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The Texas Water Safari is a 260 mile race from Aquarena Springs in San Marcos to Seadrift on the bay. It is held every year in early June. All types of boats enter and teams have 100 hours to finish.
This year the winner was a seven man carbon racing boat over 40 feet long, but there was also a simple solo sit on top which appeared to have been rented from REI, and lots of boats in between. You must have everything you will use in the boat with you at the start (except water). If you accept any help during the race, even a band aid, you could be disqualified. Only a few teams are actually trying to win one of the classes, the rest are doing it as a challenge and an adventure.
Eight HCC members, myself, Christy Long, Anna King, Bob Price, Dana Enos, Louis Aulbach, Rick Brunson, and Justin Ceterski, met early Saturday morning and drove to the start. There we watched the racers putting the final touches to their boats; packing up food, lights for nightime travel, water jugs, covers, pumps and other gear. I saw two young guys stuffing bags and bags of Tostidos into their boat.
Good luck guys. A boat is rigged so that if you turn it upside down nothing falls out, but you can still readily access your food and water. The race begins at 9:00 am. We left for Rio Vista Dam to get a good watching spot.
The boats that ran the dam swamped but quickly dumped and were on their way. Most of the racers slid their boats over the slanting wall with them tumbling down after.
Lots of good action. Then we went to Cottonseed Rapid, and so did everyone else. We sat and watched boats come through until about noon. There were some swampings but no real disasters and the long boats ran straight through with no problem. My favorite was a tandem team where the stern paddler fell out the back, but the bow paddler didn't know it and kept right on going down river with his partner running after him.
After Cottonseed, we went back to Pecan Park and ran the three miles down to Skulls Crossing. That evening Anna, Rick, Bob and me went to Palmetto Park (Christy came down later) which is 60 miles down river. The first boats had come through about 5:00 pm and thirty boats had come through by 8:00 pm. They kept coming steadily until midnight and sometimes there were six teams on the low water bridge at one time. Some just quickly switched off water jugs, but some stayed for a half hour or more.
We camped out and early the next morning cheered on the lone sit on topper as he pushed off at 6:30 am. He looked good and I think he finished. Sunday we paddled a nice five mile run from Spencer's Shady Grove Campground in Martindale to Staples. The first part of this run has good current with some waves and riffles and down trees to avoid. It is a nice stretch and the club should do it more often.
The first team of racers reached Seadrift in about 36 1/2 hours or about 9:30 pm Sunday night. I think that some of our members got the water safari fever and want to do it next year, anyone else interested?
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