By Dean Burke
What happened next, no one could have ever imagined.
After a team called the “Platte Canyon Yacht Club,” a high school STEM class team from deep in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, successfully participated in the second SEVENTY48 (and changed the identity of their town and school doing so), their inspiration took root in perhaps the most unexpected place of all. In the high desert mountains of Utah. At another school. But this time, a school for the blind and deaf.
Sit with that for a minute if you need.
In case you missed it the first time, a school for blind and deaf kids put a large canoe in the water and paddled 70 miles. This was not some boat sponsored by the school to raise awareness. The boat actually had a whole slew of blind and deaf kids (and a few adult coaches to keep the boat moving, of course!).
Utah School of the Blind has competed in the event four times. One year, the team was moving through a moonlit night when a pair of humpbacks moving up the course passed them. One of the blind girls told me about the experience at the finish, about how she experienced a humpback whale through sound only. I imagine it’s a story she will tell for the rest of her life.
And I think that is true for all of those kids. Imagine that for a moment. A blind kid who becomes an adult and who has a story like this to share throughout their entire life. “I paddled from Tacoma to Port Townsend. 70 miles. Through the day and night. With whales and sea lions and eagles overhead. With helping hands, as a team, I did it. We did it.”
I had been sitting on the idea of the SEVENTY48 for several years. Its genesis was informed by the desire for what I might call “a working man’s epic.” Long before R2AK, there were other epic races of various mediums around the world that were aspirational, but in reality, unattainable.
I wasn’t ready to ditch my career or put my family or home at risk for the sake of my own desires. There is a level in adventure racing that simply requires a different lifestyle. Something durable enough to allow for such departures. I deeply admire those who have made it work. But I needed something a little more balanced.
And so the seed for the SEVENTY48 began to germinate.
Then, when R2AK came to be, I felt like there was an audience that could help bring SEVENTY48 to life. I shared the vision, a partnership was formed and a life-changing event was born.
I think that all of us behind the curtain of this event can agree, we had a pretty good idea of what the race might look like. It’s fairly predictable, the “who’s and what’s” of the race: seasoned paddlers and rowers, probably from a somewhat regional draw. And all of that was true. PNW water-people in a wide array of craft love the event.
But word spread in the most organic of ways. And as the years passed, the reach grew. The UK. Japan. Hawaii. Australia. Florida. Michigan. Texas, to name just a few of the places participants were coming from.
A friend of mine was on vacation in Hawaii and stopped to ask some lifeguards about renting a surfboard. The lifeguard asked where he was from and he said “Tacoma,” to which the lifeguard replied, “Oh man, that’s where the SEVENTY48 starts. I want to do that race so bad.”
Together, We do this.
