Credimus

About the Film

Two teachers from Platte Canyon High School in the mountain town of Bailey, Colorado form a boat building club with their students and construct a catamaran style canoe to race 70 miles in 48 hours in Washington State. For many of the students paddling in this race, this will be the first time they have seen the ocean…

As a part of their journey, they paired up with the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind to teach deaf and blind students how to build and race the boats in order to lift up the entire community of landlocked schools wanting to create boat building opportunities for their students.

How it all began

I first heard about Kip, Steve and the Platte Canyon High School Yacht Club from the Dirtbag Diaries podcast. I was inspired by their story and wanted to help bring it to life with a visual component so after 6 months of shooting in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Washington we have something to show their amazing accomplishments. Through the process of making this film, I realized it isn't about building a boat or doing a long paddle race, it's about the amazing community of people who help bring this experience to life. The lives of the kids will never be the same because of these teachers and I feel so honored to bring that to the big screen. There were countless moments where I was brought to tears by the kindness, generosity and humility of everybody that stepped in front of the camera and hope that the film gives others the chance to feel what I felt while becoming a part of this community.

Bailey, Colorado

The first time I met up with Kip, Steve and the Platte Canyon High School Yacht Club was at their school. Because of COVID restrictions, I wasn’t allowed to enter the building but it all worked out since they had planned to do some construction on the boat on the field out front of their school. This was the first of many trips from Boulder, Colorado to Bailey for me and the start of a pretty grand adventure.

When I first set off on making this documentary, I wanted it to be a small passion project to fill in some extra time I had in the spring. Since I’ve never made a documentary longer than 5 minutes I wanted to keep it to that length as I felt that short-form content was my specialty. I soon came to realize that this story and all of its characters, passion and traveling simply couldn’t be told in 5 minutes. So, I just committed. I went all in on making this my best project yet and my first 30+ minute film.

Salt Lake City

Believe it or not, a trip to Salt Lake City was the first time I ever met the kids from Bailey, Colorado. A week after meeting up with the Platte Canyon teachers to make sure that I was a decent enough human to follow them around for a while, I was on an 8-hour road trip out to visit the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind. Since the kids from Bailey, Colorado had already built a boat and raced in the Seventy48 race before they decided it would be nice to spread some of their passion and knowledge over to the deaf and blind students. It’s here that we met with Adam Billings, the wonderful teacher in charge of the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind’s yacht club, and learned all about their school and what they’re hoping to get out of the race.

Lake Powell

This was an amazing trip filled with a lot of fun memories for myself since I was slowly starting to meet all the kids involved in the yacht club and creating fun relationships and inside jokes with all of them. So, what did this spring break trip to Lake Powell look like? Well, it was a party. By the end of it all there were close to 100 people that took over this massive sandy beach to camp for five days. Between the students, parents, and siblings of the both yacht clubs (from Platte Canyon High School and the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind), there was a pretty solid group. It was here that the teams really got to dive into paddling for the first time. Every day they spent a few hours on the water and worked up to a longer 8 hour paddle day through the canals of Lake Powell on the fourth day. Friendships were made, backs and shoulders sunburnt and bellies full of tasty food prepared by the parents while the kids were out paddling.

Colorado Training Days

Since the Platte Canyon High School didn’t have the luxury of paddling in the ocean like many of the racers participating in the Seventy48 they were limited to Colorado’s manmade reservoirs. Most of their training took place at Chatfield Reservoir which is about an hour away from their school. Because of it’s distance and amount of time it took to load and unload the sections of boat to and from the storing dock there was only a limited number of paddling and training days over the semester. Still, it was important to get time in on the water so they went out and made it happen. Their first overnight paddle took place at Chatfield and after completing a few dozen circles around this lake in the dark, the sun arose and they called it after 40+ miles. In addition to training on the water, the group also had a fitness regiment laid out on a Google Docs form where they would check off when they were completing their workouts to hold their teammates accountable for getting stronger in preparation for the race. Because this was still a high school group, Kip and Steve included a book group element where the whole team read “Boys in the Boat” to get a feel for what life on the water, and a part of a crew, was all about.

Seventy48 - The Race

The vibe of the race was awesome. We all arrived a day earlier to prep the boat at the dock in Tacoma, Washington alongside the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind. The sun was out, spirits were high and it was evident we were all excited for what was going down tomorrow. When race day came around there was a fair bit of downtime beforehand since the race didn’t start until 7pm but when that starting horn went off the adventure really began. Although you get a sense of what the race entailed in the film, it was hard to capture truly how exciting the race was. At risk of spoiling the conclusion of the documentary, I guess I’ll just leave this here and let you watch the film to get a sense of really what it was like…