Wednesday morning March 23 at 7:00am, SOS started the remaining 36 nm to reach the finish line.
Near Clearwater, SOS reported that Sawhorse (Meade Gougeon) sailed out to meet him for a brief sail together.
The warm winds are from the E or SE at 4mph and are forecast to increase to 8mph from the SE by noon. High tide would be at 1:00pm.
By 10:30 SOS was passing the Clearwater Beach inlet and had traveled 14.5 nm in 3.5 hours (4.14 kts). At that speed, ETA at the finish line would be about 3:50pm. However, at noon SOS reported that his first 18.7 nm had been up-wind in "not enough wind" and that it was very choppy. Slamming through chop makes paddling difficult and hard work in the hot sun.
By 3:00 pm SOS was moving well with a velocity-made-good (VMG) near 4 kts.
SOS crossed the finish line at 6:24pm Wednesday, setting a new Class3 record: 18days 11hrs 24mins.
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| 36 miles from Anclote Key anchorage to the finish line on Mullet Key boat ramp |
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| chart |
Meanwhile, LRock and CrazyRussian finished the challenge at 6:53 am. Awesome! Race manager, PaddleDancer, was there to greet them and award their trophy paddles.
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| photos by PaddleDancer |
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| Photos by PaddleDancer |
CR: "You never let me sleep! En garde!"
LR: "Wait! Seriously, don't look but there is an SOS
right behind you!"
