Hello and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guests are Bob Spain and Joy Emshoff, authors of Texas water safari, The World's Toughest Canoe Race.

Thank you both so much for being here today.

Good to be here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I'm going to start with the most obvious question.

What is the Texas water Safari?

Well, it's a canoe race, but it's a lot more than that.

It's like an expedition.

It's a race that goes down, starts in San Marcos, right in where the water flows out of the ground.

It goes 80 miles downstream on the San Marcos River.

Then it hits the Guadalupe River and goes another about 170 miles.

And then it hits the coast and it's sea drift and it goes about eight miles across coastal water.

And it finishes the little town of Cedar of Texas, which is how many miles?

It's 260 miles.

It's nonstop.

And you can sleep when you need to or you can paddle all the way through if you can.

And what time of when does this happen?

This is a yearly event.

But when this happened, this this the second Saturday in June this year, it will be June 8th or ninth, whatever the second Saturday is.

But, you know, second, second, 72.

And now the subtitle says it's the world's toughest canoe race.

And I know as Texans, we like to tell some tall tales, but this truly is considered to be a really difficult one by not just us here, but worldwide.

It's renowned for being a tough race.

Actually, it was actually designed to be exactly that.

In fact, the first application said they had purposely made this the most difficult race possible.

And the reason for that is you get very little support.

Most canoe races are either short enough that you don't have to stop and get water.

This one is so long that you have to stop.

You have to sleep unless you can be one of the fastest teams that goes all the way through in 30 to 40 hours, then you won't sleep at all.

That's still a long time to be awake, and I guess that would make it pretty hard to help people actually fall asleep paddling, if you can believe that, and follow the boat because it just or but the adrenaline kicks in on the latter part of the race.

If you're that far and you see the finish line, so to speak, then then you can kind of get a little extra energy getting something to drink and you want to finish that finish in a fast time.

So then you keep going.

It's hard to believe that ordinary people can do this race and many do do it just one time to see if they can do it.

But then we've got 100 people have done it at least ten times.

I imagine it's like running a marathon.

You just want to see if you can.

And then some people, it's like they get they get hit by the bug and they just want to keep doing it.

That's exactly right.

It's hard to believe.

It's hard to believe on paper, but people do it over and over.

Yes.

I want to go back.

And how did this start like it?

I mean, you mentioned kind of it was designed to be difficult, but how did it come about?

Well, in 1962, the year before the race, two businessmen from San Marcos, Frank Brown, who was manager of the Chamber of Commerce and a man nicknamed Big Willie George, who had a restaurant there, they decided, I'm not sure why if it was a bet, they had too much to drink, but they decided to go down the river all the way, all the rivers, all the way to Corpus Christi.

Neil They were in a V bottom 14 foot motorboat the way £233.

But they decided to use no motor and they paddle.

They sailed and they rode all the way down the rivers and all the way down.

They at first they thought it would only take about a week, but after four days they'd only done nine miles.

And so they knew they were in trouble.

It actually took them three weeks to do it.

Wow.

So the next year, Frank Brown managed the Chamber of Commerce possibly to draw attention to the city or whatever.

He planned the water safari following the same route.

But along the way you could receive no help whatsoever on the river.

So the first 250 something miles, you had to treat river water.

Or if you found a faucet along the river, you could drink water.

You had to have all your food, you could shoot squirrels, you could fish for food, you could eat oysters if you could find them.

But you had to live until you got to the coast.

And then because the salt water you can't drink, they would provide saltwater for the people at three days old, three different segments.

But 57 teams started only to finished.

Wow.

So that tells you a little bit about the river.

It's tough.

And then over the years, it's evolved a little bit.

Yes, it's the first few years they went to Corpus.

Now in 1971, Sea Drift was chosen to be the ending point.

It was 337 miles the first year, and over the next eight years it went to Freeport and it went to Port Lavaca.

But then they decided we decided it was for that time.

We decided to stop it at that point.

And so.

Sorry.

What was the rest of your question?

Just how it's changed.

Yeah.

And so it's also changed because at first there were no rules regarding design or number of people, any kind of boat, any number of people.

But in 1923 it had gotten so difficult.

Somewhere in the seventies, we started allowing to provide water and ice to the people in the boat.

But then around 2003, the boats got so long, we had a nine person boat to eight person boats.

One of them was 54 feet long, had to be hauled in two pieces down the road.

It was too long to carry.

It just became so difficult, so expensive.

We wanted to have more parity, so we limit it to six boats.

And then in 2006, we also allowed people to be able to get food from their support team and medical supplies as well.

So for the old timers, we solved the race quite a bit.

Well, that's probably good though, for say, I mean, I don't go anywhere in June in Texas without a bottle of water, so I can't imagine having to go, Well, you know, you've got the hot Texas weather.

You sometimes have bays that you can't cross and canoes are open.

There's the first race, had 56 logjams at two had to go across plus a dozen dams.

And then you've got once you paddled 255 miles and you're dead tired, then you get across a bay that has three or five foot swells.

People swim out there more than once, have to get back in the boat.

It's it's hard to believe until you've been there.

I imagine one of the maybe the draws four to do it over and over again is how changing it can be just the race itself.

Because like if you if you run a marathon, it's on flat ground.

It's going to be it's going to be maybe different locations, but, you know, you're not going to have obstacles.

But a river's changing some years.

We're going to have more water or less water.

There's going to be logjams.

There's just going to be environmental factors that's going to make it more challenging or maybe more easy.

And then the big unknown is you'll get messages from your team, your support team, that all the bay is slick, It's like Glasgow here.

But the time they get there, things can change a couple of years ago I can't remember three years ago we had extremely low water, lower than it is now.

We had some of the hottest weather we've ever had.

We had high winds in the bay was worse.

We've seen and we barely had half the boats finished over the years.

Two thirds of the boats, if you average all the years, two thirds of the boats normally finish 66%.

But there's no canoe race in North America where you don't normally see 98% or whatever finish.

Very few boats don't finish the race because they're shorter.

They don't have all the obstacles.

So it's world's toughest killing race, like you say.

Now, you've both run this race, right?

Tell them about your race.

Yes.

Well, Bob is on the board and I volunteer.

I've run one of the checkpoints.

I help with registration and and just whatever I can do to help all along the race.

Well, tell her.

Tell her about your race.

Tell me.

She went well, I'll tell the stories.

What she she wanted to do the race once.

And she had a partner who was a college student and he thought, I don't need to train.

I'm strong.

Young guy.

First time they were in the boat, she and I paddle together and we we we paddled the river.

And I was teaching her at that time because she was already kayaks instructor now, but I was a canoe person.

So the first time they really both direct the boat and had to have it repaired.

So she decided to wait.

Got a lady partner the next year and they had led the team, their class, for about 188 miles over the men in their class.

We were first in the novice class almost all the way until the until the bay.

And then two guys got around us.

But it was quite exciting.

And just like you were saying, every year, even the people who have done it multiple years every year is different because of the weather conditions, the water levels, it may rain, it may be extremely hot.

Whatever.

It's it's different every year.

Now, you mentioned something.

You're you you were a kayak instructor and you're a canoe guy.

For the uninitiated, people like me, what's the difference?

Basically, kayaking is with a double blade paddle and canoeing is with a single blade.

But then in the safari, we have unlimited boats that you can double blade or single blade.

But basically that's the difference in kayaking and canoeing.

Kayaking usually have a close boat more or less.

Now they have sail on top.

So that's all changed.

But like she said in the water for the first race, anything went one class, just whoever won.

But over the years, we've created this, as she mentioned, unlimited as many as six people, any kind of boat, single blade, double blade.

So this race has created the boats all over.

They're raced all over the country that are the fastest boats because we didn't use any rules.

We started out with no rules and made them skinny.

And most races have specs for boats and an unlimited class.

Maybe Internet.

Unlimited class is totally unlimited.

The boats made here in Texas often win those races because we've been racing them for many years.

Yeah, you talk in the book about how boat technology has changed.

You know, I mean, every technology has changed since the sixties, but the things they're built out of the way, they are shaped, all that has has really changed over the years.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure.

You know, the first race, for example, some of the boats that were race were Grumman Canoes.

That was the main boat back then.

And also there were some outriggers and some John boats.

But then on the second year of the race, two men came down from Michigan that already had a pro racing circuit, and they had a boat that was 24 foot long and more narrow, and they won the race, too.

And so that kind of got people to thinking the next ten years or so, rowboats, believe it or not, won the race most years.

And it was because those boats are very fast, because you can get your whole back arms, everything into it, but they're going backwards and can't see.

So there's parts of the river that don't do well.

But once you get the big part of the river, the bay, if it's quiet, but then the canoe is solid.

Well, you know what?

We can build a longer boat, too, and make it in there and put more people in it.

So in, I believe, 1971, the first time a three person boat me and beat the robots.

And since then they've just made them longer and longer and longer.

And so with the advent of Kevlar, which, you know, we have that also you make bulletproof vests out of that came along by the DuPont Company.

And then when carbon fiber came even lighter, those boats were made out of that.

So they got skinnier longer.

And now faster.

The fastest time now was set in 2006, I believe, 29 hours, 46 minutes go.

And 8.7 miles an hour in a canoe.

It was our water that year.

But that's what we're and you have 100 hours to finish.

So you see, they made it in almost one fourth of the town.

Wow.

But that record probably will ever be broken because I think we're a little more safe, safety conscious now.

It was at really high water and it was really dangerous.

And from my standpoint, I don't think we'll hold it when it's that hard, you know?

So you mentioned something about the checkpoints.

So you're a volunteer, you work the checkpoints.

Tell us how that works, because it's not just like you said, often you just go to the end of the race.

There are spots you have to check it out along the way.

Yes, there are checkpoints along the way.

They're spaced out.

The first one is 16 miles down.

They're spaced out about from 16 to 20 miles apart.

And the each team has a team captain.

So the team captain at that checkpoint can give them their food, their water and medical supplies.

And then the team captain has to come sign them, the check, the checklist to let us know for sure that they have been through there.

Because if they haven't, if we don't have any way of keeping track on them, of them on this long, long race, it would become very difficult.

So that's what the main part, I guess one of the main things the team captains responsibility is to come to these checkpoints and then a lot of times some of the teams at the checkpoints down near the end of the race, they'll rest a little bit, get out, maybe stretch their legs, maybe sleep a little bit, but it's just a place to check in.

And that brings up something in the book.

They're keeping track of these people when they meet you.

There weren't checkpoints and there wasn't the technology we have now.

There was all kinds of inventive ways to try to keep keep an eye on these people From ham radios to now.

We've got GPS tracking right.

We started out with him some years ago and that was our main communication.

Then, of course, with the advent of cell phones now, it's amazing.

And of course, the computer now we put, you know, GPS is on the boat, which is call it what you call spots.

And so people can actually sit at home and track their teams and where they're at so that really has made it an advent.

And of course, now we allow them to have communication, too, so people can actually say, Hey, speed it up.

These guys are 5 minutes ahead in your class.

So, you know, that was something.

So all these things that we've done is for safety.

It also helped people a lot.

But it still, if you think about, you know, you've paddle for 80 plus hours, 90 hours in there, you hit the bay and you get 3 to 5 foot swells and you've got to get across eight miles and you've only got 8 hours or so to do it.

We had to rescue 12 different teams last year that got far enough to the bay, but they kept waiting because they knew they would swamp and swam and didn't know if they could finish.

That's what makes it tough.

Now they do put covers on, snap them on, but they're not waterproof.

They still come underneath the seam on the thing and still fill up if you don't have pumps in there.

So it's up.

Even though we've made some additions that are helpful, it's still a really tough race.

I'm a complete novice at all this, but I would imagine switching from river to ocean is probably one of the more difficult because maybe you get at one of your good at the other.

But being able to do both in the same race, I imagine that's a degree of difficulty there is in trying to figure out how you can best do it.

Now, some of the unlimited boats have come up, just a few with a new adventure.

It doesn't say you can't have extra flotation.

So some people have made like an outrigger that they would tie down where they have a little bit of buoyancy on each side.

There's only a few that have done this, but I would imagine we'd see more of that because you don't need that in the regular river.

But when you get out there, when you're getting waves crashing, maybe you're going in there crashing from the saddle all the time.

You try to figure out a way that you can get across that bay because it is different, as you just said.

And it's not like you can just swim to shore real quick.

I mean, you could be out there a couple of miles.

You know, there are places where you can actually stand up and they were able to turn and they look for those two where they can dump their boat and then everybody try to crawl back in with it without turning it over again.

So it's yeah, it's, you know, and when you're there running the race and you're watching the screen and you're seeing a dive that's out here way, which can be your heart starts beating a little fast.

Now we do have motorboats that we use for rescues and that sort of thing.

But at night you sometimes wonder is that the boat is a person with it or is it the boat by itself?

And the person may have turned over.

So there is a there is quite a risk.

And it's you know, people still do it.

But I also want to talk more about the volunteers.

There's a whole section in the book about how vital they are, because as you both have mentioned, they're they're needed all along the way, every checkpoint to get water, to monitor people, to make sure they're safe.

I mean, they're you describe them as kind of the backbone and the unsung heroes of this race because they they make it possible.

You know, like Joyce said, we have, I say, 70 to 80 volunteers to put in on every year.

It's more than that.

But because you need a checkpoint that has to be open around the clock, once they start coming through it, one person usually can't do it.

You're going to need some relief for a second person.

We also have rescue teams that we use.

We have a team that tries to handle the top part of the race, the first hundred and 30, 40 miles or most the river, and then boats that are capable motorboats that we can get in in the lower part.

And of course, we have timers, we have people that have to shuttle.

Sometimes we have to take GPS units to a different spot because people that come along there stop working.

So you have to look at all these we have police support.

Of course, they you know, they're paid.

But I mean, we have to get them at certain places where we have a maybe traffic problem or we have parking that might be an issue or people are walking cross the road with a boat, you know, that sort of thing.

So it takes a lot of planning over this, you know, 260 mile, five day race to pull it all off.

So it's just a lot of people and most of the volunteers have done the race before and they don't want to do it anymore, but they still want to be involved.

And every year we get together and we always say it's like a big family reunion and hey, how are how are you?

What have you been doing the last year?

You know?

So it's really, really, really family oriented in a lot of ways.

That brings up something else.

I really noticed in reading the book is the sense of community that there is I don't know that I want to run this race, but the way that people talk about each other, because it's a it is a competition.

Yes.

But the way they speak about their competitors, it's like you say they're family.

I may want to beat my family at a board game, but I still love them.

And it it really comes across and how much everyone cares about each other in this community.

I think that really came across in the women's chapter.

When we first started writing this book, we kind of had in mind all the things that we wanted to include, like the statistics, the the description of the course, talking about the people who have done it many years, all of those things.

But we we wanted to do something on the women of Safari.

And so I sent out a questionnaire to all the women, anyone who wanted to write something.

And so I started getting and I was thinking I would bring all this together and write the chapter.

And I started getting these wonderful stories.

So when we first came and talked to the editor of the press, we were talking about everything, you know, the chapter, the different chapters along the way.

And then when we got to my chapter, I said, Well, my chapter is a little bit different.

Mine is stories and stories about how this has brought families together, stories from women who have just found so much strength and found out things that they didn't think that they could do during the race.

I guess more of the emotional side of the race.

And I said, is this an okay thing?

And they said, yes, we we do want to include that.

And so I think that it shows that this is very empowering for women to do.

And and and so I ended up just putting together their stories.

I didn't want to change a thing.

And most of them mentioned family.

And we ourselves have seen whole families, some of the families we've we have actually taught everyone in the family that stand the race to paddle.

We've given them instructions and we've been with them all through their evolution of racing.

And it really is wonderful.

It really is a community.

It's like we have a big party at the end because the race is so long.

We've chose not to wait till the very end because some of the people that got there in 30, 40 hours, they're having to wait several days, you know, just camped out or in a hotel there.

So on Tuesday, which is 70, I believe, 6 hours into the race at 1:00 on Tuesday, we have a banquet now.

They're still coming in right by where, you know, they're coming in every once in a while, we okay, we'll stop the banquet here, the cup.

And so at that time we have it and it is like a big party that we all get to celebrate.

And the people in the race, we actually give an opportunity to get behind the microphone.

Sometimes we wish we could stop it, but they see from the same green, they say, but you know, this race is so low.

But anyway, it's a big family.

But another point.

But they also talk about things that happened in I haven't even mentioned yet.

People hallucinate in this race and do crazy things.

There's a whole chapter on that in here.

And there was one year when I was we have positions during the races for board members, lots of volunteers, but we also have a head race judge and people that are designated in those spots.

That year I was not just a board member, I was in charge of the race, so to speak, and we had a team that was doing great.

But then a couple of hundred miles down the way they were leading their class, they didn't show up.

So the wife of one of the guys is real concern.

And so we said, Don't worry, they're probably just sleeping there.

Okay, This is back before we had the tracking system that we have now.

And so long story short, they never showed up the next morning.

So I sent people out to get them and they found the guy.

He had gotten out.

I can't tell you the whole story because we take up the whole program, but basically he had gotten out because he thought the black helicopters were after him, drug runners, and he could see fields of marijuana.

So he got out.

When we finally I sent a rescue team out to get him.

They found him and ran up behind him and tackled him.

And the fire department showed up with their EMT to help and everything.

And yeah, he didn't have any clothes on till he was naked.

And so there are some really crazy stories, and that's a true one that happened in this race.

Yes, that's that's a very interesting chapter.

I recommend everybody read that one closely.

But I imagine going that long picture without sleep, you're the mind does crazy things.

People see things in trees.

Vines that are snakes got stopped, He said he made a phone call at the phone booth at carnivals.

Just a lot of people see tiny circuses along the way, and there's an area that it seems to affect people more and we call it hallucination Alley Yeah, and this story's clowns, lots of clowns, brick walls and the water just crazy.

Amazing.

And the people, some of the people have the presence of mind.

They've done this far enough.

They know we say, okay, this has got to be a loose nation.

Others don't know that one guy that he was going to was going to do his 20th.

He's done it many times.

He was toward the end and only eight miles to go.

And he felt like he was on a flying carpet.

And he said he could just see sparks when he moved his hands through the water.

So he said when they got close to bank, he said he jumped out like a cat, as some people told him, and he ran, got in a pickup and his team captain came up there in the wind and said, well, you're out of the race this next year.

That's against the rules.

You can't do that.

But I mean, he'd done it 19 times, he'd finished it.

And so it's it's crazy that it does happen.

That goes back to that part about it being the toughest.

I also do want to touch on the people who do this race.

They've come from all over the world.

This is this is and sometimes people bring in ringers and there's there's a whole write it somewhere around 1985 six somewhere in there that brought in first people.

They recruited some people to come in to race with the better teams.

We've had a team that dominated and that's happened through the years.

I think it's now 44 states have been represented by people for continents, nine foreign countries, one Olympian, 112 time world champion adventure racer that does the adventure racers.

We've had the best paddlers from Canada, the ones up in Michigan that have a pro circuit.

So it is drawn.

In fact, this year we have on a four person team the best paddler who's winning more of the pro races right now in in the Michigan area, the Triple Crown races, he's coming down.

He's in a four person boat racing this year.

So it's drawn the uniqueness of this.

It's unlike any races they do in these other races, but it's so unique.

They want to do it at least try one time.

And many times they're with the better team and they may very well win it.

And they have won the race before and also young and old, as you mentioned, lots of women.

It's a it's a pretty diverse race.

It sounds like the oldest one to finish was 81 and few months.

The youngest young lady was nine years old.

Now we have limited the age now.

We felt like that was not good.

And now you need to be 13 and you have to be in a boat with adults.

Sure, if you're 19 or 18, then you can race solo by yourself.

But any wonder you have to have adults in the boat with you and permission from your parent.

So also, well, sadly, we're running short on time here.

This is such a fascinating thing and I hope people will read the book to learn more about this and maybe just go watch it.

You can watch the race.

Sure.

There's a website.

You can you can learn all kinds of stuff about it.

So in our final 2 minutes, can you just tell us what you want people to take away from this book?

You'll go first.

Go ahead.

Well, you know, I think that the thing that we've brought out a little bit is people from all backs of all all lifestyles all over the world have come in.

People who are inexperienced have and sometimes don't make it.

But anybody can do this race.

I can give you some good advice if you want to finish, but we'd like to let people know that if you you have a desire to do something on your bucket list.

And that's what exactly some people do, is it's on their bucket list.

Go out and give it a try.

It's something you can do and you won't believe how invigorating it is when you finish.

So, you know, this year on is a June 2nd, Saturday in June, 9:00, come to the Meadows Center where the Spring Lake San Marcos River comes right out of the ground.

And you can watch these people in these crazy outfits and these long boats that are look a little bit out of it because maybe they are because they're going to do Texas waters for the world's toughest canoe race.

So anyway, I invite you all to come.

Well, thank you so much for being here for telling us about this is a fascinating race.

I don't want to run it, but I want to I want to watch it.

Maybe I want to learn more about it.

Maybe I'll volunteer.

So thank you so much.

That's all the time we've got for today.

Again, the book is Texas Water Safari.

That's all the time we've got.

So thank you so much for joining us.