2014 everglades challenge

That's not Meades new canoe. New one is yellow, also hull built by Skip. It's about 2 feet longer, more beam, bigger amas and taller rig. Boat name is Voyager, an evolution of Woodwind.

 

^^^

Thanks Swampmonkee, for the correction. I saw that I'd confused two canoes this morning in a post elsewhere.



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There's been lively SPOT tracker discussion on the Watertribe forum. Probably they'll be looking for a better tracking and mapping in the future, but I think they should still allow some tactical 'invisibility' somehow.

For example, during the 'Prince de Bretagne' (Valencia-Lisbon-Dublin-etc. last summer for MOD70's Multi50's and the PdB Maxi) then I think the tracker was on a slower reporting at night so that the positions of the boats was actually quite different from what the map showed.

 

Well gee, googled Meade, the boats name etc, came up with squat.
Thanks.
Great footage, love the main hull, bigger floats though !

 

And I thought I'd googled the wrong name !
Still Skip Izon was a good tip.

 

Ec

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Man, Skip Izon does great work-never heard of him before-thanks...
http://grandbendstudiotour.com/locations-artists/home-studio-of-skip-izon

 

Wouldn't you know it? At the moment the hot thread on the Watertribe forum is the Best Hallucination Award.

There are some pretty good hallucinations there... but I still think Iron Bob's transcendental visions in 2013 take the prize (I'll again have to look for the link and post it later).

Zerothehero also had some exceptional hallucinations this year, which I enjoyed reading, I'll have to look for the link and post it later?

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Personally I haven't had any serious hallucinations except for once or twice.

The first time still bothers me! I'd been helming a 45 foot Swan across the German Bight many hours one November when at 4 in the morning or so I saw a rocket on the horizon. A few minutes later I saw another rocket, from what I thought was the same place. I shouted below to the other two guys on the boat, waking them up and telling them what I'd seen.

They both came up and spent some minutes observing. They were older and more experienced than I, and they concluded that I'd perhaps imagined it, after which they went back to bed and we sailed on.

 

I thought I was hallucinating but the next day I still had a ring on my finger.
Doh !

 

Well yes there is a ton of stuff on Skip Izon, mostly the same stuff on different sites, but bugger all on Meades canoe tri !
Skip Izon must be an artisan in the truest sense - no email !

 

^^^

Did you watch the two videos on Youtube? Izon doesn't seem to bother with computers too much, but if anyone wants to get in touch he provides his phone number.

video 1

video 2

The Canadian Canoe Museum might have notes or video or something from Izon's presentation last summer?

In this 2008 article there is an amusing story about his houseboat.

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I'd think there'll be something about 'Voyager' on WestSystem.com, pretty soon?

They have good material on their site about 'decked sailing canoes';

• Articles on the topic here, and here.

• An interesting article from 2000 by Meade describing his interest in sailing canoes.

 

What was the relative boatspeed of the different teams in the 2014 Everglades Challenge? Is there some way of evaluating that, before factors like routing, sleep, tides etc. came so much into play?

Here's a list compiled from eight different lists at the Watertribe site, just showing how many hours after the 7am start the first 24 teams of the 2014EC fleet got to Checkpoint 1.

As far as I know the wind was light to moderate, I don't know if anyone was becalmed.

The first of the different EC classes to CP1 are in bold.

07 h 26 m: one-off tri Sizzors/ Sewsew (Class 5)
08 h 47 m: one-off tri Mosquito/ SOS & Poptarp
09 h 51 m: Tornado with racks/ Swampmonkee & Chainsaw
10 h 18 m: Prindle 18/ Puma & Steerswithbeers
10 h 33 m: Frankenscot/ TwoBeers & Moresailesed (Class 4)
10 h 48 m: Hobie 16/ CrazyLugan & Wildcard (Class Hobie)
11 h 19 m: Decked Sailing Canoe, amas/ Sawhorse (Class 3)
11 h 20 m: CoreSound17S 'turbo'/ Sambasailor & Sailsalot
11 h 29 m: C Scow modified/ Chupacabra & Flysonwater
11 h 32 m: Windsurfing Raceboard/ Seadogrocket
11 h 33 m: One-off 22ft catamaran/ Vikingur & Broadsword
11 h 34 m: Hobie 18/ Cojones & Spicey
11 h 48 m: Double kayak (no sail)/ Riverslayer & Whale (Class 1)
11 h 50 m: Epix18X Kayak (no sail)/ KayakVagabond
11 h 52 m: Double 23 ft kayak (no sail)/ Ironbob & TheJuice (Class 2)
11 h 53 m: Laser/ Aerosparrow
12 h 15 m: Modified kayak (no sail)/ BustedRudder
12 h 19 m: Hobie Tandem Island/ Pedal on & Sherlock (Class Hobie TI)
12 h 20 m: Seda Triumph kayak (no sail)/ JungleJim & MountainMama
12 h 20 m: Hobie Adventure Island/ Dogslife (Class Hobie AI)
12 h 25 m: CoreSound 20/ Ridgerunner & Porkbelly
12 h 27 m: Windsurfing Raceboard/ Bermudaboy
12 h 28 m: One-off pilothouse tri/ Danceswithmullet
12 h 29 m: 19ft modified Sharpie ketch/ DonKeyHoTey & ZeroTheHero

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All the sailors chose to go on the outside, fairly close to the beaches (haven't seen Sewsew's or TwoBeers' or Puma's tracks there). The kayaks all went down the ICW except for BustedRudder, who went in the ICW at Venice inlet.

After Sewsew, Sawhorse is the next solo sailor to CP1 and 7th overall, ahead a lot of younger guys on doublehanded boats, and the windsurfers (who are very experienced).

Voyager is also the quickest of any boats without hiking/trapeze/movable ballast.

As to Sizzors/Sewsew, is it the fastest sailboat ever of any size, in really light air? With the sole exception of what, AC33's USA17 with its 68-meter wing?

How would Sizzors do against M1's and M2's in Switzerland during the Bol d'Or? The M1 and M2s have taller masts and sometimes only find wind higher up than Sizzors can, but I wonder if Sewsew would give them the slip in the right conditions.

 

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But the Bol d'Or is not open to any beachcat or tri. There's a required length of 7.01m (~23ft) in the M2 class, and Sizzors is about 20ft?

On the other hand the entry deadline is very generous, and against a slightly higher entry fee you can postpone entry until midnight the Wednesday before (the deadline in 2013 at least) the race, when you might have a better idea if the weather might be interesting, or not.

 

Blackburn, day 1 was interesting and possibly favored the boats that had better speed when rowing. In the time it took us to get across the bay many of the faster paddlers had already made it across. The wind was light and a fast kayak can do 5 knots or so for long periods. Once we were outside it got light for quite a while. Boats that could row well pulled ahead of us while light sailing craft healed their own. Heavier sailing craft that didn't row fell back. Once the wind picked up it was a sleigh ride for everyone and from experience I can tell you that a kayak with a sail or an AI/TI can do 8 knots or better easily. Heck my kayak with BSD rig and BOSS outriggers has hit 12 knots DDW in 20+. Once the wind picked up we were doing 9-10 regularly with 11+ being our fastest. However we sailed out 5 miles and had to sail that back in at stump. There were Hobie AI/TI's around us, a few sailing kayaks, and a few cats. The forecast was for the wind to go east overnight and we new the Lightning would start to eat them up so we weren't worried. Sure enough one the wind was more of a tight reach the AI/TI and kayak group fell off the pace. Scissors is an amazing little boat, very fast but also very breakable. Randy is getting to the sharper end of that and I think that soon only a very similar boat with a similar sailor will give him a true test. Usually the weather tests him.

 

Thank you very much HERO for telling us from your personal experience with your boat (19ft modified sharpie ketch ?). I´ve read it with great interest.

 

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Thanks ZeroTheHero, it's very good to have descriptions from you who were there, as compared with sitting far away at a computer (I'm not in Florida now) making guesswork from little tracker maps.

Would you regard any particular Class 4 & 5 boats as being the best to row? Last night I saw the Frankenscot video with them rowing on day 1, their rowing seat looked pretty efficient. Did I understand it correctly that lighter sailing craft 'held their own', and they were able to keep sailing without rowing or paddling that day?

What's the quickest way to paddle the 2-man tris and cats? A man forward on each hull with a double-bladed kayak paddle, rudder clamped? Perhaps an autopilot steering while you paddle?

If I recall from the 2013 thread on SA, that year the EC featured stronger wind and colder nights, and I have great sympathy for any sailors coming to Florida, of all places, and then having cold weather/nights making for difficult sleep and aggravating their exhaustion - to the point of some getting hypothermia. I'm there in the summers with my wife and kids, then of course the nights are warm and wonderful on the water.

I saw that you'd first evaluated cats and trimarans for the EC; there are several threads on this forum as well about various small trimarans, but not many of them are optimal performance boats, or suited for the shallow parts of the EC. Did you find any personal favorite there?

 

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DirtyLittleRunnerGirl's 2014 Everglades Challenge photos.

A good album with shots from the start, CP1, and Key Largo.


Yesterday there was this article in the Tampa Bay Times:

First windsurfers complete 300-mile challenge