As the Summer Winds Down

The temps are still in the hundreds, but the days are noticeably shorter and the talk of football is back. A nice weekend with not too many responsibilities left me no choice but to brew and bottle, and sail in the last race of the Summer series. It's been a while since I was under sail and without a paddle, and it felt good. Projects are limited with the number of hours I will be taking at school this Fall semester, but I'll see what kind of adventure I can cook up for the Winter break. Any ideas?

A 10 Foot Trailer for a 40 Foot Boat -

Hmmm... looks like some balancing will be in order. Here is the new (used) trailer platform for Long John Silver (name is not official) and a stack of lumber. We will soon begin building up a trestle on which to carry the new 40 foot aluminum. Wish us luck.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...

step right up, step right up. Two bits is what it costs, just two bits. Witness a spectacle... nay, an aberration of nature. A freak of the canoe world. Behold: FRANKENCANOE!
What you are looking at is Team Marines' 2010 Water Safari entry - a home built forty foot aluminum canoe for 6 paddlers. Forty. Feet. Made from cutting an Osagian canoe in half and welding 23 feet of metal in the middle, those guys finished the race in 60 hours.
Team Cuatro Sinko planned to race the CR 100 in it, but about 24 hours after our team captain bought the thing, race officials finally returned our emails and informed us that the race was limited to solo and tandem boats. Wow. Oh, well - their loss.
We will be racing instead in the Jr. Safari, the first 16 miles of the regular Texas Water Safari (familiar territory). Will this mean we get competitive? First let's see if we can even steer the thing!

Cool TWS Vid

Not as elegant as a pod of dolphins, but here's some nice underwater footage of the Texas Water Safari race start.
And here is some neat time lapse of Palmetto (one of the checkpoints) at night.

July!

That month usually doesn't have an exclamation point on the end of it for me, but it's been almost a week since I watered my plants - or needed to. We've had a cool front bring us several inches of rain and highs in the low 90's. Wow! Summer is 1/2 over, and I haven't even thought to myself, "when is this going to end?!". It's a shame the rest of the country has been having record heat waves.
Team Cuatro Sinko, it seems, is up for another canoe challenge: the Colorado River 100. You guessed it - it's a 100 mile race down the Colorado River. Happens on Labor Day. Just enough time to get good and flabby if I don't continue training.
Also, it looks like the team is in the planning stages of the Texas 200 (these events have very clever names) - the 200 mile sail up the Texas coast. We have two options: sail a Catalina 22 (a very capable shoal-draft boat with a swing-keel) or rig our canoe Tinkerbell with a Sunfish rig and fit it with amas (pontoons) to make it a trimaran. In true "go big or go home" Cuatro Sinko style, we are currently considering both. Heck yeah!

Last on the Topic of TWS: Inspiring Individuals

Alternate title for the post: Cojoneros. I'm not sure that's a word, but what I mean is 'Folks With Cojones'.
There were a lot of inspiring folks out there in the race, but these are my top 3 favorites:
1. Old Man and the Sea - solo paddler in his 60's (maybe 70?), plugging away, portaging over dams and jams. Awesome. Lucky he had a light composite canoe.
2. Not So Lucky: The Reluctant Solo Paddler - this guy's partner wanted out. He didn't. So he stayed in, found an old tire/rim on the river bank to use for ballast in the bow of his aluminum 2-seater. He finished not long after we did (and under the 100 hours). This is surprisingly not the first time I've heard of this happening, but it was cool to see.
3. El Cojonero Mas Loco - this guy is the first to try (and first to finish) the entire 260+ miles on a stand-up paddle board. Not really much more to say about that. Simply amazing.

pic: stand-up paddle board guy displaying withering hands, around mile 190.

Update (written 7/02/2012): well, it looks like there's mutual respect amongst all us folks who were told we couldn't finish. And speaking of the devil! Check out TheStandUpGuy blog!

TWS: Lessons Learned

There are a multitude of things I've learned while training and running the Texas Water Safari. Not least among them is the importance of a good team. But the following is advice for folks not running with such a large pack, and some for general paddling:
1. dry bags
2. take care of your hands and your butt, and they'll take care of you.
3. almost as important as hydrating is taking in enough salt and electrolytes. This year was the first ever fatality of the Texas Water Safari, in the 50 years it's been going. The cause: water intoxication - too much water intake and not enough salt/electrolytes.
4. listen to veteran's advice, take what you need and disregard the rest. Many veterans told us we would not be able to finish in the boat we chose. I'm glad we didn't listen. We dared, and we did. We practiced, thought, and trained, and had a GREAT time. Don't let others tell you that you can't- instead, keep your head down and keep paddling (practicing and training, that is).