Team members: Katy Stewart
Hometown: Savannah, GA, USA
Race vessel: Angus Row Cruiser
LOA: 18’6″
Human propulsion: Row
Connect: facebook, instagram
TL;DR: COVID, fork-based violence, *jazz hands*, sleeping in coffins, and Downton Abbey.
After two years of COVID, all the pressure cooker isolation has messed with everyone’s human-to-human baselines, waistlines, alcohol intake, and binge-watching tendencies. The early pandemic prediction of COVID causing more births and divorces turned out to be half right; birth rates were down. Divorces? More. Way more. For a while, nearly twice what it was in 2019.
There’s no data to back this up, but here at the R2AK’s understaffed and yet to be formed Couples Counseling Division we have a theory: the pandemic made us all more binge-watchy, more drinky, more “Please get out of this room so I don’t stab you in the neck with this fork. Either that or chew quieter. I’m going for a walk.” Even if the sins of coping were small, the peril was real and the stakes were high.
In the ever-expanding menu on how to screw up a relationship, there are greater sins than breaking the “We will watch this show together” oath. When you’re new and in love, it doesn’t seem important, never ascends to the altar offered nuptial promises. (Pro tip: the notion to get it in there retroactively is not a great opener for renewing vows.) It does rise up the list a bit when you’re deep in a pandemic and you’ve already watched the rest of the internet.
It’s not a problem for the bad shows, but for the good ones… What we all said was that we would only watch it together. We’d watch the new episodes when we had time together and DEFINITELY not watch them without each other. We made a promise. But then suddenly your watch history shows that SOMEBODY already blasted through the first four seasons that you’d been saving for “Couple time”.
Betrayal is betrayal. Downton Abbey moves fast, and we all only have so many last straws. (and Jesus, chew quieter.)
After a pandemic pour of chablis and gritted teeth “I” statements, you can try again. They aren’t going to rewatch the whole thing. The half-good move to salvage the situation is the annotated catch up: start in season five, with the offending party pausing the show every minute or two to recount the previous episodes’ nuances like a proactive, know-it-all Siri who can’t be trusted and definitely chews too loud. (Sorry, “I feel like you definitely chew too loud.”)
Long way round to this: unless you’ve also already watched the first four seasons of Team Razzle Dazzle, we’re going to need to move past the drama and get you caught up as we go because the backstories have backstories.
Start with the team’s sole crew member. Katy Stewart is as close to royalty as R2AK gets. Not like the queen or anything, probably closer to the Downton’s Earl of Grantham… or something. Katy has been in every R2AK but one and is the first person to cash in on our “Buy four, get one free” punchcard. In season one, she was Team Onism, trimaran with sister and a friend. Seasons two and three had sisters and husbands onboard. In season four, she rebooted as Team Razzle Dazzle; simultaneously embracing one of the most bizarre and flawed military strategies ever while making it impossible to not at least mentally do *jazz hands* every time you read the team name. Even you. Even now. Be honest.
*Jazz hands*
Less than 50% of the teams that sign up for this thing ever even make it to Ketchikan; Katy has done it 100% of her four attempts. Lady Grantham is no joke.
Even her boat has multiple backstories. Designed by the guy who first human-powered a trip around the globe by boat and bike, the Angus Rowcruiser was developed by and for human-scale voyaging, and in the R2AK pilot season became the first boat to find R2AK solo glory. The tiny rowing trimaran punches above its weight as a rowboat/sailboat/way to rid yourself of relatives for three weeks and 750 miles. It’s a rowboat, with a sailing rig, and a tiny cabin described by the designer as a “coffin,” where your remains in training would be happy to trade hypothermic exhaustion for claustrophobia.
This particular boat was built and destructively tested in 2019 by Team Perseverance, who is R2AK royalty in his own right with two seasons of spinoff episodes (you’ll need to watch those on your own, but inspiring!). Completed hours before the race, it ran the maelstrom that was Stage One, broke a centerboard, and went back to the drawing board. Doug is moving on to a production boat for 2022.
OK, we take it back. I don’t care if we have to sleep on the couch, this show is too good. You’re just going to have to go back and watch the old episodes. Chew as loud as you like, we’ll wait in the other room.
Welcome back to the R2AK, Team Razzle Dazzle (*jazz hands*). As no one says: fifth time’s a charm.