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Everyone is home!

Jacqueline Windh / 18.03.2007

All of the teams who were out on the course have made it home! With the extremely long sections in this year’s race, we are all relieved to have them here. This kayak section was 100 km long, so every team was forced to navigate these complicated coastal canals through at least a few hours of pitch darkness. Both on the kayak and hiking sections there were long periods where we just did not know where some of the teams were.

Gregg Berman, who is a paramedic here and now beloved by all of the racers for the miracles her has worked on their blisters, is also a hot sea kayaker, who lives near (and plays on) the Mavericks wave in northern California. (That’s that big 40-or-so footer where they have the international big-wave surf contests). The last we’d heard yesterday afternoon, news filtering in from 60 km back on the course, was that Dark Horse (Tom Smith, Mary Misiaszek, Bill Butcher, Sara Pragluski) could be paddling in some time in the early evening. Team Bones lent Gregg and I paddles, and about 7:30 pm we headed back out the canals hoping to come across Dark Horse.

The finish line at the Vista al mar hotel is located on an island fronting along a wave-washed beach on the Caribbean Sea, and backing upon an extremely narrow, winding canal edged by dense jungle. Everyone knows that it is easier to paddle at night without your headlamp on, so we started out with lights off. A hundred metres or so down the canal we ran aground on a swampy bar on a meander, so were forced to paddle with the light on... my headlamp catching the orange glowing eyes of countless caymans lurking in the shallows.

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