Winter. The mere mention of the word to a New Englander this past season evokes a glassy-eyed stare, and involuntary twitching of the facial muscles in some sort of nervous tic. It had been a bad one. Only the most hardcore of skiers and Shackleton survivalists welcomed the seemingly endless bouts of storm after storm. After participating involuntarily in a long, long winter of crosstraining involving snow blowing, snow raking, and snow shoveling, the New England surfskiers amongst us had grown accustomed to the donning of multiple layers of neoprene and drysuits, and cracking through the ice to gain access to liquid water to paddle in. Thus, given the opportunity to participate in the Shark Bite Challenge, a race and clinics run on April 4th, 5th, and 6th by the pug-loving family of Mirlenbrinks, Rob and Karen, a number of us pale, white, pasty northerners leaped at the chance to paddle in the blue-green waters of Dunedin, Florida.
Tom, Mark,Rob,Steve
Pronounced ‘Duh-nee-din,’ the city moniker heralds from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Just what these two cities have in common beyond the fact that occasionally, its male residents don skirts and profess a love for tartan clans, is unclear. I’m quite sure its early settlers gladly traded peat for palm trees, and rum cocktails served in hollowed out tropical fruits festooned with multiple paper parasols. Comprising a weekend of events, from clinics to races, involving a veritable plethora of paddlecraft, the Shark Bite sang a siren song of fitness and fun, and delivered famously on all counts. With the assistance of one good man, Gary Williams, and Team Achilles, who graciously trailered our boats from CT to FL, and the generosity of Susan Williams (a.k.a. ‘Lady Justice,’ but no more related than the band of the hand as paddlers both), I, and two of my bestest peeps, Tommy ‘Kahuna’ Kerr, and Steve ‘I smell the barn’ Delgaudio, boarded JetBlue Flights to leave the frigid temps behind, and immerse ourselves in sunshine, Dunedin Brewery microbrews, and Naked Turtle Rum concoctions. Tom and I taxied in midday Friday. Unfortunately, Steve was detained in a cold and rainy NY, rolling in sometime after 2 AM that night. We deplaned in Tampa and beelined immediately for a waterfront table and some seafood. Following needed sustenance, we headed straight for Dunedin and some boat time, joining Team Achilles on a beach populated primarily by brown pelicans. Curious birds, pelicans. I confess a certain kinship to them by virtue of the manner in which I’m forced, due to time constraints, to choke down my lunch at work. I’ll wager I can cram a microwaved Lean Cuisine faster down my gullet than they can a menhaden.
Gary, Tom, Robin, Russell, Dennis, the Daves, Nihal, and Gretchen, of Team Achilles, were testing their newly delivered Stellar ST21 tandems. Tom and I unloaded his V12 and my ‘Ring of Fire’ Huki S1-R for a blast across the bay out to the race course. It was blowing pleasantly at about 10, and there were some small runners stacking up with the tide. For the first time in months, we were sans drysuit, sans gloves, sans neoprene in any way, shape or form, freeing, to put it mildly. Mid 80s air temps, low 70s water… In the immortal line from ‘Field of Dreams,’ I yelled over to Tom whilst surfing: “Is this heaven?” My voice lost to the wind, I answered my own query: “No, it’s Florida!” We were having way too much fun sprinting the small swells, but wanting to leave something in our tanks after an hour and a half of sprint, surf, and repeat, finally strapped the boats back on the racks and readied for the pre-race festivities.
Team Achilles
The welcoming party and race registration pick up was hosted by the Dunedin Brewery, ostensibly the oldest microbrewery in Florida. True to its Scottish roots, traditional Highland Games had taken place that day, culminating in a parade that very evening. A scrum of Scots had just finished their marching, straight into the brewery. It was a meeting of two worlds. On the one side, superfit and shredded SUPers, OC-1 and 2ers, and surfski racers sported their finest flipflops and beach regalia, while on the other, a plethora of plaid and kerjillions of kilts surrounded the moor of the bar, a scene directly out of ‘Braveheart.’ Thankfully, the Scots checked their cabers and stones at the door. We picked up our schwag bags, replete with one of the all time wildest race jerseys I’ve seen to date, emblazoned with the graphic of a gaping set of shark jaws, as well as a plethora of giveaways. I confess this whole ‘shark bite’ theme had me a bit uneasy. I number myself among the minions for whom seeing the movie ‘Jaws’ back in the 70s ruined an entire lifetime of ocean swimming.
Big Crowd for the Races!
We were warmly greeted by Karen and Rob Mirlenbrink, immediately partaking of the finest works of art of hops and barley the brewery had to offer. The kilts thinned out about 9ish. Perhaps we stayed a bit too late, but when in Rome… Out of deference to the Romans, with a 10 AM start time, race day dawned at a more than respectable hour. Actually, it wasn’t even remotely close to dawn-the sun was already high and hot. Honeymoon Island State Park, an idyllic mecca for hiking and biking with 4 miles of beachfront, was home base for all the events. The parking lot was packed with all permutations of paddlecraft and their pilots. One can quite easily pair watercraft with their owners, based solely on physique alone. The SUPers are all about core-chiseled midsections seemingly carved out of marble, they resemble Ab Blaster ads; and the men are even more hewn. The OC-6 paddlers are hulking beasts, with massive traps and the sloping shoulders of medieval prison guards, sporting board shorts in lieu of chainmail. The surfskiers are leaner, more lithe, narrow at the hips like Marc Anthony, enabling them to wedge into the width of something that’s essentially, like paddling a telephone pole on the water.
Karen
After evoking a false alarm of ‘Baby beluga sighting!’ thanks to our great untanned whiteness, numbers were grease-markered on our arms and legs, and we shamelessly panned for photo ops with the Shark Bite mascot, a powerful looking guy sporting a latex great white shark head. He had to be baking like a potato in there, but his good-natured demeanor and willingness to ham it up for the lens belied the red zone temps required for his role in the little-known Dumas classic: The Man in the Rubber Shark Head Mask. Rob launched the pre-race captain’s meeting. The course was quite simple: paddle parallel to the beach, swing counter-clockwise around the turn buoy-times two. Alas, however, the wind of the day before was not to be; it was pancake flat. I lamented my boat choice and decision not to bring the wee rudder. It would be a grind, albeit a shortish one for just under 8 miles, for this northerner’s early season dearth of fitness. Ours would be the first wave to launch.
Everyone and their entire extended family, it seemed, was on the water. Threading the needle through multitudes of SUPs, I drifted up to the start line next to Tom and Steve, positioned slightly to the side of the Polish hammer, Jan Lupinski, and the well-muscled marine biologist, Reid Hyle. At Rob’s countdown, we were off, in a pace line reminiscent of other races with these chaps. Reid instantaneously hit the nitrous button and was gone, baby, gone. Jan, Tom, and Steve immediately formed a high-speed train in pursuit, and this hyperventilating caboose, despite repeated attempts to attach bungees to their sterns, lost contact after the first half mile. Note to self: more intervals for you, Thomas the Tank Engine. Racing alone is a no man’s land of tiny mental games. Positioned somewhere ahead and off to my port side, along with several OC-1s and 2s, were a V10 Ultra and a Stellar, stripped of its logos and housed in a plain, white wrapper. My trusty Huki is an incredible boat, yet perhaps best suited to when things get big and nasty. Unless you’re Greg Lesher, keeping pace on the flats with boats two feet longer and two inches narrower at the beam, is taxing, to say the least. Disclaimer in (smile), I settled in to do some good work. I had thankfully turned off the HR alarm, lest it announce the surety of my impending nuclear meltdown the entire race.
Mark Ceconi
At the first turn buoy, thanks to the Huki’s steering precision and spin on a dime turning radius, I noted my gap had closed considerably on the Stellar and the V10. Buoyed by this, from then on, it became a steady effort to stay with these two paddlers. These would be my rabbits, to coin a phrase from a beloved friend who made game of hunting down prospective competition on beach jogs the same way. Shortly before the second marker turn by the start line, I reeled in and came around the V10, who hung wash for a bit, before dropping away. Again, I closed even more real estate on the Stellar in the straight. Steve and Tom had rounded the turn by now, and were shouting motivational euphemisms on their return trip back in passing. Surging again, by the 180 degree pivot around the third turn, I was right on his wash. As I tucked my bow inside, he bemoaned the difficulty of quickly spinning his ski around with the small rudder he had outfitted. I discovered he was paddling an SEL, the very boat I just recently sold, but in the Ultra layup. Knowing this to be an outstanding ski, with significantly greater hullspeed, even more so endowed with the shorty rudder, what was required was either the concoction of an evil scheme, or a direct act of God. Since divine intervention had rarely been bestowed in my favor before, I crossed over to the dark side. My devious plan for world domination would be to shamelessly ‘stern suck‘ him all the way down the backstretch, then pray to come around in the final turn, setting the stage for the finishing sprint to the finish.
Admittedly not the most noble of pursuits, but hey, that’s racing. As I traced his line, weaving like a drunken sailor in and out of the mass of oncoming SUPs, it resembled a somewhat slower version of a car chase movie, when the pursuant and pursuers drive maniacally against head on traffic down a one-way street. Euphoric with the decreased oxygen consumption that riding wash brings, I began feeling a bit froggy, attempting to come around a few times, only to witness my HR spike through the roof. I convinced myself that maybe where I was wasn’t half bad after all; location, location, location, in real estate terms. Before I knew it, there it was! The giant, floating, crab rangoon of the final turn buoy; this was it! With the slow dawning of realization that could only come from too little time spent attending to my 5th grade geometry class, I recalled my study of angles, specifically, that a right angle comprises exactly half of a 180. Thus, any prior advantage I had pivoting around the turn would be exactly halved as well. A bit too late to the party, I lit the afterburners to tuck inside, eking out a whopping 10” margin of lead. Would it be enough? We both kicked it wide open, and Stellar Guy began to inch slowly away. To add a little bit of “In your face!” to injury, he picked up a miniscule bump close to the shore and rode a boat length and a half all the way in to second place. So much for my highly strategic plan, but hey, that’s racing.
Reid had taken the young buck’s class, followed by Jan, Randy Taylor, then our own Tommy Kahuna, while Steve took the AARP class, with David Robertshaw in second, and yours truly rounding out the podium. Not a bad showing for us denizens of the Great White North; now it was time to reapply sunscreen. Shortly thereafter, our Team Achilles compadres began coming across the line, led by Dave McPherson and Tom Tarrant, then David Lind and Dennis Moran, Russell Lazarus and Gary Williams, and Robin Francis and Nihal Erkan. These are dedicated athletes overcoming their physical disabilities to test their mettle, while enjoying time spent on the water. I applaud you long and loud; you are champions, and great folks to boot. One by one, the other competitors finished strongly. The SUPers were particularly inspiring, furiously pawing holes in the water, to catch the little breaking swells coming across the line in a playfully exultant fashion. The winner of this class was, I truly believe, the mighty Thor, some 6’6” blonde-bearded Norse immortal with Fabio-style, flowing locks. (I’ll bet he would have kicked some serious bootie with his trusty Mjolnir in the hammer throw event at the Highland Games, too.)
Tom Kerr
Steve
The sun was blazing, just a few wisps of cirrus clouds in the sky-what a day. Sliding our skis up on the trailer, we showered off the salt at the park facilities, and donned our party dresses for the post race festivities and awards. Held at the waterfront Marker 8 Tiki Bar, the combination of grass-thatched umbrella tables poolside, buffet, and free-flowing Naked Turtle rum cocktails, along with silk-screened t-shirts printed on the spot, made for an absolutely outstanding afternoon. After meeting folks from all over the Sunshine State and beyond, Karen and Rob led the awards ceremony. Individuals placing in their respective classes were bestowed traditional necklaces of Hawaiian Kukui nuts, prompting some to proudly proclaim: “Hey, look at my nuts!” Paddling classes most densely populated were awarded a first place trophy of an exquisite hand-carved, wooden Lei O Mano Hawaiian war club. An artfully-crafted, viciously-hooked thing, with embedded sharks’ teeth around its circumference-it was an islanders’ version of an ice ax, only it wasn’t mountaineering it was intended for. Good luck getting that baby back through the TSA check in your carry on. (“What do you mean I can’t bring my Hawaiian war club?! Why do I have to step to the side and spread my arms and legs?!”) All highly ranking on the ‘Oh, so very cool’ scale, and completely in the spirit of the whole weekend.
Lei-O-Mano
Suffice to say we came early and stayed late. Sunday was a day for clinics at the beach, OC-6, and technical skills SUP races. At Tom’s insistence, we somehow arose from the dead fairly early and dragged our sorry selves back to the water for a last paddle in warm Gulf waters. The wind had picked up considerably and there were nicely-formed, small sets of runners up the coastline. This was living large, as we kept pace for periods with some of the OC-6 teams, shouting words of encouragement over the wind. Beachside, the Epic Kayaks boys, Vince and Wayne, led an entry-level clinic, and were allowing demos of almost the entire line of skis to follow. Additionally, Gary led an Adapted Paddling Clinic for Team Achilles, and a traditional SUP clinic was ongoing, as well. After a few quick photos, we said our goodbyes, promising to return the coming year, then regretfully packed up boats and gear for our return flight back to JFK and some decidedly un-Florida-like climes. A fine, fitting ending to a fantastic weekend at the Shark Bite Challenge. Once bitten…
OC6 with Rob and Reid
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