The Texas Water Safari is a 260 mile non-stop canoe race from San Marcos to Seadrift. It starts at 9 am on the second Saturday in June and the first canoe to reach Seadrift is the winner. You can stop and rest if ya want to, but you probably won’t win. This is my story regarding the first time I won the race.
The year was 1971. It was the first year that the Safari was going to be held without the coastal portion (we were going to finish at Seadrift (260 miles non stop from San Marcos). In those days we were required to drink river water (or find a hydrant with a working handle). Ice in the race was unheard of (in fact, I’m not sure ice had been invented yet).
I was racing with Pat Oxsheer, a Navaho Indian with a bit of a redneck streak who worked for Dow Chemical. I, meanwhile, was a college student at U of H on a mission to figure out why we were in Vietnam before I had to go there. I wore a peace symbol on my Safari outfit and my hair was shoulder length. Paula heard one fellow comment as we went by: “That fellow in the front (Oxsheer) is going to do good, but that hippie will never make it”.
Our intention was to paddle the race with the biggest Sawyer single blade paddles we could find. Back in those days, paddles were about 12 inches wide and weighed a couple of pounds (and bent paddles were only just being invented by a guy from Minnesota named Gene Jensen).
A team from Michigan, Jerry Kellogg and Jack Kolka, came down to do the race and a racer from Canada came back to redeem himself after a rough Safari in 1970. Luc Robillard and Claude Coursel had had a great lead in 70 (I wanna say six hours, at one point) but they got lost in the Swinging Bridge to Tivoli triangle and got passed by the two lead Texas teams. They ended up dropping out of the race after they decided they weren’t going to win enough prize money to make it worth their while (we didn’t get to drink ice water back in those days, but the race paid about $2000 for first place, plus there were always some nice prizes – like a raft trip for the winners and their wives through the Grand Canyon). Perhaps if we made the race tough again we could get some big sponsors… but I digress. Luc was back with another guy from Quebec named Dennis Thieberg (I’ve gotta admit that I’m not real sure about the spelling on any of these French names…).
Anyway, Pat and I loaned the Michiganders a canoe (it was a very heavy Sawyer Saber; ours just happened to be a little lighter) and we agreed to take them on some of our training runs to see the river. For some reason, I took along a couple of very beefy slalom kayak paddles on our first training run. I think my brother and I had used double paddles back in 1969 and we had the feeling that they were faster than singles (but, without GPS units, how could we have known for sure?).
So we take off down the river and the Michiganders just left us in their dust. I mean they took off like a couple of scared rabbits and we couldn’t do a thing about it. They were gone. Like outa sight and around the bend. How many more ways can I say it? So, we’re feeling kinda low and our self esteem is suffering a major setback, so I says, “Hey Pat, what about trying out these new fangled double paddles?” And we figured, why not? We can’t go any slower.
Well, amazingly enough, we started gaining on those guys. And then we caught them. And finally (and it took some doing) we passed them. I don’t know who was more surprised - us or them. But it was an amazing moment in Safari history.
So, anyway, Pat and I decide that we were going to have to test those double paddles again. So we took them on the next training event. This time, not only were the Michiganders beating our arses like drums, but the Canadians, Luc and Dennis, were having a go at it as well. They were beating us, that is to say, as long as we persisted in paddling with our 12-inch wide Sawyer single paddles. But, once we got tired of being losers, we pulled out our Azzali Slalom kayak paddles and the race was on.
It was during one of our sprints on this particular training run that I got to witness what I thought at the time was a very bad display of poor sportsmanship. It seems that Luc and Dennis had “accidentally” driven the bow of their Sawyer Saber right up behind Jack Kolka and that he had hit their bow with his paddle and broken his paddle. He let out of string of yankee curse words like I had never heard before (of course, I could barely understand Michigander talk, let alone cussing).
It was only later that I would find that Luc was somewhat famous at this little known skill of “breaking the paddle of an opponent with the bow of your canoe” trick.
By the way, I have long ago given up on changing any of the Safari rules. I now agree that racers should be able to have all the ice and water delivered into their canoe at any time, day or night; but I also think some clean underwear, at least twice during the race, would make sense.
And, while I have given up on changing the ice rule, and I don’t really expect the porta potties to be cleaned before the banquet, I would at least request that they not be cleaned next year during the banquet.
To fully appreciate this story (and, like I’ve said before, if I have already told this story during this thread, I’m sorry) you have to remember that the race started at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon back in 1971. It had something to do with wanting to have a big award ceremony back in San Marcos that next weekend. I guess nobody thought about little details like, “aren’t people going to have to take the whole week off to race in this event?” Or, “how are we going to get enough volunteers to run this race if we start on a Tuesday afternoon?”
But one thing is for sure: if you start the event in the afternoon, most racers will not be getting any sleep right before the start of the race. In fact, as I recall, we had the check in and briefing that afternoon right before the gun went off.
Another thing about an afternoon start is that it means you will be running a lot of San Marcos River in the dark. Seems like it got dark on us somewhere between Staples and Fentress. I vaguely remember a really fun filled evening. Some of that is because 1971 was also one of the lowest river levels we ever had. We were constantly getting out of the canoe and walking around (in the dark) looking for the deepest water, “oh look, there’s at least an inch of water over here!” As I recall, the sun was just coming up as we paddled under the Palmetto Park Bridge.
The Michiganders and the Canadians, meanwhile, had run off and left us. I think they were an hour ahead at Luling Hwy 90. By Gonzales, I don’t think our bank crew was even telling us the amount of their lead anymore. But (and once again, my memory ain’t what it used to be) the Michiganders dropped out at Hochheim. So Oxsheer and I walked on with renewed vigor (I say that because we were actually out, walking our canoe through the shallow water below Hochhem).
I don’t remember when it got dark that second night, but I do remember waking up, swimming in the rapids between Cuero and Victoria (oh, the dangers of sleep paddling during a low water year!) and it was definitely dark.
Anyway, as much trouble as Pat and I were having, it seems that the Canadians were having an equally hard time. When we got to the Victoria Boat ramp, we were told that they had wrapped their canoe (probably in the same rapids we swam) and had lost much of their lead. They were now only a mere hour ahead.
This information brought new life to the Texas team, so we blazed down the river with our bank crew driving along those roads that wander through Victoria City Park, honking their horns and meeting us occasionally to cheer us on.
Of course, there is a down side to pushing too hard in the heat during the third day of the Big One. While we were making great time and gaining on the Canadians (in fact, according to a fisherman – always a dependable source of information during the TWS – we were only ten minutes behind the Canadians when we reached Hwy 59 Business ((once again, call me crazy, but I don’t think they had built the Bypass – what us old-timers call Loop 175 – in 1971. I think you got to see your bank crew at Hwy 59 (((downtown))) and then again at the old swinging bridge))) my partner was heading into nana land. AKA neverland. AKA the Dupont Monkey Temple.
I may have to take a break. That last sentence put my brain over the top. I have visions of Mrs. Roark, my fourth grade teacher correcting my uses of parenthesiseses.
Let me begin this part by explaining that this article originally appeared in a canoe racing forum and the thread was one I had started in which I had proposed that contestants should be required to climb the banks of the river to get their ice and water rather than requiring team captains to deliver such items into their canoes while they lounge about on their comfortable canoe seats.
Is that what Mrs. Roark used to call a run on sentence?
You see, in 1971, when men were men and women could only read about the exploits of the Russian Night Witches, you had to drink river water (most of us used Halazone tablets - which killed bad bacteria by creating chlorine gas). We could also "steal" water out of a hydrant. But the idea of getting ice would have been anathema. And having a hamburger delivered to your canoe at Hochheim would be unthinkable.
All I was suggesting, in this thread, was that the racers should have to climb up the muddy banks, get their ice and water and then slide back down to their canoe. I felt that this bank climbing and sliding would provide some great entertainment for the "spectators". Or maybe it would actually mean that we could get some spectators in the first place.
As for the references to the porta potties in Seadrift, at the time that this thread was originally posted, there always seemed to be difficulty getting the porta potty company to clean the potties after the Shrimp Fest was over and before the Safari arrived. And, it was not uncommon for the company to show up to pump the potties as the Safari banquet was being served. Let's just say that it wasn't very appetizing.
Now, where was I? Attempting to diagram a sentence… I am absolutely certain that the porta potties should be filled with ice, at least until the banquet is over.
So anyway, it’s June, 1971, I’m paddling down the Guadalupe River below Victoria in very hot conditions with absolutely no ice. The Canadian team is only about ten minutes ahead of us (at least, according to a drunken fisherman) and my partner is starting to act a little strange.
Now let me say right here that Pat Oxsheer is the reason that Goynes and Oxsheer won three Safaris (not to mention a couple more with Jim Trimble. Pat is as strong as an ox, and full of sheer brawn (puns attempted). But all of us have our limits. And, on this particular occasion, Pat had pushed a little too hard. I realized we had a problem when he started yelling at folks on the bank who weren’t there. He would become quite animated, and get really angry at these scumbags. I asked him what they were doing and he said they were digging shortcuts, then letting the Canadians use said cuts, but then covering them up by the time we got there. No amount of reason would help to convince him that this wasn’t happening, so I played along – hollering at the scumbags at the top of my lungs along with my partner. I have often wondered if anyone might have heard us as we slowly progressed down the creek – and what they would have thought.
Some of you guys have probably experienced the sensation, on the stretch of river above the Invista Plant (used to be the Dupont Plant), that you are going around in circles. I don’t know how many times I have heard of teams getting into serious arguments regarding the direction of the flow of the river in this section. One team told me that their argument got so heated that they stopped the canoe and each man spit into the river. Unfortunately, they must have been in an eddy, because their spit went separate directions.
Another team told me that one member was so sure that they were going in circles that he insisted that he be allowed to tie his windbreaker to a tree limb. All the teams behind them wondered why there was a windbreaker tied to a tree…
Oxsheer just wanted out of the canoe. He decided that if we were just going to paddle around in circles, he might as well be resting on the bank. So we alternated, one minute cursing the shortcut digging scumbags, next minute discussing the circuitous route that we were taking.
Then, after hours of hearing from Pat that we were going the wrong way, sure enough, a sculling rig appeared up ahead rowing right toward us! Now you have to realize, that the rule about no pace boats hadn’t been invented yet; so there were often friendly canoes on the river to check on a team’s progress or to egg them on. And, in the sculling rig heading our direction was my brother, Jim (along with whoever owned the boat). But both Pat and I were convinced that it contained Mike Wooley and Gary Knight – the third place boat. As I recall, we stopped dead in the water and waited to be passed (always embarrassing when you get passed while going the wrong way). But no, it turns out that it wasn’t Wooley and Knight. It was my bro. And he was all excited because the Canadians were just up ahead. It turns out that my bro had launched the canoe at the Swinging Bridge and headed upstream because both teams were feared to be dead (because it was taking us so long to get from Victoria to the Swinging Bridge).
Evidently, the Canadians were having as much trouble as Pat and I. So when we arrived at the “checkpoint” we were only ten minutes behind the Canadians! (I put the term “checkpoint” in quotes because in those days a checkpoint wasn’t what they are today. There was no ice. There was no Ozarka water. There was no team captain. Our bank crew did direct us to the farmhouse on the right side of the bridge, where the friendly owner was allowing folks to fill their water jugs, at least. As I recall, it was some purty strong tasting water.)
What really bothered me was the fact that Pat came totally back to his senses when we pulled in for water. He was in fine form, cracking jokes and asking how the Canadians looked. I, meanwhile, was a basket case – stumbling up the bank for water and trying to convince the crowd that Oxsheer was out of his mind. Later, Paula relayed that everyone was impressed with how good Pat looked but concerned that I might not be able to finish the race.
Nonetheless, we were both in great spirits as we paddled away from the bridge, only minutes behind our archrivals from Canada. We were convinced that victory was within our grasp!
Almost immediately after leaving the checkpoint, Pat reverted to the dark side: once again, hollering at the shortcut-digging scumbags, and/or complaining about us going in circles. I thought briefly about turning the canoe around and paddling back to the swinging bridge to show the crowd that Pat was indeed mad. But I realized that he would just miraculously return to normal and I would really appear to be the fool. So I paddled on. And, let me say that Pat was paddling on as well. He just didn’t like the direction we were going.
I don’t have any idea how long it took us to get to the railroad bridge (it usually takes about an hour for a tandem unlimited canoe, correct?). But right below the bridge, at the area where the fishing cabins start, I saw a sight that caused a combination of excitement and confusion. There, in the middle of the river was Luc, sitting in the stern of their Sawyer Saber (with the bow riding high in the air) and Denis (Luc’s bowman) in one of the motorboats that normally are parked at those docks.
Denis was cranking valiantly on the outboard motor trying to get it to start. Of course, this is a highly illegal activity, for a Safari racer, at least. So, I asked them later what in the heck they were doing. Denis explained, and Luc translated:
It turns out that Luc was out of his mind, and he had no idea where the right river was, but he was sure that they were no longer on it. They had decided to fire up the motorboat and Denis (who seemed to at least have some sense of direction) would go off in search of the proper river and, once he found it, he would return, get back in the canoe, and they would leave the motorboat right where they found it.
In their confused, Canadian, Safari enriched minds, this seemed perfectly legal and understandable. And, at the time, it seemed pretty logical to me as well.
All I know is, I was so excited to see the first place team during a Safari that far down the river, that I broke out in my best French and said: “Le grande protage est treint minutes”. Which, I believed (and still do) means: “The big portage is thirty minutes downstream, more or less”.
They were so excited to hear a Texan speaking French that they really didn’t know what to do. I heard Denis repeat my sentence several times as we paddled out of sight. I thought how sad it was for them to have led the race so long only to be passed by the superior team as they neared the finish… But then I heard them approaching and approaching fast. It was obviously time for the slalom double paddles.
We cranked them out and started paddling for all we were worth. Pat came back to life. The only problem he was having was that he thought that we were in a car race, racing against the Canadians through the streets of Paris. But as long as he was paddling hard, what did I care whether we were on the lower Guad or Paris?
Then it happened. I brought my Azzali double paddle down hard on the bow of the Canadian’s canoe. I was concerned that the metal tip on the heavy-duty paddle had done some damage to their fragile craft, so I apologized. Then, wham; I hit their canoe again, this time on the other side. Once again, I said I was sorry. It seemed like it went on for some time; first hitting their canoe with my right blade, then my left. I was thinking, what kind of a klutz am I? Why do I keep hitting the bow of their canoe?
I remember later (after the race) watching Luc admire my double paddle at the finish line. He told me that he had never had so much trouble breaking a paddle in his life.
In order to understand the rest of the story (or at least, the next installment) you’re going to have to hear about the Log Jam. I’m not talking about just any old log jam (even one of the fairly large ones that form occasionally in the area where the Log Jam used to be). I’m talking about the two-mile Log Jam that used to exist back when men were men and the Safari was the Safari (by the way, the Corps Of Engineers paid a lot of money – I want to say a million bucks to get that original jam removed sometime in the mid 70’s). Sure, you might point out that since we didn’t have GPS units we had no way of knowing that the jam was two miles long. But someone once told me that the thing was two miles long and, by gar, I’m sticking with it.
The thing used to start right about where the various shortcuts head out to the right. And, it seemed to take up that whole bend of the river up to the area where Alligator Slough comes back into the river. Someone might even be so bold as to point out that we might have been able to take the 3 O’clock Cut or the Seadrift Cut and we could have avoided the whole two-mile portage in the first place. But, like I said, we didn’t have GPS units, and we figured that a two-mile portage was just part of it. Why would real men have wanted to eliminate something like a two-mile portage anyway?
Somehow this reminds me of the time that the Kiernan brothers (I’m pretty sure it was them) marked all the various shortcuts in the area from the railroad bridge to the Log Jam. There were all these signs that said things like: “Short Cut City” and “This is it!” (it wasn’t) and “Shortcut of no return” (which possibly could have marked the right one).
On another occasion (I think it was 1984 – the big log jam was gone by then, but there must have been a little one that made the 3 O’clock Cut worth taking) someone had marked the tree at the entrance to the cut with all kinds of fluorescent paint. I mean, they had painted the trunk and most of the limbs of this big dead tree. It showed up for a mile upriver. There was going to be no missing of the 3 O’clock Cut. We made note of the paint job on a practice run right before the big one. Then, during the race, we got to the cut and, what the heck, there was no paint! We had to stop and examine that tree. We found that someone had come along and painted flat black paint on top of all of that fluorescent paint. The moral to this story is, don’t trust the paint fairies – they have been known to mislead…
So anyway, this Log Jam, this “Grande Portage” was coming up.
And another thing; on the practice run that we had made with the Canadians right before the race (on this same section of river) we had noticed that they simply picked up their empty canoe, threw it on their shoulders, and proceeded to run around the Log Jam (at the time there was a nice little road that paralleled the river). We laughed at them as we got out our “dragging straps” and proceeded to portage the Jam in the proper way. We got their attention, once they stopped running, and they asked us about these curious “dragging straps”. We explained that, during the race they would be way too tired to even consider carrying their canoe on their shoulders, and that all us Texans used dragging straps to drag our canoes along the portage trail. Fortunately, they listened to us and rigged some dragging straps for the “Grande Portage”.
So anyway, they beat us to the take out, they drag their canoe to the road, they pull out their dragging straps and off they go, into the sunset.
Pat and I drug our boat to the road and decided that there was only one way we were going to be able to beat these guys, and that would involve putting our canoe on our shoulders and jogging to the put in. And, amazingly enough, we were able to lift the thing up and put it on our shoulders. I like to remember it as a run. But it was likely a bit slower than that. But we did pass the Yankees (are Canadians Yankees? Or are they too far North to be Yankees?). You can just imagine their surprise!
Unfortunately, our pass job didn’t completely crush their spirits. In fact, as we went by we noticed them throwing out all the non-essentials (remember, this was 1971 – we hadn’t invented the “no litter” rule yet). Next thing I remember is the sight of two Canadians passing two Texians at a very fast clip. In fact, you would have to say that they were running – full out – with their almost empty canoe upside down on their shoulders.
They beat us to the water and off we went. It was the beginning of our third night. Approximately 55 hours into the race, and approximately 70 hours of awake time. And we were still neck and neck, both teams bent on winning this thing.
It is probably not real easy for a current day Safari paddler (especially a fast one) to fully understand the tales of past races, with all the “out of our minds” experiences described. Seems like the best hallucinations always started for me sometime in the “40 hours of no sleep” range. Nowadays, the winners are showered and in bed by 40 hours.
But, once again, try to picture the race starting at 5 p.m. (with no sleep on the day that the race starts) and try to imagine being awake for that day plus another 60 hours (the race being longer than normal due to drought conditions). It turns out that it was a great way to make a bunch of people crazy.
As the two lead teams left the Log Jam and headed toward Tivoli, there was a sense of insanity in the air. Luc would stop paddling occasionally and announce that the race was over and that they had won. And he said it with such authority that I believed him. I suppose we realized that the only thing left for us to do was to paddle to the award ceremony so they could get the trophy. Pat was busy racing through the streets of Paris. Since he spoke mostly French, I’m not sure what Denis was thinking.
I’m not sure how we did it, but somehow Pat and I managed to pass the Canadians. And then we suffered one of the little unintended consequences of using double paddles.
If you’ve used double paddles for a while, you might have noticed that they tend to send more gar flying into the canoe than singles do. I’m thinking it may be the fact that the paddle blade is further out from the canoe with a double, and the gar is therefore encouraged to fly toward the canoe rather than away from it. But at any rate, it seems that I’ve ended up with more gar in the boat with doubles than with singles. And, on this particular occasion we ended up with a nice sized gar.
Pat hit it, and it landed somewhere near the middle of the boat, but then it flipped and flopped its way to the area just in front of my feet. I could hear its teeth snapping shut on a regular basis. It was obviously upset.
This reminds me of a gar story that Butch Hodges told me once. He was driving a motorboat somewhere on the lower river when something prompted a gar to fly up and bite onto his arm. It clamped on and wouldn’t let go, so he abandoned the motor and headed off toward the middle of the boat in search of a machete to use in order to dislodge the critter. This caused quite a bit of consternation among his passengers, as no one was now driving the speeding motorboat. He spent a few minutes whacking on the gar with the machete and finally was able to dislodge it.
I’m wondering if we need a whole blog on this site about gar stories… but I digress.
So anyway, I’ve got this angry gar, with sharp teeth, flopping around in the vicinity of my feet and I’m trying to scoop it out of the canoe with my Azalli paddle (with the metal tips) when Luc and Denis come paddling by. In desperation, I decide to try to trick them into stopping for a look (what else could I do at this point?) so I say, “Hey, you guys want to see an alligator gar?”
To which they exclaimed (in unison – one in French and one in broken English) “Alligator!!!???” And off they went, faster than ever. It turns out that one of the things these French-Canadians feared the most about the Safari was our alligators. So my plan obviously backfired, they not only didn’t want a look, they wanted to be as far downriver from us as possible.
So, there we were, in second place again. I went back to trying to scoop out the gar and Pat finally stopped paddling and asked what the heck I was doing. I explained, and he said to just slide that fish up to him. I did so, and he simply reached around behind himself (in the dark, and without even trying to look) picked up the snapping gar and threw it overboard. I was, once again, impressed with his bravery. But he told me later that he had absolutely no memory of the event happening, and doubts that he would have done such a thing.
The whole thing didn’t really take that long, so I was surprised to notice that the Canadians were completely out of sight already. No sign of their lights at all. We were told later, that they turned off their lights so that we would assume they were long gone and end our futile pursuit.
There used to be this hard right turn in the river, somewhere upstream of the confluence of the San Antonio River. And there was this big Elm tree on the left bank at that turn. And the river had eroded the root system of this Elm tree to the point that it had fallen in the river. In the daylight it was no big deal; you just avoided the low hanging limbs and turned hard to the right. At night you had to have a pretty good light, and your bowman had to be willing to eat some greens. But without a light, and running at top speed – lets just say it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Back upstream from the site of the accident, I could swear that I heard a couple of shouts (one in French and one in broken English). But you hear lots of strange things on that section of river. But then as we approached Big Elm and started maneuvering through the branches we saw the carnage. An overturned Saber, paddles, pfds, and a couple of dejected looking French guys. I felt sorry for them, but Luc told me later that he was hoping that we would come a little closer as we went by so they could turn us over.
We asked if they needed any help, they said no. So we headed down the river toward Tivoli. By the way, have you ever considered that Tivoli is I lov it backward?
Have you ever had an audible hallucination? I think it was Robert Youens who talked about all the various levels of hallucinations a person can have. There’s the simple 55 gallon drum that looks just like the team that you’ve been chasing for days; I think that’s what Robert called a level 1 hallucination. Then, when the hallucination starts talking to you, I think that’s a level two. But when you start interacting with your hallucination, then you’ve reached the level of Nekid Man (there’s a story someone should write down).
While we didn’t reach level three, Pat and I did have some bizarre stuff going on in the section right above Tivoli. In one instance, as we were going through some tree branches, I distinctly heard Pat’s wife Barbara carrying on a conversation with Pat. There were the usual words of encouragement, the obvious question about the location of the Canadian team, and the admonition for us to pick it up!
I remember thinking how odd it was for Barbara to have found river access in this particular section of river (this was before the big subdivision had gone in on river left from the barrier to the bridge). So I asked Pat if that was Barbara he had been talking to. He assured me that it was her. Of course, it wasn’t. I wonder to this day if it had been some couple out fishing in the middle of the night, or if the whole thing had been a joint hallucination (without the joint).
Minutes after talking to the imaginary Barbara, we were pulling up under the Hwy 35 bridge where the real Barbara (along with Paula – my better half – and lots of other folks) was hanging out. The crowd was mighty excited that the local boys (i.e. Texans) were finally ahead of the guys from up North. And, they obviously wanted us to get whatever we needed and get on down the creek (I wonder if part of the reason they were in such a big hurry was due to the mosquito population at that bridge). But this was where we were planning to put on our spray cover so we pulled in and drug the canoe up under the bridge.
Nowadays, most folks are smart enough to have a spray cover that can be quickly attached to the canoe – either with snaps or with Velcro, or some other mechanical means. But this was 1971. Technology wasn’t what it is today. Fortunately, they had invented duct tape and black plastic – and that was the choice of materials Pat and I had made.
I vaguely remember that we had also had the foresight to cut the black plastic to shape, with the two cockpits where we wanted em, so all we had to do was roll out the duct tape and attach the cover to the canoe. What we hadn’t planned on were some of the obvious problems like the canoe being wet and our hands being somewhat club like and unusable. We would snag the end of the tape with our teeth and begin ripping it off the roll. Of course, once we got a goodly amount of tape off the roll it would invariably get stuck together, and the whole process would have to begin again.
I remember the crowd getting more and more agitated as the evening went on. Every now and then one of the spectators would have a level one and announce that the Canadians were here at last. This announcement would generally cause either Pat or I to lose control of our duct tape and get a large batch of the stuff stuck together. I think the crowd finally decided that it was counterproductive to announce the arrival of the Canadians, so all such announcements ceased.
The whole process took over one hour (and at least one quart of blood per person for the mosquitoes). The big question was, where are the Canadians?
What kind of bay would you expect after a bone-dry river? If you answered “a rough one”, you would be correct. It was not the sort of bay on which to use a plastic cover with two cockpit holes in it. In retrospect, I’m amazed that we made it as far as we did. At the time it was pretty spooky; the high seas in the dark, the canoe slowly filling up with water with each wave, and finally, the big sink. And, just as we prepared to go down to Davy’s Locker, lo and behold, the water was only three feet deep! What a pleasant surprise. We must have gone pretty much straight across to the east bank as soon as we entered Guadalupe Bay. Of course, that made for a really long bay crossing, with lots of shallow water. But this is one landlubber who will take shallow water over the deep stuff any day (especially with that kind of cover).
It was one of those occasions where you really don’t know that you’ve actually won the race until you drag the boat out at the flagpole and there isn’t another boat there. We were sure that the Canadians had beat us in the bay. But they hadn’t.
It turns out that they had stopped to sleep for a few hours at the Salt Water Barrier Dam. Luc and his previous partner had slept there the year before, after they had squandered a six-hour lead. It seems that they were convinced that they were supposed to go through the Tivoli checkpoint before they passed through the Salt Water Barrier (they assumed that the Barrier had something to do with entering the bay). So they had spent hours paddling from the Barrier up to the Log Jam and back to the Barrier, until they finally called it a night and stopped to sleep at the Dam. They tell me that there used to be a little shack there that made for some good sleeping – but I always figured it was better to just get to Seadrift and sleep there.
Anyway, to make matters even more interesting, Luc and Denis also decided to enter the barge canal somewhere in the vicinity of the Boat Cut. As I understand, there is a house there, on the east side of the canal and they decided it would be a good idea to ask for directions at that house. They found the door unlocked and walked right in to use the phone. They even helped themselves to some food they found in the fridge and left some money to pay for said food on the kitchen table (I don’t really think they were aware that they were breaking any Safari rules at this point – they were, quite simply, out of their minds). I don’t remember who they said they called, but I wonder if the person would have been home if he or she could have really helped. I suppose it must have been kinda like a lifeline on that millionaire show. It might not be a bad idea to add such a thing to our rules (OK Fred, do you want to poll the audience or do you want to use your lifeline?).
What happened next was quite sad. They decided to walk out to the highway and ask for directions. Unfortunately, a friendly native picked them up and drove them to the seawall. Once we (by now we had had time to shower, eat and catch some sleep) saw them being driven up in a pickup truck, most of us realized that they would be disqualified. The head judge, Lawrence Hagan, was somewhere upriver, and the only other official present wasn’t willing to make the final call without him. So I asked the judge that was present if I could take the Canadians back to their canoe so they could finish paddling the course. I figured it was a longshot, but they might be forgiven for hitching a ride as long as they were taken back to the point of origin. In retrospect, I must not have been thinking very clearly myself.
At any rate, Paula and I loaded Luc and Denis into her Ford Econoline van (with the curtains on the windows and the peace symbol on the back) and headed back for the house on the canal. We dropped them off, wished them luck, and then headed off to find a point where we could watch their progress in the bay (I’ve never found such a point, by the way). Unbeknownst to us, the owner of the house on the canal had just returned home in time to see us driving away. And he was not all that happy to find that someone had been in his house that morning (I assume the muddy footprints, the missing food, and the money sitting on the kitchen table gave it all away).
It didn’t take long for the sheriff to track us down (not too many blue Ford Econolines in Seadrift in those days). Fortunately, Mr. Hagan showed up at just about the same time the sheriff did, and he vouched for us; unfortunately, he was in no mood to forgive the infractions of the Canadians (I remember, when confronted with the possible charge of breaking and entering, Denis had protested – in his broken English – “We no break nothing!”)
I suppose the moral to this story is, make sure you have a really firm grasp of not only Safari rules, but Texas law, or you might find yourself in big trouble after 70 or so hours of sleepless Safari.
The Safari is open to anyone. You don't have to be crazy to enter. But you will probably be crazy by the finish line.
Tom
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Pat Oxsheer &
Tom Goynes
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Pat Oxsheer,
Safari Queen &
Tom Goynes |