Over the weekend I shot the start of the 2010 Texas Water Safari.
It’s one of my favorite things to shoot all year because it’s very exciting and people come from all over the world to participate. What kind of people? Crazy people. They’ll all tell you so.
It’s a 260 mile canoe and kayak race that starts at Spring Lake (the headwaters of the San Marcos River), and goes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The finish line is in Sea Drift, TX. It typically takes about a day and a half for the first boat to finish, but the cut off time is on Wednesday. Just under 100 teams competed this year, slightly lower than usual.
This year was a little different because the race typically happens in early June, but this year it was rescheduled due to flooding on the Guadalupe River. (The San Marcos River feeds in to the Guadaulpe during the course of the race.) It turned out for the best, though, because the water remained high enough to have a fast race and the weather stayed cool enough to not make it miserable.
The people who do this race, at least most of them, train for months so they have a hope of finishing – not winning, just finishing. There are many different kinds of boats, one-man kayaks all the way up to six-man canoes. Since there aren’t any requirements as far as stopping for the night or an mandatory resting points, most teams paddle straight through. They do everything on their boat.
I put together this slide show of images and quotes from paddlers I met while covering the first part of the race.
And below (and at the top) are a couple of my favorite shots from the Safari.
