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Around Florida in 19 days - by kayak
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Outsiders may not understand this. But those who enter these events include some of the most interesting people I've ever met. They are rugged individualists, folks of integrity and courage. To use the old cliché, they are the kind of people I'd feel comfortable sharing a foxhole with. The battlefield analogy is a good one because the UFC was a physical and mental battle from beginning to end.
For me the challenge began well before the launch. A month before the race, I injured my left shoulder while training, and in the week prior to the race I struggled with thoughts of having to drop out. On the first day of the race I covered 67 miles in a little over 13 hours, but when I awoke the next morning I was barely able to lift my left arm. Again, I considered dropping out. But then I decided I didn't need to actually lift my arm, just move it back and forth like a piston. I pressed on.
By Day 4 my shoulder was no longer a problem. But I had other concerns. I got lost in the Everglades - twice, traveling several miles out of my way before realizing my mistake. And I spent a cold, cold night on a mud bank in the middle of Florida Bay.
At the time, I was traveling with Mark "ManitouCruiser" Przedwojewski. We were zooming across the bay toward Key Largo when we approached the tricky Twisty Mile Channel around midnight in near total darkness. I've taken this channel many times without incident, but when we arrived we couldn't see any channel markers. Mark went north. I went east. In what seemed an instant, strong north winds accelerated the falling tide and left us on different sides of an emerging mud bank.
We could see each other 100 yards away, but could not hear each other over the roar of the wind. We each assumed, wrongly, that the other was stuck in the mud.
There is an unwritten code among WaterTribe challengers that we will come to the aid of anyone in distress and stay with them until they are safe. That code kept us in the mud for seven hours that night, each for the other - though neither of us was stuck. The next morning I paddled out into deep water. When Mark saw me, he took the channel across the bank. Together we paddled and sailed into the rising sun to Key Largo.
After about a week, the UFC became two races rather than one. At the front of the pack was Matt "Wizard" Layden in a 12-foot sailboat he had designed and built. Matt brings a potent combination of intellect and physical toughness to these races. His plan was to build up as much of a lead as possible sailing almost nonstop up the east coast to help him get up the St. Marys River, across the portage, down the Suwannee and back into the open waters of the Gulf before anyone could catch him.
The "anyone" turned out to be Mark and me. Mark, with his expedition sailing canoe pulled away from me near Palm Beach. A strong paddler, he eventually caught and passed Matt on the Suwannee River. But I suppose the bigger surprise is that I eventually caught and passed them both. More than 1,000 miles into the race, three vastly different boats were suddenly neck and neck in a race that would be determined in the next three days by a combination of seamanship, endurance, and weather.
The turning point came just after noon on March 21 when I plunged into a 20 mile-per-hour head wind in the turbulent Gulf of Mexico in a final push to Cedar Key. The next day, after seven hours of blissful sleep in a motel, I began a final run, knowing that both ManitouCruiser and Wizard were not far behind.
I covered 120 miles in 30 hours of nonstop paddling from 7:30 a.m. Wednesday to my arrival at the finish line at 1:48 p.m. on Thursday.
ManitouCruiser arrived a mere 50 minutes later. Wizard came in five hours after him. It was a remarkably tight and exciting finish in a race that had begun 19 days and 1,200 miles earlier.
Of the 10 challengers, three dropped out. Two others, Nick "Pelican" Hall, and Donald "Doooobrd" Polakovics reached the finish line on March 30. The final two challengers, Leon "Dr. Kayak" Mathis and Dawn "SandyBottom" Stewart completed their journey together on April 2 after 29 days, 13 hours, and 33 minutes.
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'WIZARD':
Matt Layden stands in front of the 12-foot sailboat he designed and built. The photo was taken on the beach in Fort DeSoto, Fla., just before the start. Mr. Layden led the race for all but a few days, eventually coming in third.
MARTY SULLIVAN
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