December 11, 2001
By Susan McKenzie
Lambert Beach isn't normally so crowded at eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning: a few swimmers, a handful of joggers and, if the surf is good, a cadre of surfers are usually the sole occupants of the stretch of sand on Tortola's north coast.
This Tuesday morning, however, the beach was literally bursting with bodies, and the surf wasn't even up. Expedition BVI, the first adventure race in the British Virgin Islands, brought athletes and staff and media and even a Hummer to Lambert Beach to launch the race. Athletes and gear and kayaks and megaphones have brought this quiet beach to life.
It was a sunny start, and a rainy start. In what seems to be typical weather at this time of year, the sun was shining and the rain was falling most of the morning. But the rain was a mixed blessing, since it calmed what was supposed to be choppy surf. It will likely rain at least a few more times today, but the calm water off Lambert Beach should bode well for both the first kayak section and the initial coastaleering, a section where security and safety are pre-eminent. If the surf does get too rough, teams will be ordered to swim the section, fifty metres off shore.
The race began (in rain and shine) with a sprint down the beach to the put-in for the kayaks. Moments after a brief blessing offered by Pastor John Klein of the New Life Church (who hoped for fair weather and a good time), race director Don Mann began the countdown. The teams tore down the beach, leaving a trail of not-so-well fastened ropes and sunglasses and hats in their wake. Some teams ran out ahead, like the New York-based Morgan Stanley, but others, like the mainly-female Athena, whose members include champion paddler Jane Hall, covered the beach in a slower paced jog, confident in their ability to make up time in the water.
The first team to hit the water was King Oscar/AdventureTraining.com, the paddling powerhouse captained by Robyn Benincasa. Within fifteen minutes, all of the teams were in the water, creating a conga line of bright yellow kayaks that weaved among the team's yachts.
The first leg of today's course is an eight mile paddle along the northern shores of Tortola to Brewer's Bay, where they will be coastaleering, a combination of swimming and scrambling along the rocky coast. Swimming is the safer option, but scrambling is generally the quicker option.
The rest of today will be spent largely on or in the water, kayaking, swimming and coastaleering, but teams will also be doing some trekking on Jost van Dyke, and a rappel down its rocky cliffs before they finish today at Foxy's Bar in Great Harbour. Teams that do not make it to Checkpoint (CP) 2 by noon will be moved into a second race category called "Adventure." They will still race, but on an abbreviated version of the original race.
The race course itself has been designed so that teams change disciplines every six hours or so.
"I wanted to design a course I would enjoy as a racer," says Ian Adamson. "Almost every race has a painful, miserable and boring death march. Expedition BVI does not." (Though the trek on Jost van Dyke will be hot and difficult, at least it won't last a day and a half.)
"This really is a different sort of race," says Team Epinephrine's Paul Romero, who is an experienced adventure racer. "It's not quite an expedition, because we'll be stopping each day, but it's not a stages race either, because there is no time cut off each day. I think that's going to make it interesting for all of us."
