38 Hours on the River: Team From Belize Paddles to Texas Water Safari Victory
By Pat Hathcock, Victoria Advocate, Texas
Jun. 13–SEADRIFT — A team consisting of one Texan — John Bugge of College Station — and five Belizeans — Armin Lopez, Jerry Rhaburn, and cousins Efrain Cruz, Amado Cruz, and Daniel Cruz — paddled boat no. 911 to a win in the 2006 Texas Water Safari, pulling in at the flagpole in Seadrift at 11 p.m., Sunday.
The team was captained by Megan Yeager. New rules this year limited paddlers to six.
The Belizeans were looking for a soccer ball to kick around on the bayfront grass, evidence of their superb conditioning. Bugge wasn’t looking for a soccer ball, pointing out, “I’m more than twice as old. I’d make three of some of them.”
Bugge is 55. Amado Cruz is 18.
The fearsome Mynars, who have dominated the race for a decade or more, brought boat No. 44 in some 44 minutes behind them. Number 44 was about 20 minutes behind at the swinging bridge at DuPont and about 35 minutes behind at the salt water barrier at Tivoli.
The Bugge/Belize boat came zipping across a glassy San Antonio Bay under a full moon and checked in at exactly 38 hours, a good time for a race when low water made for difficult paddling. Bugge, a veteran of a score and more of races, said, “All I can say is it was hard. It was as low as I’ve seen it on some parts of the Guadalupe. We were all over. There was just no river there in some places it seemed like.
“Our lighting sucked, so we sort of drafted the Mynars’ lights. Us and the Mynars ran part of the race nip and tuck. The last time we passed them it was 4 in the morning,” he said.
“We did real good. They are all real athletes, I was arguing with one of them about going so hard the first day, so we’d have something left for the second day, but we did fine the second day. They made it fly. They’re the Belize national champs.”
Belizean Elvin Penner was at the finish line as a representative of Koop Sheet Metal, which sponsors the team in Belize and co-sponsored the Water Safari entry, a carbon fiber boat built by Bugge.
Penner said, “They won the Ruta Maya Belize River Challenge. It had 101 teams last year, same as this race this year. We won this race last year but got no credit because the Mynars didn’t race.
“Our next goal is to go to the Clinton Classic in New York or the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon in Michigan. We want to go to those races because that’s where the best racers in the world are,” Penner said.
Harvey Babb, assisted by son Allen, was working a ham radio in a motor home Sunday evening. He’s a member of Victoria Amateur Radio Club. He was constantly on the radio writing in times radioed in from various checkpoints up the river.
“I’ve been the communications director of the Safari for 15 years,” he said. “It’s a tough year. They’ve had a lot of people getting knocked out.”
Among the casualties were Bodwin Slaughter, 48, and her husband Wes, 63, of Eldorado, Ark., and Wes’ brother Ted, 59, of Porter. They’d come down to watch the end of a race they didn’t finish. Bodwin (she says it’s an old Welsh name) said, “We got out at Gonzales, at 183. We had some problems with the boat, and we all got hurt.”
One of the guys put in, “We didn’t train enough.”
“And,” she went on, “we didn’t train enough, Three out of four of our lighting systems failed and three out of three of our paddlers. We had a little bad luck and an equipment failure with the lights. The low water worked against us this year. Still, it’s not bad for a combined age of 150.”
“More like 200,” the commenter commented.
“Wes and I actually met on this race. I was Ted’s team captain nine years ago and met Wes then. Ted’s done it 23 years and got 20 finishes,” she said.
“Wes and I compete together shooting pistols. One time I got knocked out of a match and a man there said to me, ‘There are just two kinds — those that have been knocked out and those that are gonna be.’
As of 4:45 p.m., Monday, six boats had completed the race. And a seventh was just coming in.
There will be an awards banquet at noon today for those who have finished by then. The cutoff point for an official finish is 100 hours after the 9 a.m. Saturday starting time, or Wednesday at 1 p.m.
–Pat Hathcock is a special correspondent for the Advocate. E-mail him at pathathcock@usa.net, or comment on this story at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Victoria Advocate, Texas
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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