorage and wait for the wind to die down at nightfall. A repeat of the previous night’s scenario found her approaching the final checkpoint at Flamingo at the southwest corner of the Everglades park on the fifth day. This time, strong current flowing out of Florida Bay conspired to keep progress to 2.5 knots. The respite of checkpoint three was not to come until many hours later than expected; however, as she was coming into the channel, “some guy” sitting on the dock made a comment about her blue eyes. Smyth had traveled all the way from Key Largo, where he had finished days earlier, to surprise Wright. In the harbor, manatees jumped and played for hours …another of the many wonderful interludes of nature that always lifted spirits in the face of fatigue. Now with just 50 miles to go, another night of slogging upwind found Wright nearing the finish line in Key Largo in the early morning. Within three miles of the finish, she had a glorious 11.5 knot beam reach in super smooth waters …a fantastic finish to a truly epic Challenge!    

Wright set three new records: First single-handed female sailor to ever finish an Everglades Challenge, First Weta to successfully finish and First single-handed female to finish in Class 5 Multihulls. In the end, 97 boats started and only a third of the fleet finished.

On the way home, Wright was already starting to prepare for 2017 and her goal of breaking her own records. She plans to pace herself better in the early stages of the race, but the weather is always the big unknown and can drive many different solutions to the puzzle. Wright said, ”can’t wait till next year …It’s kind of addictive”.

By Stephanie De Lair

Photos Linda Wright

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