EC2014: Checkpoint 2 and the Very Long Day

Harry and Bryan did stop to rest early on Sunday night after the short sleep after checkpoint 1 on Saturday. They stopped on Sanibel Island just past Blind Pass. I got the SPOT custom message, "I am going to camp here. Hope I will be warm," at 6:57. Then Harry texted me this nice photo of the gloaming dusk. I could see on the WaterTribe tracker that Bryan had pushed his OK button on the same spot so I figured they were just chilling out on the beach eating all their ramen noodles and tuna packets.

They stayed there a good long time. I didn't get another SPOT message until 9:22 am Monday morning. Then there was no tracking for a long time. Then at 10:51 am I got another one. Then the tracker started working. I never saw a new tracking location for Bryan though. He was still on the island at 6:50 the night before. When Harry called about 4:00 pm he said he would tell Bryan to be sure to push the OK button.

He said Bryan consulted the Sailflow website on his phone and made a float plan. He set a course for a cut near Marco Island, but there was no wind in the early morning. Harry said Bryan made him paddle for what seemed like 5 hours. (By the map and weather reports I think it was just 2 hours.) When the wind picked up they were mostly just sailing on the fastest course they could achieve, planning to change direction with the turning wind and end up where they wanted to go. They had been out of cell phone range most of the day cutting across the open water. As they got closer to Naples and Marco Island they could use the phone again.

At 6pm Monday the tracking map looked like this.

Monday 6pm, track from camping spot overnight Sunday.

I kept hoping they'd go over to the shore and rest but they just kept going. Finally I saw them nearing Marco Island. I got an OK message at 11:10 pm Monday night. I'd sent a variety of texts for perusal later and I got one back. "Need water." I zoomed in where he'd landed.

Marco Island water stop

Man, look at all those giant condo complexes! I texted him back that there was a swimming pool full of water straight in front of him. (Hurr hurr.) But they probably also have a hose bib and a cold shower on those boardwalks down to the sand. I decided to text him this picture and tell him to watch out for those three groins when they set out again. I couldn't imagine they were going to camp right there in front of those big buildings. It would be like taking a vacation to see a Formula 1 race but being forced to sit through a NASCAR race the night before.

At 12:18 I got another OK message. I assumed it meant they were setting out again. I could see Bryan had pushed his OK button on the island too, so they were still together. 

There's Brian's default skull and crossbones up there on the beach.
Gokey's red sail icon looks like he's leaving Bryan, but they are together.

I thought maybe they would maybe go past Marco and camp on one of the keys in Thousand Islands. Maybe even on Dickmans Point. I would definitely have stopped there. (In fact I am so easily amused by that I blew up that iPad screen shot in iPhoto and took a screen shot of it on my Mac just so I could put it here. I spent the day troubleshooting why iPhoto that won't let me export cropped iPad or iPhone screen shots. Decided it's a bug. Anyway, that's why this update took me so long.)

I haven't been shirking on my race tracking duties though, oh no. In fact I check it so much this happened last night. (uncropped, I give up.) It says "This site has exceeded its daily quota for maps."

I don't know if the Everglades Challenge singlehandedly used up the map quota or what. It was 12:51 am EST, so I guessed the daily quota was based on PST so it would probably work again in just a couple more hours. I'd forgotten all about it the next time I woke up to check on Harry and Bryan.

They are just out in the middle of the ocean again! And this time it's DARK! I bet the stars were amazing though. I figured there was no way they had cell phone coverage out there either. 

I took a screen shot of the Challenge Tracker at that time too, just to see where the other WaterTribers were. Sunrise was only another hour and a half away, the temperature was above the dewpoint, so no fog or depressing chill to worry about. They were likely fine.

Harry's going 1.94 knots. Destination is that green check. Bryan still shown on the beach on Marco Island.

About 8:30 I was looking at the map and even though I figured it was unlikely they had cell coverage I texted Harry that Picnic Key was coming up. I couldn't imagine they wanted to just keep going without resting. The next tracking spot showed Harry turned. Then he ended up doing this maneuver.

Where's he going?

I pondered this move. I texted our cousin Wes. I'm sure he was busy at work and couldn't answer, but I like to share.

Two day track. Very top is Saturday night stop. Little tent is Sunday night.
The rest of this is all one extended stretch in the boat except for that 1 hour
stop in Marco Island to get water. Good lord, y'all!

But they just KEPT GOING!

From Tuesday morning at 8:30 am until Tuesday night at 7:00 pm

The thing at the beginning, point 1 to 9, I don't know what that was. They got on track again and landed at Everglades City at about 1 pm. That's where the Everglades National Park office is. You have to get there between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm to buy a permit for camping. They moved on along to the WaterTribe checkpoint and hit the OK button on the tracker at 2:08 pm.

Here they are on the results page with some other people who got there near the same time.

I'm pasting in the top of the chart below it so you can see what the different classes mean. I think it's interesting that all the different classes were getting to the 174 mile mark at about the same time. SailBirdMike was out there with JibeTurkey and AhMaChamee all night, while the kayakers were close in to shore and taking the shortcut behind Marco Island instead of going farther to stay in the wind. The point of the whole thing is to show how very different boats can participate equally.

Harry called me around 4:30 from Chokoloskee. He said he was very tired after being awake for 36 hours. I said he sounded surprisingly normal. He allowed he may have gotten a second wind after having a good lunch at the Cuban restaurant.

"But I was incoherent this morning," he said. " I thought I was going backwards. But Bryan caught up to me and convinced me I was going forward."

"Harry, look at the GPS! We're going 3 mph!" Bryan said.

"Yeah, 3 mph BACKWARDS!" Argued Harry

"Harry, there's no current, it's fine! You're hallucinating!" Explained Bryan.

"So I just concentrated on two points on the shore and convinced myself that I was going forwards," Harry said. "Bryan and I just have to look out for each other." 

It sounds like a solid plan. Between two of them operating on about half a brain each they add up to one lucid individual.

I asked if it could be caffeine withdrawal hallucinations but he said he made coffee on the beach at Marco around midnight last night and sipped out of his thermos all night. That makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

They are heading out of Chokoloskee to try to get to a camping spot. "Hope we make it," Harry said flatly. 

As of 7:30 Tuesday night they still haven't stopped. They really need to stop and sleep. They haven't slept since Sunday night on Sanibel Island. 39 hours and counting. If I see one of those crazy course changes I'll figure one of them is hallucinating again. I hope they take turns at becoming incoherent and don't both see a mermaid at the same time.

EC2014: Checkpoint 1 and Beyond

It was a late night for Harry on his first night of the Everglades Challenge. He sailed in the dark all the way to the first checkpoint. The tracker shows him going pretty darn fast, 4.76 knots.

Ignore the stuff at the bottom that seems to include everything since his OK message in Jupiter last week.
The third paragraph that shows Nautical Miles from last tracking point and a fraction of hours is what is relevant.
Nm/hrs = knots. I got out my HP app and checked that 0.81 Nm / 0.17 hr = 4.76 knots

He got to the first checkpoint at 00:44 EST Sunday morning. (From his SPOT personal page, easier to update than the WaterTribe Challenge Tracker.)

At the first checkpoint Saturday night/Sunday morning

I could see by the results page that there were lots of people there so it was probably not as grim as it sounds, getting to a marina in the middle of the night by yourself. Harry appears to have waited around for Bryan (AhMaChamee) who got there less than an hour later.

I got another OK message at 1:59 EST on 2 March, which I interpret as Harry and Bryan setting off again to find a camping spot. Then I got another message at 2:53 EST saying "I am going to camp here. Hope I will be warm and comfy." That was on a spit of land just south of the checkpoint. Oddly I got that one as a text and no email. I'm glad I had him put me down for both. (Update: I did get email too, it just wasn't threaded with the others because it was custom. I fixed my filters.)

This morning at 8:21 EST 2 March I got another OK message. He appeared to head out from the camping spot towards Charlotte Harbor. I found an OK message from Bryan in the same spot at the same time on the Challenge Tracker so that confirms they camped together. Bryan doesn't seem to be running his tracker all the time, just pushing OK when he starts or stops. I'm glad Harry is running the 10 minute updating tracker. That only works when the right satellites are in range though. You can see the spacing of the updates changing over the course of a day.

At about 10 am Harry and N8R headed out into the Gulf at Gasparilla Pass. I got frustrated trying to get speeds off the Challenge Tracker on the WaterTribe website so I found an online web tool to convert the two points from the SPOT tracker page to a distance so I could calculate it myself.

I typed in the Latitude and Longitude of the last two points on the SPOT tracker.

Here's where I got the data for the calculation. Click the + next to the track point and it opens up details.

That's 13 minutes. 13 minutes/60 minutes/hour = 0.217 hours. 

0.780 Nm / 0.217 hrs = 3.59 knots

(Dimensional Analysis FTW! Stay in school, children.)

So if Harry calls me up and asks how fast he's going or how far he's gone I'll be able to figure it out. It must be pretty calm for him to be out in the Gulf and going slower than he was last night. It's a beautiful day here and I think it's about the same down there. 

This is a checkpoint. You have to push the OK button on your SPOT tracker,
get out of your boat and go sign the log book inside the orange box.
(Photo Macatawa on the WaterTribe Forums)

The next checkpoint is in Chokoloskee Bay. The first challenger got there last night about the time Harry got to checkpoint 1. It was Randy Smyth (SewSew) in his custom built trimaran. SOS and Poptarp in the Mosquito are almost there now.

Checkpoint 2

There seem to be other people getting close already. I think the bulk are back where Harry is though, taking it easy and not trying to set speed records. If the wind died down these guys in the trimarans would probably stop having fun pretty fast. I hope they camp tonight and get some rest. There's no deadline to get to the second checkpoint. The first one you had to reach by today at noon. It looks like most people are going to make it.

Update: The problem with checkpoint 2 is that its hard to get there at low tide, which is pretty much all day. (Here's the website for tide tables) The best time to get there yesterday was in the middle of the night, like Randy Smyth did. When people got there this morning they had to walk a long way through the mud.

For people who make it all the way to Marco Island tonight they can probably ride the rising tide tomorrow when high is at 3:03pm and get there without worrying about mud.

I wonder if there's a strategy for the people who are really taking it easy that involves camping nearby then popping over there at 3:30 am on Monday night to check in. If you got there right at sunrise it would have an extra 2 feet of water at least. Better than down half a foot. I really don't like getting mud in my boat.

I'm going outside now.

EC2014: Day 1 After Dark

I got a call from Harry (JibeTurkey) at 4:58pm concurrent with an OK message from his SPOT transmitter. He'd stopped to lower his mast to go under a bridge near Venice. While he was getting his paddle out they raised the drawbridge.

He stopped earlier to reef his sail and deal with the loss of his stern light and his friend Bryan (AhMaChamee) got far ahead of him. As for the loss of the stern light and the strobe light on his PFD, Harry has a light on the top of his mast and a hand held flashlight and his head lamp. He's just going to turn the head lamp around backwards and let that be his stern light. He thinks he'll have enough ambient light to see what he's doing. Those of us with blue eyes are pretty good at seeing in low light, so he's got that going for him.

I haven't been able to see any tracking on the WaterTribe Challenge Tracker Map since early this morning. It got overloaded with traffic and nobody could see anything. According to the forums some people can get it to show results of individual classes, but I get no joy.

At 8pm 17 people have already arrived at the first check point, even kayakers. (I can get the results page to work) Shows that slow and steady wins the race over sailors who stop to rig up strings from their rudder to their feet so they can steer and paddle at the same time, which Harry did earlier today. I bet the paddlers are more tired though. (There is not enough Advil for me.) Harry is Class 3, Sailing Kayaks and Canoes. There are eight in that group, five single males, one single female, and two double mixed. Three of them reached check point one before 15 hours into the challenge, Sawhorse, WindwardMark and Leeward Lauren, and Yakmandu. The other six are still on their way, including Jibe Turkey.

I don't even see JibeTurkey on the list though. I think the automatic reporting is just imprecise though as the full list of challengers is missing the people that got there first. According to the forums SewSew (Randy Smyth) was reported in at 2:25 pm, Class 5 Single male. (21' solo trimaran, home built for the comfort of getting to Key Largo quickly) Mosquito got there an hour and twenty minutes later at 3:45pm, Class 5 double male. I think they mean SOS (Alan Stewart) and Pop Tarp (John Kohl) in their 22' Mosquito Trimaran. Tortured plywood construction. Wet, cold, fast. (from the Roster)

Here's JibeTurkey's tracker map as of 8:00pm. I am not sure where the first check point is since I can't get the map to work. I think it may be near Stump Pass at the bottom of this map.

The weather at Venice is reported as clear skies. Tonight's low will be around 55°F (13°C) at 6 am. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Humidity is low so there will likely not be any dewfall. Sunrise is 6:52 am. 

Sunday is forecast to be sunny with a high of 77°F (17°C). The wind will shift around to a shore breeze from the East in the morning then swing around to a sea breeze from the West in the afternoon.

EC 2014: First Look

I got some pictures in email from Harry's phone.

It looks early.

Yes, very early.

This beautiful red backlit sail reminds me that Harry can't see the color red. I ran this photo through the Vischeck simulator to illustrate how it looks to somebody with protanopia like Harry. In his eyes his jacket is not that different from the red sail. The sail is just darker. Bryan's yellow boat and the red boat on the other side are very similar, not a stark contrast as it is for color-sighted people.

But that blue bag on the deck of his boat is the same. So if you want to make something stand out for Harry's field of view, make it blue, not red or yellow.

Cruising along

EC2014: Just drifting along with the kayakers

I just got a phone call from Harry (JibeTurkey). He said Bryan (AhMaChamee) wasn't really stuck in a time loop in the parking lot, he might have forgotten to turn on his SPOT tracker. There was such a favorable wind across Tampa Bay Harry got a lot farther ahead of him. When he called me he was drifting along in about 14" of clear water. The wind dropped off in the lee of Anna Maria Island, but he was keeping up with the kayakers that he passed in the bay with a slack sail waiting for Bryan to catch up. He said he'd tell him to turn on his SPOT tracker.

Harry reports, predictably, that he's not really packed up right even though he stayed up until 1:00 am trying to get organized. He got up again at 4:30 to start getting ready but he said he still didn't get off the beach until long after the start time. He says his boat isn't any slower loaded down with stuff, though. In fact he thinks it handles even better. Hurray for ballast.

He is wearing his SPOT transmitter on one shoulder strap of his personal flotation device and Personal Locator Beacon on the other shoulder strap with a little strobe light on the back. He said when he leaned back there was a thing that really pushed against the back of the seat. As he headed across the bay he heard a snap and a *PLOP* over his shoulder into the water.

"Oh shit!" he thought. "Something popped off my PFD and fell into the bay! My SPOT beacon is disappearing behind me! What will I do! I can't keep going without a SPOT! Where will I get another one?" 

But it was just that little $11 strobe light on the back. And now the seat is more comfortable. He has a spare light if he needs it. 

He says that in light wind his boat is a lot faster than the Hobie Adventure Islands because he has a big sail for the size and efficient sail set. The AI doesn't have a boom at all, plus it has high surface area and paddles stick down underneath. When Bryan catches up he will have to stay in the channel. I asked how far the paddles stick under Bryan's boat. Harry guesses about 16" down and the hull probably draws 5 or 6 inches. I gather there is hardly any freeboard.

Bryan's boat weighs 115 lbs fully outfitted. (According to the Hobie website.) Harry doesn't know how much his weighs, but a lot less than that. In rough water and high wind the Adventure Island is stable where Harry's boat would tip over. That's why he was cautious and didn't head out into the Gulf.

If the wind really drops off and he has to paddle he will rig up some string from the rudder to his feet so he can steer while he paddles with a double ended paddle.

Position 15 9:58 am 1 March 2014