Locals team up in Texas Water Safari

Locals team up in Texas Water Safari Subhead TOGETHER AGAIN News Staff Wed, 06/19/2024 - 12:01 Image

• Andrew Condie and Brandon Stafford start their 2024 Texas Water Safari in San Marcos. They use bilge pumps in the canoe to remove the water. Approximately 50% of the competitors finish the grueling four-day race. (Photo by Kate Tart)
• Condie and Stafford pull ahead later in the race in their carbon fiber canoe. Their first canoe 15 years ago as a 2-man team was aluminum. (Photo by Ashley Landis)
• The Locals team (L-R) Brandon Stafford, Jay Condie, Joseph Bitterly, Selena Condie and Molly Pinion show off their hardware after the 2024 Texas Water Safari. Not pictured is Andrew Condie. (Contributed Photo)
• The Locals team at the finish line: (L-R) Molly Binion, Jay Conde, Selena Condie, Andrew Condie, Brandon Stafford, Heather Stafford and Joseph Bitterly. (Photo by Sandy Yonley)

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Virginia S. Gilstrap, reporter/ managing editor

Cuero natives Andrew Condie and Brandon Stafford competed in this year’s Texas Water Safari as a team called “The Locals,” finishing first in their class and 2nd overall with a time of 47:13.

The intense heat this year took its toll on all paddlers in the annual event billed as the “world’s toughest canoe race,” 260 miles from Aquarena Springs in San Marcos to the Guadalupe River to San Antonio Bay and ending in Seadrift. Finishing times were about 10 hours more than the fastest times of previous years.

It’s four days and four hours of boats powered only by human energy in “relentless, soul-sapping Texas heat,” according to the Safari website. “There is no prize money for the winners; just Texas- sized bragging rights for the finishers.”

Notice the word “finishers”? About 50% of the competitors do not finish. Something about the challenge of the race keeps paddlers coming back and new ones signing up.

The Locals came full circle this year after their first race as a team 15 years ago. Both were mentored as paddlers in 2009 by Stafford’s father, William “Polecat” Stafford. Both have competed in – and finished - the Safari each year since their first race. And both have longtime friends in the race community.

But for Condie, who has won the Texas Water Safari seven times – mostly as part of a 6-man team - this year’s race is also a return to his roots of a couple of guys in a boat.

Condie said when he was graduating from college in 2009, William “Polecat” Stafford, who had 15 Safari races under his belt, took him and Brandon on a canoe trip in Big Bend State Park down the Rio Grande River.

On that trip, paddling through the deep canyons, Polecat told stories of his Safari experiences that captured the imagination of his son and Condie. Brandon was training at that point for his first Safari race and Condie was part of his team that year. The following year Condie and Stafford raced together, finishing in 60 hours 10 minutes.

Condie said their first boat was a heavy, old aluminum canoe. With this year’s race the team had a carbon fiber, teflon canoe which is not as comfortable as their first one, but it is much faster.

Stafford said in the team’s first year competing they really didn’t know what they were doing. “We had great expectations of winning our class, but we didn’t know how to take care of ourselves.”

He said they didn’t know when to push and when to rest, what to eat and what to stay away from. “You have to learn to listen to your body,” Stafford said. “Those are the kinds of things you learn as you do the race.”

Stafford said this year starting out in February, the two would get together each weekend to train on the river.

“We got to spend a lot of time together,” Stafford said, “which was nice. We graduated together and he was the best man at my wedding, so to be able to experience that time together training was special.”

THE TEAM BEHIND THE TEAM “There’s a lot of sacrifice for the family too,” Stafford said, praising their team captains and his wife, Heather. “She’s a huge support. We are pretty much in Safari mode from April on.”

For the last nine years, Joseph Bitterly, a fellow Class of 2003 CHS graduate and Stafford’s brother- in-law, has been his team captain. Condie’s team captain for the last 12 years has been his father, Jay Condie. Andrew’s girlfriend, Molly Binion, and stepmother, Selena Condie, completed the team.

Stafford said the teams not only stay awake and support the paddlers during the race, but take care of the boats and gear afterwards, when the athletes are recovering.

The only persons authorized to hand anything to competitors are the team captains. Paddlers depend on their captains for nutrients and race information as well as decisions on continuing the race.

The race rules state that paddlers must compete only with the gear they start with. Team captains can only give water, ice, food and medical supplies. This year’s race saw an infraction of that rule when a competitor received a square paddle from her captain, according to the Water Safari website. After a complaint was lodged, the competitor had one hour added to her time.

Joseph Bitterly, who joked about the nostalgic feeling of “getting the band back together,” said this year’s checkpoints were “boring” because they never saw any other teams, which were four hours ahead and hours behind.

Condie, however, said the team behind them was a 4-man team and it was “tough to keep them off.” He said the team finished 45 minutes behind them.

In their first race together, Stafford said he and Condie would get down on themselves instead of staying positive, which they have learned only makes things worse.

“Those times happen every year,” he said.

Condie said the biggest challenge this year was the low water after the Gonzales Hydroelectric Plant. He said the plant was holding back water to fill their lake rather than releasing it, so there were places where the water was too low to paddle. He and Stafford had to get out and drag the canoe about 20 yards then jump back in. This happened about 20 times, he said.

Condie said they were lucky to only have two people jumping out and running because with four or six-man teams, inevitably, someone is slower or stumbles and it takes longer.

The heat index was 105, Condie said. “We prepared but no matter how much you train, you can’t go as hard or as fast in that heat.”

He said they were fortunate in the last part of the race, which is a stretch across the San Antonio Bay, that the water was calm.

“It was the easiest part this year,” Condie said. Last year, the bay was rough and he overturned several times in the last five miles. He said it’s common for competitors to make it that far and not finish on the open water. “You have to have a spray skirt in choppy water and the bilge pumps working.”

This year a spray skirt was not even necessary at the end, and they only had one bilge pump still working, so they were fortunate that the water was calm.

Finishing second overall and first in their class, the team has bonafid bragging rights for the shallow and extra hot 2024 Safari.

“We got some more nice trophies,” Bitterly said, “and that big wooden Texas plaque.”