The Alegator Tale of Coast to Coast, 2001

It was a chilly morning on the St. Augustine beach when Dick drove us up to the starting line. We were a little early, so we sat in the car and waited. We'd been awake for a few hours, and the anxiety was building. Finally as the beach horizon began to glow with the morning's sunrise, we all gathered at the starting line cheering and counting down the final seconds. Then at 6 AM BANG we took off running south along the beach heading for Mantanzes Inlet.

We had heavy packs on, so perhaps "took off" wasn't the best wording. Susan and I had a nice easy jogging pace that carried us 9 miles along the beach. It was beautiful, the sunrise to the left of us, and a swirling cloud of smoke from the Florida wildfires on the right. The colors the sun left on the smoke were incredible. We kept a really good pace for that jog, and were very happy to finally see Dick again signifying we were near the end of the first leg.

Our next leg put us in our 2-person self-bailing sit-on-top kayak that we'd rented for the weekend (thanks to ). Susan, who was the rudder in our last race, got in the back and I got in the front. We headed out for Rattlesnake Island but found ourselves snaking through the water instead of making a straight line. Soon we hit the island and portaged over it, where we decided to try putting me in the back. Our kayak had no rudder but apparently my fat ass over the keel helped keep the boat straight. =) We continued to paddle south along the Intercoastal Waterway to Pellicer Creek, which snaked through some tall grass mile after mile. This was our first paddle section, and up until now we'd paddled no further than a mile or two.

The first bike leg was all road biking, about 12 miles west on Highway 204, then south on Cracker Swap Rd for 7 miles. This fed into a dirt covered brick road (Turner Rd) which led to some thicker dirt roads, including some sections the bikes just couldn't make it through. A few miles of this led us back to asphalt, and 7 miles later we found ourselves on Highway 17 crossing over Dunns Creek. And that was just the first bike leg!

We arrived at Checkpoint 2, after biking about 29 miles or so we were actually looking forward to resting our legs in a boat, with ample cooling water all around us. Oh what fools we were.... we paddled Dunns Creek to the Barge Canal which led us into St. Johns Lock. We portaged the boats over the lock, took giant swigs of liquid (probably a gallon between the 2 of us), and dropped back into the water. Susan told her Dad that we should see him around 2 AM the next morning, it was probably mid-afternoon about that time. That estimate was just a tad off...

Back into the Barge Canal we paddled, heading into Ocklawaha Lake . As we emerged into the lake we noticed the strengthening wind behind us, and even saw another team putting up a sail. So we made a sail by taking my Auburn University poncho and supporting it with Susan's paddle (which split into two pieces). This worked pretty well when the wind was blowing, enough even to see some white water coming off the boat. So we proceeded across the lake, Susan holding the sail up and eyeballing where the obstacles were and me paddling in the back. The lake was manmade, and there was a lot of driftwood and tree stubs to navigate through.

The sun was setting when we reached the other side of the lake. We turned from our westerly direction to a southerly one, entering the Ocklawaha River. However this also took away our wind, so it was back to all paddles. Understand that we were one of the slowest boats out there, if not by the boat itself by our lack of paddling strength. We tried to stick with the other teams in this section but soon found ourselves passed by the last boat we could see, which was the last boat we'd see for hours.

We heard distant thunder to the west as the sun descended beneath the treeline. Soon we put on our headlamps for the night, and soon after we received a slight drizzle from above. We were following buoys through the river, but in the dark, drizzle, and fog it was getting hard to see. Our best visibility came from the occasional lightning strikes. We continued on, and on, and on - our deep wide river became shallower and narrower, but we kept on paddling. Soon we heard an airboat, and since we were headed for a boat ramp we figured this to be a good sign. Eventually the airboat came buzzing past us, and so we paddled on. What was once a river was now becoming a creek in a swamp, we were hitting ground often, and polling the boat more than paddling. We debated turning the boat around, it'd been about two hours since we were in real "river" water, until we finally saw another team. It was two single-man boats. We passed them and continued on with new fervor.

A while long of paddling and poling through muck, and eventually Susan had enough of it. We tried using our safety net, every team was required to carry a cell phone in case of trouble. However go figure, we had no service in the swamp. So Susan decided it was time to get out and pull the boat. I was more than hesitant - I neglected to mention that we'd seen several alligators during our swamp tour, and the thought of walking through muck with alligators, snakes, or who knows what attacking either of us was a little disheartening. However Susan was determined - so she hopped out and started pulling the boat. A few steps later I followed suit, and then we were wading thigh to waist deep through an alligator infested swamp. My Tevas were sucked off a few times, so I threw them into the boat and found myself going barefoot. Never did I imagine this scene when we were talking about doing this race. =) However we were moving much faster, and soon enough we ran into another team, Team Headed East. We joined them in search of some sign of civilization, pulling our boats onto some land and trekking around for a while. However we found nothing, and collectively decided it was time to head back.

On the way back we ran into many other teams, probably a party of 10-15 boats. We all paddled around for hours, and finally around 5 in the morning decided to get some rest and wait for the sun to come up and light our way. Mental note: sleeping in a swamp is not the best way to get rest. =)

Once the sun came up we headed out, and fairly soon found ourselves back in the main river again. Then we saw it, the river went straight, but there was a 90 degree turn with a buoy a little ways in that we and every other team we were with that night missed. We'd lost probably 8-10 hours by missing that turn, not to mention the extra exertion and demoralization of spending all that time in the swamp. However on the plus side this final leg of the paddle was beautiful, the river snaked through cypress tress and we were surrounded by magnificent greenery on all sides. A while later we were passed by some jet skis, a search and rescue team. Apparently they hadn't seen a team come in since 2 AM and it was around 8 or 9. They assured us we were on the right path, and soon enough we saw Eureka Dam which meant we were close to home. Dick waved and cheered as we came rowing full speed into our next transition area.

We were both dead tired, very wrinkled and blistered, but very happy to have survived the night and completed that leg. The race director said my hands were some of the worst he'd seen. We took a nice hour long break at this checkpoint, ate some food, dried off, and took a nap in Dick's car. A little rested we slowly regained our orientation (an hour's sleep after 24+ hours of exertion leaves the mind very disoriented). So we geared up for the next leg, a 8+ mile orienteering/trekking section.

Not too far into this section we ran into another 2-person co-ed team who'd done the race the year before. We hiked along some jeep trails with them. We tried to keep track of where we were by the intersections of the trails in reality and on the map, but there were many more trails there than on the map, and soon we realized we didn't know where we were. To make sure we didn't overshoot our destination, we headed east back to Ocklawaha River and followed it thinking we'd eventually reach Gores Landing, our next transition. This was a pretty good plan until we hit a tributary that was too wide and deep to cross without swimming it. So we headed back west, ran into the jeep trails again, and quite fortunately took us right to Gores Landing. Fate was with us on this leg, Susan and I both ran out of water perhaps a mile from the end so we had just enough liquid. My hairy legs kept attracting ticks, nearly every time we stopped to rest I had at least 10 of them to pick off. Dick thankfully had a can of Off to greet us with, and I found insane amounts of pleasure watching dozens of ticks fall off my legs as he sprayed generously. The pain from my scraped sunburnt legs being sprayed with Off was nothing compared to the joy of dying ticks. =)

We prepared for the next leg, a bike leg, figuring we'd continue on with the team we'd hooked up with. However one of their teammates was having some medical problems so they dropped out and headed home for some R&R. So Susan and I hit the roads again. It was late afternoon at this point I believe. So we headed out to State Road 315, and then to State Road 40 (heading east and south). We wound up running into Team Headed East again, and we took turns drafting off one another. Turns out this team was from Atlanta as well, and we repeatedly saw each other during the race. Finally as the sun was beginning to set on day 2 we reached the Ocklawaha River again, which was Checkpoint 5.

The next section is described as "bushwhack with bikes." Luckily we were near dead last at this point, and a pretty decent trail had already been cleared by the 40 or so teams ahead of us. We were right behind Team Headed East for a while, then we took a break to rest and get our headlamps set for another night along the river. The 3 mile or so bike hike took a little longer than expected, but finally we reached the end where Highway 314 crosses the Ocklawaha River. We biked west on the highway for a mile or so until we reached Marshall Swamp State Park.

At this point we were about 36 hours or so into the race, and had only a solid hour of sleep under our belts. Dick was well prepared for this, he'd gone out and bought a nice space blanket type tarp along with some ground pads. We took our gear off and headed straight for "bed." We woke up a few times through the night, hearing some teams gearing up and heading on, but we elected to get a good rest for once. We slept for about 4 hours, breaking camp around 4 AM or so. We were the last ones left in the park, the absolute last place team (of the teams remaining, we'd heard of at least 10 teams who'd dropped out thus far).

So we hiked out along the Marshall Swamp Foot Trail, grateful for the well marked trail. We reached the end of the trail, a decent hike as the sun came up. We were a little confused, at the end of the trail we were supposed to find Checkpoint 8 however there was no one there. From here we continued hiking on a 220 degree heading through a corridor between some neighborhoods. As the sun rose higher into the sky we reached the intersection of Highways 35 and 464 (thanks to Susan's excellent navigational skills!). We continued on this heading through some landfills and then back on asphalt at SE 41 Ct., which led to the Santos Mountain Biking Area for grand total of miles.

Here at Checkpoint 9 we ate another hearty meal, complete with fresh fruit. We saw many other teams reloading and resting, but with our 4 hour nap we were good to go. We loaded up on our bikes and took off. Unfortunately the area was inundated with smoke from the Florida fires which made for difficult breathing, but the Florida flatlands were nothing compared to the mountains we'd been training on in Georgia. Shortly we reached Checkpoint 10 where we did our first tyrolean traverse across an old quarry. Then we continued to bike through most of the rest of the day on the OMBA <> yellow trail, then onto some horse trails crossing . Most of this was bikable, but there were spots were we had to trudge through thick sand under a hot sun. Eventually we reached Checkpoint 14 where we abandoned the trails for asphalt yet again. We took Highway 200 south to the Withlacoochee River, passing a very tempting catfish restaurant whose inviting odors were quite hard to resist. We reached the river and finally saw Dick again and all the other support teams. One guy handed Susan and I a couple noodles and insisted we cool off in the river. Floating in that water felt great after spending the entire day hiking and biking under the Florida sun.

Knowing the end wasn't too far away, knowing it was attainable after that swamp mishap, we loaded up into the boat again and took off paddling. We'd built up a really good paddling rhythm over the past couple days that carried us efficiently along the river to the town of Dunnellon, a total of miles. Near the end we wound up paddling along side a boat, talking to them about the race. We met a few people like that along our journey, and not a one of them considered us to be remotely sane. =)

We pulled into the boat ramp in phenomenal time, the checkpoint people were surprised to see us there that quick. We'd passed several teams on this day, gone from dead last to, well to something better. =) We took a nice break and geared up for the next leg, some road biking. The sun was beginning to set again, and so were we. We were very tired, blistered, sore, etc. I couldn't even get my feet inside my biking shoes, so it was Tevas and socks for me! We took off heading west on Dunnellon Road for about 9 miles, then biked into and through Dick's neighborhood. We were finally within a few miles of Crystal River, the end was near. 5 miles or so later brought us to US 19, and the large bridge that crosses over the Barge Canal.

This was our last checkpoint - there was one more planned for the course that was removed for safety reasons. A couple teams boats had flipped in the Gulf Coast of Mexico trying to reach it. So Susan and I loaded up and headed west one last time along the dead straight canal. This led to the nuclear power plant at the mouth of the river, where we emptied out into the Gulf of Mexico. We headed south for a couple levies, portaging the boats over them (and a few oyster shell islands on the way). It was very difficult for the both of us, both navigationally and personally. We were 65-70 hours into this race and had about 5 hours of sleep, both very tired and both of us wanted this thing to end. We paddled around the gulf for a while before we finally found the inlet which would lead us to Crystal River. And then, finally, we found the river, paddled north on it, then sharply east to the finish line. The sun was just coming up, it was about 5:45 in the morning, and we'd accomplished both of our goals. To both finish the race, and one better to do so in under 72 hours.