At 7 p.m. Pacific time on June 4, the 14-person crew from the Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind will shove off to compete in the Seventy48, a boat race between Tacoma and Port Townsend, Washington which requires crews and boats to be in constant motion for 48 hours. All boats must be human powered, which means participants must pedal, paddle or row the 70-mile course. To prepare, the crew not only needed to practice, they needed to build a boat. The directors of USDB’s blind and deaf programs got approvals and funding, and enlisted help from students and staff at Platte Canyon High School in Colorado, which competed in the race in 2019. The boat builders and the paddlers learned to problem solve on the fly, to paddle in sync using metronome bracelets and in late March had their first practice on Lake Powell. Read how the project came together here, and wish them well on race day.
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