SCAR Adventure Race

The SCAR is one of those great annual races, and it usually hot. I heard from Erik with Mojitos on Monday (Jeanette Ciesla, Dave Shuman, Erik Wise) - and was in and racing!

This race had some very challenging navigation, especially on the paddle. Most of the checkpoints along the paddle were down side channels - meaning we would have to pay very close attention to our navigation. I also have previous experience in the Wekiva river - meaning I know how many side channels and tricky navigation spots there are. Our strategy was to head upriver passing CP8 and CP7 (by the marina) - and hit all of the CP's on the way to CP1 and CP2 - which I was sure would be pretty challenging. The aerial shots of the area near CP1 and CP2 show that the intersection where the split is more of a T. When we reached the intersection I was a bit confused as I did not see a channel curving north after the jog east. We looked around and eventually realized that we simply had to bash through a little tree cover to get through. After that we had little trouble finding CP2 since it was visible from the main channel.

Knowing the location of CP2 made it really easy to find CP1 - since now i was sure of the location of the T intersection. On the way back we snagged CP7 and CP8.

The trick to this navigation was keeping meticulous track of your location along the river at all times. I made sure I viualized our boat as a little dot along the blue line of the river. I also called out left 90, right 180, etc... as I anticipated turns in the river so both boats (Erik and Dave in the other boat) could anticipate each turn.

We were the 2nd team off the water with Canyoneeros. We don't know who the first team was or if they got all the points. We had a few teams with us at CP1 and CP2, but did not see any of them around.

Here is the detailed track of the area around CP1 and CP2.

The trek was pretty straightforward and we finished in about 1hr. There was a little issue with overheating. It was nice of Greg to put ice in a nice central location - and we definitely appreciated it.

The next section was the bike/trek. The bike leg was challenging, though still hot. The real challenge came after we dropped the bikes at CP15. The section north of CP15 was a foot section (you could bring bikes, but with the vegetation - you would not have wanted to). The video shows some of the ineresting parts of this trek.

Here you can see my strategy on CP24. We aimed off to the north since we knew we could use the ditch (description was at end of ditch from Northeast). Then I headed south to the ditch and southwest to the end.CP25 we kept a solid direct bearing. We had dropped the bikes north of CP15 to avoid the thick palmettos, so the route away from CP25 headed northwest.

Results are at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2013-scar-ar