Dupont to Salt Barrier Dam — 17 miles

We were up at 6:00 a.m. again. And, as our pattern had been on the two previous mornings, we spent a little more than an hour getting ready to go. We left Dupont about 30 minutes after Laughing Stock (#1204), and about 5 minutes ahead of Doug Rhude (#62). We felt strong and confident knowing that today would be our last day on the river. Even more, we paddled off knowing that nothing could keep us from finishing now.

It was 7:25 as we shoved off from the boat ramp. Despite our nearly 6.5 hour pit stop, we only lost six positions, falling back to 77th place overall.

We paddled with Doug for about an hour, but he gradually pulled away from us until we rounded a bend and he was no longer there. Somewhere around the Railroad crossing we passed Laughing Stock, amazed at their tenacity and persistence. And somewhere near Alligator Lake, we passed Ann Best and Julie Basham (#210). We had paddled with them on several stretches of the River — on Day One, we chatted with them for a little while between Luling and Fentress; on the third day we paddled along side them somewhere between Cuero and Victoria, talking and chatting for a while. Their cheerfulness was infectious. So it seemed somehow appropriate that we would run into them once again before the finish.

We only encountered two motorized boats between Dupont and the Salt Barrier Dam, and both slowed well in advance to minimize their wake for us.

We had only seen three alligators that morning, but numerous coastal birds, turtles, snakes, and insects. This is about the time that Marty went into his Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin impressions. For two solid hours, Marty perfectly imitated and mocked the infamous Aussie. "Crikey. There's another elusive North American common alligator. The officials of this, the world's toughest boat race, have asked me, Steve Irwin, to make sure the native animals are not endangered by the rowdy paddlers." Then we started to act as if Steve Irwin were participating in the Safari…in the Novice class. Kneeling in the bow, not paddling, looking back at his stern man/camera man (who would be wearing a head mounted camera)…remarking…"Here we are, paddling through Alligator Lake, (camera man thinking, "We? The next damn time you take a paddle stroke will be the first. Next year I'm going solo, dammit."), and….oh, wait, turn around, I think I saw another elusive brown tree spider in that tree back there…"

Anyhow, Marty was cracking my shit up for a solid two hours. It was almost enough to distract me from the irrepressible heat and humidity. Paddling through the brackish and still water, we would move from bank-to-bank, trying to paddle through any and all shade that we could find…which was sparse at best.

Finally, we turned a bend and could see the pillars of the Salt Water Barrier ahead. We pulled up to the muddy boat ramp, next to Doug Rhude (#62), Woodrow Courtney, (#817) and Sam Brett & Jason Sellers (#1953). Alan Picket and Chauncey Day (#1985) were pulling out just as we landed. They would finish 18 minutes ahead of us.

Boats #817 and #1953 also left the checkpoint moments after we arrived.

The heat of the morning had been taking its toll on us. Marty was as tired and worn out as I could remember since the final two hours before Cheapside. We stayed at the checkpoint for about half an hour, drinking lots of water and Gatorade and eating the rest of our peanuts and beef jerky. We unloaded the remaining gear that we would not need: extra batteries, all of our lights, all extra food and powdered drink mixes, extra clothes, and boat repair stuff.

No one at the checkpoint knew what the bay conditions were like, so we put our spray skirt on. We only buttoned it into place over the middle section of the boat, creating a tarp between us, but leaving our seats uncovered. We figured we could easily finish putting it on just before we hit the bay.

While we were putting our spray skirt on, Ann and Julie (#210) paddled past us, not stopping. We yelled our encouragement and told them we'd see them at Sea Drift.

It was 11:25 a.m. We had completed the Dupont to Salt Barrier Dam section in 4:05, which was the 39th fastest time. We had moved up another three positions to 74th overall. Looking back on our split times, I think we might have been about the 40th fastest boat in the race. But our poor pit stop strategy (or lack of one, actually) would result in us finishing much lower in the overall standings.

For the final time, we pushed off from the checkpoint, to a chorus of "Na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na, Hey-hey-hey, Goodbye" from the remaining team captains, race officials, and random spectators (what the heck where they doing there?) I almost got teary eyed.

Salt Barrier Dam to Sea Drift — 18 miles

Marty had been dreading the bay from the moment I described it to him months before the race. Throughout the race he had been resolute in his reluctance to paddle through it at night. In his mind he had conjured images of 40+ mph winds, 5-8 foot swells crashing over the boat, and sharks circling as we careened from wave to wave. Much to his relief, we would be paddling the bay during the middle of the day.

Just before Traylor Cut, we passed boat #210. Ann and Julie's team captains were waiting for them at a private boat ramp on river-right, and they were putting on their spray skirt. They were putting their paddles back into the water moments after we passed them.

Marty was still anxious about the bay, and wanted to conserve energy for the crossing. He was dragging pretty low at this point and was complaining that he didn't have much energy left. The heat and humidity had become tortuous. Just like the final push to Cheapside two nights earlier, I felt like I was the only thing keeping our boat moving forward.

And then, suddenly, there it was. The mouth of the Guadalupe River and the San Antonio Bay. Another milestone reached, and only one more to go. We stopped for a moment in mid-river, about 100 yards from the mouth, to take a few pictures of the moment.

And that's when we were blessed with our biggest break of the race: to say that the bay was calm would be a serious understatement about calmness. There was no wind. None. In fact, half way across the bay, we would be complaining about the lack of a breeze because we were so hot.

Just feet from where the river meets the bay, there's one last shade tree right on the river's edge on river-right. I had told Marty that we would stop there in the shade to re-hydrate, squeeze down another GU (we each had two left, and had been saving them specifically for the bay crossing) re-apply sun screen, put on our life jackets, and discuss our bay crossing strategy.

As we were pulling into the shade of the tree, boat #1953 was only about 30 yards ahead of us, and was just entering the bay. We wished them luck, and told them we'd see them at Sea Drift.

We didn't need to finish putting our spray skirt on, nor would we have needed it at all. Just as we were shoving off from the shade tree, boat #210 entered the bay no more than 30 feet behind us.

We had decided that we would follow the right shoreline to Foster Point, and then cross over from there. When we turned right, we could just make out the sun reflecting off of the aluminum boat of team #1953, who was heading straight for Foster Point. Looking behind us, Ann and Julie were taking a more direct line across the bay.

Our adrenaline levels were high. The excitement of a flat bay, the nearness of the finish line, and the proximity of other boats fueled our competitive nature and we paddled hard into the bay. By now we had developed a great rhythm of long and powerful strokes, rather than the short, quick strokes we watched so many other teams use. We figured our average stroke rate when we were moving at our best was no more than 40 strokes/minute…compared to the 60-70 strokes/minute used by many teams.

We could tell that we were quickly catching boat #1953 and that Ann and Julie were fading into the distance behind us. Looking further ahead, right at Foster Point, I thought I saw a yellow dot. A few minutes later I realized it was Woodrow Courtney (#817) in his yellow sea kayak. I urged Marty on, reminding him that this was a race, and our new goal was to catch the blip ahead of us that was #817.

Because the bay was so flat, there was no reason to hug the right shoreline and the cover of Foster Point. So we steered our nose towards the center of the bay, and took a direct line to the end of the spoil bank on the left. We stopped in the middle of the bay to take our shirts off from under our life jackets, which proved to be huge relief from the heat. It was hotter out on the bay then it had been during any other part of the race.

As we went past Foster Point (we were nearly in the middle of the bay, and the Point was well off to our starboard), we could see that #1953 had stopped momentarily behind the point. Looking ahead we could see that #817 had stayed far over to the right shore, even after Foster Point. He looked to be at least a half-mile ahead of us, but also several hundred yards to our right. I felt better about our chances of catching him.

Approaching the end of the spoil bank, the water was much shallower than we had anticipated — no more than 2-3 feet deep. We kept hitting bottom with our paddles, and had to turn slightly towards the center of the bay to get a little deeper water.

We made the 90° left turn towards Sea Drift with #817 within 150 yards of us. When I had run the bay on my training run last year, I had to paddle far out into the Gulf, aiming for the small islands farther out before I could turn back towards Sea Drift. However, with the bay being so flat, we were able to paddle straight across, since there were no waves to crash over the sides of our boat.

We did scrape the bottom of our boat on a shallow reef, but were able to shove through it. We paddled towards the Barge Channel, and noticed that there was a twin-screw towboat with a single covered barge heading in from the Gulf. It actually looked much closer than it was. I could see that #817 hesitated for a moment before deciding to cross. I yelled at Marty to pour it on, and we sprinted across the barge channel. Looking back, the boat and barge would not reach the point where we crossed for another five minutes.

Our sprint across the barge channel allowed us to catch up with #817. We slowed for a moment to chat with Woodrow. He asked if we knew exactly where the finish line was. I pointed ahead to the shoreline and pointed out what looked like a big red square on the sea wall, and indicated that's where the finish line was (it turns out that the big red square was two bright red Port-A-Johns). We then picked up our pace and passed him by (we were racing, after all).

Shannon was about 200-250 yards from the finish line looking for us. She said she didn't realize it was us coming until we were quite close, since she had been looking for our trademark loud yellow shirts, which we had taken off in the bay. We would actually beat her to the finish line. She said that we were moving so fast, that she couldn't get there in time once she realized it was us.

The Awards Banquet had ended just a short time earlier (we'll make it to the banquet next year), so there were a lot of people still at the finish line. The final 200 hundred yards were filled with the most amazing combination of emotions. There was a huge sense of pride as the still-large crowd cheered us in. There was the sense of accomplishment that was washing over me as the realization of our goals was before us. But the greatest emotion was the closeness—the bond—that my brother Marty and I had just forged over the last four days. I was as proud of him as I'd ever been, and my already tremendous respect for him had grown by an order of magnitude.

And then we were there. We were finished. I flipped out of the back of the canoe at the foot of the sea wall into the salty Gulf of Mexico. And I just stood there, trying to figure out what needed to be done next. But there was nothing left to do. We didn't even have to hoist our own boat out of the water (thank goodness for that, since we were wiped-the-hell-out).

Our final finish time was 78:15, 72nd overall out of the 111 boats that had started the race. We had completed the final leg of the race in 3:50, which was the 44th fastest bay crossing of the 2003 Texas Water Safari.

We posed for a few pictures at the finish line, received our finishers plaques, and sucked down a couple of well-deserved ice cold Shiner Bocks.

We stood at the finish line and waited for Woodrow (#817) to pull in behind us. Fourteen minutes later, we watched Ann and Julie finish the race. While congratulating them on their race, they told us about their very special cargo that they had been carrying with them for the last 262 miles. Julie's father had died very recently, and they were carrying his ashes with them throughout the race. They stopped just short of the finish line, to spread his ashes into the Gulf of Mexico. It was truly a pleasure to have paddled with and against these ladies.

We also waited as boat #1953 paddled in 18 minutes behind us. Doug Rhude (#62), who we had seen every day during the race, finished 22 minutes behind us. The last boat that we watched finish before we headed off to take our showers was the father/son team of Mark and Jack Elvig (#22). Jack was this year's oldest finisher at 70 years old, and had just completed his 14th consecutive Safari finish.

After a shower (air conditioning, soap, and warm water? Yeah, it was better than the beer), we cleaned up the boat, packed up our gear, and headed home. But not before we enjoyed a huge seafood dinner at a little diner down on the coast.

We'll see you all again next year.

Total Distance paddled on Day Four: 35 miles

Day 3—Previous