Paddle Boarding From Bahamas to Florida
Three cheers for Captain Scott and the Lionfish Assassins! They made it possible for me to paddle board from the Bahamas to Florida in 14 hours and 32 minutes. We accomplished our goal of going “beach to beach”.
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A huge “THANK YOU” to everyone who donated. With nearly $6,000 raised and over 50 donors, we got the message out about kids with cystic fibrosis. This amount was exceeded last years fundraising by more than four times.
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Last year was a debacle trying to get to Bimini before the start. The opposite happened this year because Scott was our captain. He had his boat in Bimini well ahead of schedule. There was plenty of room for everyone’s gear. A tank of fresh water and pressurized hose. A huge cooler full of ice, drinks and fruit. And a big shade mounted over the stern to give Brandi and Michelle respite from the sun.
I can not say enough about our support crew. Brandi and Michell were literally at our beck and call. During the day, the calm seas allowed me to literally paddle feet from the boat and get handed off anything I needed. Our other paddler was nominated as Honor Man of the team for his determination to finish no matter how violently he got thrown from his board. (The entire boat winced at one point when the ocean rose up and slapped him down; injurying his left rib cage in the process.)
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THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
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Captain Scott: Highly competent skipper with over 18 years experience on Floridian waters. He taught me to scuba dive deep to 100 feet and spear the invasive Lionfish.
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Colin: 1st Mate: A quick-witted duck hunter extraordinaire. Always on hand to back up the Captain and keep the boat going.
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Brandi, Director of Support: Gorgeous babe who knows how to feed, water, and motivate me when I’m doing these adventures.
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Michell, VP of the Little Things: Our dear friend from California who flew out for this. We hiked the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim once so she knows how to manage my low blood sugar grumpiness.
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Delgado, Paddler #2: He finished this race last year and came back for more. A mutual friend introduced us a couple weeks ago. I am not sure what he knew he was getting in for when he signed up to join our pirate crew.
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RACE DAY
We participated in the Rose Paddle Out Ceremony. What a moment to experience over 100 paddlers on the water in a big circle. Colin had his drone out and captured the spectacle of the beautiful Bahamian waters. But being out in the 92 degree heat factor for over an hour may not have been the smartest move. I suffered for it later.
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After a short practice paddle, we headed back to our hotel rooms for hydration, food and naps. By 1pm we were in our air conditioned rooms finishing our gear prep and packing for the boat. About 6:30pm we put everything into the boat and grabbed dinner. By 8pm we all went back to our rooms and got in a last bit of rest for the long night ahead.
11pm came too soon. We gathered at the boat then headed for the check-in for the start. It was logistically interesting as we had to navigate in the dark a couple miles to another marina on the other island. Add another 69 boats to the mix and it was a floating fiesta of antsy boats, crews and paddlers. Thankfully no idiots appeared. We eased into the marina, offloaded our paddle board and headed for the final check-in.
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THE START
Scott stayed on the boat as Colin, Michelle and Brandi helped Delgado and I with our 14 foot boards and gear. After being issued our Garmin trackers and passing the safety gear check, we were issued bibs and final instructions. Colin, Brandi and Michelle returned to the boat. Delgado and I were on our own with pre-race jitters.
All the boats had exited the marina and were gathered off the beach awaiting their turn to pick up paddlers about 100 yards off the beach. I love being in and on the ocean. So to see those 70 boats in one area at night with their under-hull glow lights was a spectacle for me. (Boats in Florida tend to have LED lights mounted under the water near the engines. The captain can control the color that glows out under the boat.) Behind them was the pitch black of the ocean. No moon. No stars. Just a bobbing flotilla of lights and glowing pools of color.
It was a staged start with us being in the 7th of 10 waves. The first wave went off about 10 minutes after midnight. We launched at 1:05 am. Being in lane 8 of 11(?), we had paddlers and boats on our left and right. Once we stepped into the ocean, I forgot about everybody. Thank God I didn’t immediately fall off my board. Brandi and the crew were spinning glowsticks in big circles on the boat so it was easy to spot them. It seemed like it took 10 seconds to get from the beach to the back of the boat. Scott had chosed a red underglow to start off with. Gliding up to the engines with that red underglow had a surreal feel to it. Delgado and I both called out “Ready” and we heard the engines “clink” into gear. Game on!
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PADDLING IN THE DARK
What is it like on the ocean at night on a paddleboard? A hard feeling to describe. Put simply, I felt like I was standing calmly in the dark with a boat in front of me that was bobbing like crazy. Off in the front was a horizon of small white dots of light from all the boats that had launched over the prior hour. So that gave me a clean line to maintain my balance. So to see the boat bucking, rolling and rocking against that horizon line created the illusion they had it worse than I did. It did not take long before I knew the opposite was true.
Despite the gentle waves and 5mph winds, the wind was at our backs so we had no cooling effect from it. With a heat index over 90 degrees, I started overheating quickly. This problem continued through the night and into mid-morning. Eventually I started feeling the onset of heat exhaustion and quit paddling. But before that point, we experienced a breathtaking sunrise.
The night paddling was actually smooth once we got a pace figured out. Kudos to Captain Scott and Colin for figuring out how to deal with two paddlers who kept falling off their boards. The engines have to go to idle as soon as we fell in. He could not back up because he might hit us. He could not turn the boat around because he could lose us in the dark. Delgado and I only had a single glowstick each attached at our belts for visual markers; no lights, no headlamps or beacons. So Brandi and Michell had to keep a really close eye on us until we re-mounted and paddled back up to the boat.
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After about two hours we found our groove. Then it was a steady pace.
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GOOD MORNING
At about 5:32am we spotted the first blue-ing of the eastern horizon that signaled the approaching dawn. By 6am we were feasting on the gorgeous sunrise backlighting huge storm clouds miles behind us. The sunrise was behind Delgado and I. From my right peripheral I could glimpse Delgado silhouetted against the light. Definitely good Instagram pics for his channel. The whole sunrise experience was a picturesque scene.
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By about 8:30am, the sun started poking us with heat; reminding us we had a new menace to deal with. And deal I did not.
Somewhere around 10am I called a time out. I had started feeling the chills that signaled heat exhaustion. I had experienced heat exhaustion years ago doing a half-Ironman triathlon. I knew I had better ask for help before that life-threatening problem accelerated. I looked at Brandi, gave the “cut the engine” hand gesture across my throat then stepped off my board into the ocean.
I put my arms up on the board and just relaxed in the water trying to let it cool my core body temperature. But a 83 degree ocean is too close to the average bathtub temperature of 95 to have much effect. I climbed back up on the board, kneeled then slowly paddled up to the boat. “I’m way too hot guys. Somehow we have to cool me down” I told Brandi.
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Thankfully she recognized I was wearing a pair of long shorts. So she suggested I switch out to my lighter running shorts. I could not get in the boat because I was trying to earn the “Beach to Beach” award. (This only goes to those who stay on their board and never get on the support boat.) So I dropped back in the water and changed my shorts. Yes, it was as funny and awkward as you can imagine. And yes, I thought about a shark checking my exposed manly parts. Whatever was down there was obviously scared away as I remained unmolested.
Back up on the board, I quickly felt the improvement. Brandi and Michell then instituted the best pit crew maneuvers you could ask for. I paddled close enough to the boat that they could throw cold water on me. Michell kept a steady supply of neck and head towels soaked in ice water coming to me. You have NOT been pampered as an athlete until your support crew repeatedly hands off ice water to drink, sprays you down with cool water from a hose (Thanks Scott for owning a boat with a 50 gallon tank of fresh water.), flicks ice water on you, feeds you morsels of peanut butter / honey sandwiches and continously swaps out ice water neck/head towels. Life became gooooood! I was BACK IN THE GAME! They did all of this while I kept paddling (and Delgado calmly glided along the other side of the boat.)
By maybe 10:30 or 11 my body core temp was down to normal. I was fully back in my zone. The water was glassy and gently undulating waves caressed our boards from behind us. The sky was bright. The wind non-existent.
Hours passed.
Colin pulled up the Sirius XM radio and found techno dance music. Scott danced up on the bow. I think a small amount of twerking occurred. Colin was piloting the boat and boogeying to the rhythm. The sun shade was up over the back of the boat so Brandi and Michell got some relief. They bravely cracked a can of tuna in an attempt to make tuna fish sandwiches. But Michell was already feeling tepid so I don’t think it went well.
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We were 10 hours into our paddle. Delgado and I were on pace to finish in about another four. Mentally I was confident we would make it. We had beat back the heat. My lower back was threatening to cramp up but that was kept at bay by dropping to my stomach every 20 minutes and paddling with my arms life a surfer. There was an equilibrium between fatigue and effort in my paddling. Just enough to stay steady but not enough to blow up. We had a rhythm of sipping water and nibbling food every 5 and 20 minutes.
Somewhere around 1pm the radio crackled to life and changed everything. “All paddlers get into your boats and relocate to the following coordinates” came the announcement over the radio.
We had been seeing a wall of black clouds building way out in front of us. By this point we were 55 miles into the race. We were over half way. Both Delgado and I knew we were going to make it. We estimated about four more hours of effort to reach the finish line.
Captain Scott followed the orders of the race director and had us board the boat. It was a safety procedure of unknown cause. The three engines roared to life and we zipped about 15 miles forward to the designated spot. As we approached we drew closer to the wall of black clouds that stretched all the way south to north in front of us. “Why did the race plant us directly in front of this menacing wall of a storm?” Thankfully the radio crackled with new instructions: “Captains, put your paddlers back in the water at these GPS coordinates and continue paddling to the finish”. Quickly we complied.
But just as quickly, we paddled right into the downdraft of a thunderhead. 20 knot winds whipped the seas into a frenzy. Pounding rain threw mini-geysers of water off the oceans surface back into the air. “But it’s a warm rain” someone said from the boat. Delgado and I just looked at each other, shrugged, and paddled forward as best as we could.
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After about an hour and a half we paddled through to the sunshine on the other side of the storm. It had been a line of thunder cells stretching tens of miles north and south; parallelling the Florida coastline. To our left (the south) had been lightning. The closest strike had been about 10 miles away. While Delgado and I were focused forward into the rain, the boat crew could see “sideways” to the south where the towering black storms were throwing bolts of lightning.
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Unbeknownst to us, the safety team of the race had observed the doppler radar predicting a wall of lightning-filled thunderclouds along the south edge of the route. So they had correctly relocated everyone to a GPS point that put us north of that danger. Which allowed us to continue racing; albiet in slightly “wetter” conditions.
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Once past the storm line, Delgado and I experienced another of the ocean’s mood. Choatic, disturbed, unsettled. The waves were coming from anywhere and everywhere. Poor Delgado got bitch-slapped off his board so hard that Brandi said the whole boat winced from the loud and violent sound. Unfortunately his paddle got tangled up in his cartwheelingk limbs and slammed his left rib cage. Injury!
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Delgado could no longer generate any power in his paddle stroke on the left side. Bad enough to suffer that pain from these somewhat knife-edge carbon fiber paddles. It was made worse by the fact we needed to keep veering to the right; requiring him to constantly paddle on that injured side. Did he quit? Nope. Did he whine? Nope. Did he smile and keep paddling? Yes he did!
The 4 knot current from the Gulf Stream along the Florida coast finally snuck up and stabbed our efforts in the back. We wound up getting too far “upstream”. We spent time paddling hard to try and get back “downstream” south to the beach. After over 13 hours of paddling, we were simply too tired to do it. So Scott made a decision allowable by the rules. He pulled us back in the boat and jetted us “downstream”. Then put us back into the water at the same distance from the finish line pier. So instead of paddling that final 2 miles against the current, we were able to paddle cross-current to the finish.
But the ocean showed us another mood. It took a couple minutes to adjust our wobbly legs to the new direction of the waves. With the finish line in sight, we still fell in. Did we care? Nope. There was no way anything was going to stop us at that point.
THE FINISH
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The finish was everything I wanted.
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Delgado and I followed our boat up close to the pier where the finish line was. We shouted our thanks to such a great team then aimed our boards for the set of yellow buoys marking the last 100 yards. Behind us, Scott, Colin, Brandi and Michell anchored the boat and watched Delgado and I paddle to the finish.
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Delgado and I approached the beach. People were shouting and yelling down to us from up on the pier. What a great feeling to come in the “finish chute” to all that commotion. Delgado showed how much of a bad-ass paddler he was when he surfed a wave into the beach. Talk about a crowd pleaser! He ran up the beach and crossed the finish line. I coasted in behind him to the sand; wiggling my hips and waving my paddle in time to the pumping music. The announcer came over the loud speaker “And here is Delgado and Brian!” After a little over 14.5 hours, I crossed the finish line.
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EPILOGUE
Delgado and I paddled back out to the boat shortly after handing off our GPS trackers and accepting our finisher medals. Getting back on the boat I spent a quiet minute with my amazing wife Brandi. She has supported over 17 months of my pursuing that finish line moment. To pause and soak it in with her was the highlight of the whole adventure.
Colin pulled anchor and we aimed the boat for our overnight slip at a local marina. Delgado’s mother met us with a tray of McDonald Oreo McFlurries for everyone. What a treat! After a quick change of clothes at the hotel, Brandi, Michell and I headed for a meal of whatever we wanted. Scott and Colin killed off a pizza back at the hotel. You never saw a more grateful group of people flop into their air-conditioned beds for a well deserved night of sleep.
What would I do different? Nothing. The captain was perfect. The boat was perfect. The crew was perfect. My paddle buddy was perfect. Every race throws you unexpected challenges. Being able to adjust throughout an endurance event is critical to overcoming and moving forward to the finish. And everyone on Team Lionfish Assassins made it possible for Delgado and I to adjust so we could cross that finish line.
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BIG THANK YOU
It surprised and humbled me to see so many of you donate. I had no idea that more than 50 people would step up and financially contribute to this challenge. Thank you to Scott’s friends and family. Thank you to Colin’s friends and family. His dry pan humor kept us going “We’d get there sooner if you stopped falling off your boards” was my favorite utterance from him. Our friend Michell flew all the way from California to serve as our second support person. Many thanks to her friends and family for donating. And to those friends of my wife who donated…
Thank you! To our daughter and her friends and coworkers for donating, Thank you! To Delgado’s friend and family… thank you for your donations.
Many blessings to each and every one of you for making this year and a half adventure reach a wonderful conclusion.
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