Thomas! Kim!, Rob!, Ann!, WHERE ARE YOU… Voices shouting, wind howling, ocean rumbling. Hyperventilation, panic movements trying to get un stuck from a fishing line trap,
large amounts of salt water streaming down my throat and from the kicking my right foot’s fin strap breaks, leaving the fin to sink into the depth below. With distressed eyes I signal to my team mate, Charl, I’m in shit…
Welcome Expedition Africa Rodrigues 2019!
Ok so that paint’s a pretty dramatic first impression of what was an epic start, in my opinion the best ever to an Expedition Race.
Brundle telling some story about how hectic that leg was or how big the fish was he caught, don’t know really?
Let’s hit rewind for a bit; 240 people standing on an idyllic beach on a tropical island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We are hugging, high fiving and wishing each other a prosperous journey! Journey? Yes, for some this will be a life changing journey, an Expedition Adventure Race of approximately 350km made up of Paddling, Mountain Biking, Trekking, Swimming, Caving, Rope Work, Sailing, Snorkeling and SUPing on an Island that is 18km long and 5km wide!
Team SPOT Africa mid race!
The stage is set and ready for the adventurous group of slightly misguided individuals that call themselves Adventure Racers.
I say misguided with the greatest respect, everyone standing on that beach on the 1st of September 2019 was ready to explore the unknown, travel to deep dark places within their own minds, jump into the air with pure joy for the smallest gains (like finding a Checkpoint), focus, without modern distractions for 5 or so days on one thing only, surviving and completing the course. In my opinion to truly LIVE!
The hooter goes, and we are running along the beach towards our traditional boats and local sailor while the island locals cheer from the sideline. There are 60 boats that looks similar, causing some confusion as we all try to get onto our boats and out to sea on this Sailing Regatta, Leg 1 of the Expedition Africa Rodrigues. Eventually we are all on our boat and moving, Charl is the last to jump in after pushing us into deeper water, I turn and realise our sailor has changed from the guy we met a few hours ago on the beach. I’m not sure what to make of that, he is shouting at us in French, Brundle and I start to hoist the sail, we are moving, we are smiling, we are sailing!
The boat is moving fast, I glance over to the left and see a boat in distress, Lize shouts “Hulle het n problem julle”, Brundle shouts “It’s going down” I shout, “Shit guys this is real we can actually sink, FOCUS”.
The first “tack” the sailing term for turning around, is absolute carnage. Boats collide with one another, more boats go down, our sail gets torn while the mast breaks of the boat hitting us! Our sailor is shouting in French, we are shouting in Afrikaans and both parties eventually reduces to ape style Huh, Arrrrgh and gesture language. Thankfully our new sailing recruit was slightly older and wiser and decided after that first tack, that we will steer far away from the chaos on the next turn. Following these more conservative lines made it difficult to figure out where we were placed in the field, but for the time being we were just happy to not be sinking. After the 3rd attempt of changing the mast and sail for a successful tack we started to get the hang of it, we were now on our way to the drop off point for Leg 2 our snorkeling leg.
Lize was voted as the team member to collect the Checkpoints under water as she was a bit like a mermaid in the water. She was first out of the boat, Brundle second, Charl third and I well my sailing buddy and I first had to do our last “ape talk” as he wanted to move the sail over me, breaking my snorkel thingy that kept it in place. Hitting the water, I find myself tangled up in fishing line with a hook through my buff, (luckily no flesh).
This is the scene explained in the opening paragraph. Charl gets me untangled and my fin back onto my foot. Lize has collected the first CP already and was on her way to the second, we swim for the second Red Bull buoy. Waiting there I try to normalise my breathing through the snorkel and realise how strong the current is pulling us out, this did not help for getting my breathing to slow down. Lize confirms she has all 3 CP’s we make sure we are all accounted for, which turned out to be a lot harder than we thought and we start to swim for land! The problem with swimming head down, with a mask is that you can see and gauge with relation to the reef, that we weren’t really moving. Fortunately, we kept it together, I defaulted to back stroke and made it to land, sweet land, eventually.
The best bloody start to an AR ever! Adrenalin rush of epic proportions!
Too many legs to recount all of them, but at least we had time for some beach strolls
Our game plan was to get onto the trekking leg as quickly as possible to avoid a queue at the Zip-line as it had the potential of a bottle neck. Lize conquered her fear of heights and we could start breathing again on our descent back to transition after the Zip-line. Three legs down of 29 on this glorious treasure hunt for CP boards placed all over the Island by route visionary Stephan Mulder.
We actually tried to recap all of the legs as we trekked down to the coast on leg 28, but it was too much for our sleep deprived minds to remember so I’m not going to try and tell the story of each leg. Let’s just say there was some high moments, like having a Burger and a Beer at the Tortoise Sanctuary, meeting Wally in the Caves (that’s a story for another time), sleeping for 2 hours a night and acting like you slept for 6, finding shops with some good chow and smashing an ice cold Coke along with it, swimming across some scary channels at night, entertaining your mates with your fear for mice, making buddies with the big ass spiders all over the show, being freakishly mesmerised by the Bats gliding like raptor birds during the day over the Island and seeing multiple sunrises and sunsets over an unique and beautiful landscape.
Dramatic scene in one of the bays where most of the transitions was located during the scene. Teams left their boats in these bays while completing the land legs of the race.
Then there were the lows, the 80’s and the 90’s was not kind to us (Checkpoint numbers). This is where our #GetLostStayFound moment kicked in good and proper. Our Dot watchers must have had a field day with our SPOT tracker going around in circles. Never the less we hope it was entertaining for some watching our dot. These are normally the moments you start to think about actually pressing that button on the SPOT tracker! We got whiff of the fact that we were in the mix for a top 10 position and was super stoked with that, but our wheels came off on day 4 with a trekking leg and a bike leg. Sleep deprivation leads to some silly choices followed by irrational counter arguments causing Team Spot Africa to fall back on the rankings.
Picking ourselves up again took a bit of time, the mojo was lost for a while and we were caught between, do we stop for dinner and a beer or to we keep on keeping on?
The answer to that is fairly straight forward. Adventure Racers always keep on moving.
We went out with a clear sleeping strategy of sleeping for 2 hours a night from the start. It worked perfectly for us up to the 80’s and we had to submit to a power nap or 2 in between.
The paddling, against the wind. I must say I have had worst, but it was pretty up there as far as paddling into the wind goes, especially when the bikes loaded on the front of the boat added to the wind resistance.
Our last CP of the race, 109 Checkpoints successfully hunted down
Robert Le Brun, the joker, the only one with French heritage that didn’t help us at all, learned these lessons from the race:
Brundle always up for a laugh!
“The lessons learned are endless, it’s basically 116hrs of learning - about yourself, how far can you push, about new facets of the sport, about expedition racing, about the area you’re in, sooooo much!
Top three things that’ll stick with me:
- Again I was reminded the best way to explore a place in a “short” space of time is to do an adventure race - on Rodrigues, we travelled every riverbed possible, ascended the high peaks, plodded every beach & rocky cliff path, traversed almost every road rideable and so much more...
- After 3 days of racing, you become very mistake prone!
- Take the conservative route option. Sometimes.
Was a privilege sharing the “trail” with Lize Du Plessis on basically her first AR, to witness her strength & especially how you owned the zombie walk, Zane Schmahl for just being as solid as ever, a legend skipper & being petrified of mice & Charl Du Plessis for being the intricate navigator, taking the conservative line (even when I didn’t want to) & teaching me a truck load.”
Charl and Lize Du Plessis, as a married couple taking on an expedition race, they where extremely brave and did a fantastic job!
The things that saved my bacon. Chaffing was always going to be a thing with all of the salt water and one of my biggest concerns going into the race. I can honestly say that the Barrier Balm from Squirt worked brilliantly. I had a big tub in my resupply bag and a small container in my backpack and I simply reapplied when needed. I did not have a issue whatsoever! I started using Barrier Balm a while ago. I will admit at first I was not too sure about it, it doesn’t feel like cream, it doesn’t spread as easily and went against everything I was use to. But I’m converted and sold, the best anti-chaffing product around and it doubles up as pretty awesome lip balm as well!
Proudly South African Socks
Socks, my team mates laughed at me when I showed them my bag for food compared to the bag with my socks and buffs (Yes the sock bag was bigger). It was quite interesting as with the barrier balm I was concerned for my feet with them being in wet conditions the whole time. Here again I can vouch for Versus Socks, the guys from Versus very kindly gave us a pair of Proudly South African socks for the race and we started the race with them. I think Brundle recycled them again in leg 28, after wearing them for at least 10 other legs . I ended up only using half the amount of socks I packed and I simply rinsed and re used the Versus socks, they were quite simply, the bomb!
My resupply bag from Sealand Gear, it was important to keep our resupply gear safe, dry and accessible throughout the race. This bag didn’t disappoint and it was my general traveling bag as well. The big plus for me racing on a remote Island in the Indian Ocean was that I was racing with a bag made from up-cycled material (rubbish in other words) and came from a company that is trying to reduce the amount of waste that eventually ends up in our Oceans.
I have been using Extreme Lights for years now and they are the absolute bomb. It was an added bonus to race with the new Baviaans Bike light named after our event the Trans Baviaans, I did the whole race with one battery pack for the bike light!
SUPing was the last leg of the race and a time to reflect on what teams have conquered
The SUP leg, the final leg was a great way to end the event as we paddled downwind with very little effort and could reflect on the last 116 hours spent together on a tiny island. I’m very fortunate to live an adventurous life always traveling and exploring but I never switch off. I’m always connected and working, scheming and thinking. But what an expedition race brings is a complete disconnect from the modern world and all of it’s issues. For about 5 days it is just you, your fellow AR mates and the area you are exploring. The extend of your concerns are surviving. Sure it is tough, but it is the best damn holiday I can take!
Team SPOT Africa done and dusted with their epic adventure!
Finish line celebrations and emotions after 116hours of racing with a total of 10hours sleep. #IslandHoliday
Thank you SPOT Africa for believing in us and supporting us! #GetLostStayFound
All photo credits to Jacques Marais #DieOom
Blog written by Zane Schmahl, Team Captain for Spot Africa who finished in 13th position out of 60 Teams that competed from all over the world.