At exactly midnight on June 23, 2024, hundreds of extremely fit stand-up paddle boarders prepared to enter the water in the Bahamas and begin the intimidating task of paddling across the Atlantic back to Florida. Unfortunately, this year, the weather had other ideas, but everyone was ready and willing to paddle for the cause. And we'd like to share the important work they do.
The Crossing, as the event is named, is organized every year by the Piper's Angels Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up to support and improve the lives of families in the cystic fibrosis community. It does so by raising awareness of cystic fibrosis through education about the disease and its effects.
Travis Suit and his daughter Piper
The Piper's Angels Foundation was founded by Travis Suit after his daughter, Piper, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at age four. Travis' personal journey in learning to help Piper cope with her health difficulties led him to discover the healing power of the ocean. This led to a lifelong love affair with watersports, including stand-up paddling.
Ultimately, his creation of The Crossing was Travis' way to bring attention to and honor the fight being waged every day by CF sufferers, as well as a means to bring attention to CF and the families affected by it.
Liubov Terenteva
In 2024, a team including Pursuit Boats' very own Liubov Terenteva decided to participate in The Crossing for the very first time. Pursuit Boats proudly supported Liubov for this event.
In celebration of our new connection with Piper's Angels Foundation, we were excited to sit down and chat with members of their executive team, including Founder and Executive Director Travis Suit, Development Director Tatiana Tims, and Paul Smolchek, a Board Member and Senior Director of Business Development, to find out more about who they are and about the foundation's work, as well as to get the story behind The Crossing.
Travis (right) and Piper's Angles supporters
Travis' passion for people and relationships was the first thing that was clear to us. "My day-to-day responsibilities are really all about connecting with people," he revealed. "I always joke that the best thing that the Foundation could do is to lock me in a room with a phone and a list of people to call!"
"There's this great gift that comes with advocating for a rare disease, which is the fact that on one hand, you get to see the devastating pain caused by these kinds of diseases, but on the other hand you get to see the most profound, beautiful, triumphant spirit of humanity," he continued. "I believe that building the bridge between those two is my job; ensuring that the CF families we're fighting for, feel our support and feel like we are really in their corner. Cultivating that sense of community is the most important job in a non-profit. I just wish I had three of me so that I could communicate more!"
And though she's not a clone of him, Travis soon identified Tatiana as the perfect executive partner for the Foundation. "Tatiana is very outgoing and fun to be around; she can connect with anybody in a room. I was running out of bandwidth. Finding her meant that now there was, like, two of me. We could walk into a room together and cover 360 degrees of the people inside. It's paid off quite well," said Travis. "The basis for advocacy is communication and I think people underestimate just how much communication is actually required for us to be successful in our mission."
Tatiana got involved with the Foundation in early 2020. Her connection with CF came about as a result of a family member having been diagnosed with it. "My sister-in-law was diagnosed at six months old. I've been around them for over sixteen years now; I've seen the life she's lived and the toll that the disease has taken on her. She had a double lung transplant at 20 years old and then got cancer twice as a result. She had to undergo radiation treatment and chemotherapy. She's a completely different person now, but without those lungs, she wouldn't still be here."
Tatiana (left), and team celebrate the first day of incorporation for Piper's Angels.
Tatiana joined the organization in 2020 after first participating in The Crossing with her husband in a paddler team in 2019. As Development Director, Tatiana admits that she "wears many hats". "I began by volunteering on the social media side. Now we run a communications team; doing a lot of back-end work and delegating work to some independent contractors, as well as getting payments, producing the live stream, asking for referrals and connecting with people with CF. I am also involved in organizing The Crossing which is a year-long effort. And we're on phone calls a lot!"
To help the Foundation reach more people, Travis was emphatic that their followers reuse and share the Foundation's story far and wide. "We encourage everybody to use our story as their content creation; whether they're paddlers, volunteers, partners or sponsors. Use our storytelling for your benefit, we can't do it all, we can't handle the storyline all by ourselves. We love to see everybody else's side as well."
Paul Smolchek, meanwhile, is a board member at Piper's Angels Foundation and, coincidentally, also the owner of a Pursuit S 3480 Sports series center console. At 55 years old, he's a born-and-bred Floridian and the proud father of two.
Paul's connection with the Piper's Angels Foundation began in 2017 when he registered to participate in The Crossing for the first time. After attending the first committee meeting as a paddler, he immediately experienced a deep sense of belonging. "I've referred to it as a duck finding water for the first time; I found my tribe of people," Paul recalled. "There was this remarkable sense of welcome that Travis put into the room. In 2018 I began showing up to all the meetings and soon afterwards, Travis asked if I wanted to join the advisory board that serves at the behest of the Board of Directors. I enthusiastically agreed."
Soon afterward, Paul was invited to join the Board of Directors of which he would become president, serving from 2020 until December 2023 when he stepped down to allow new people with fresh ideas to replace him. "I had offered all that I could in terms of knowledge and headspace," he said. "But I can honestly say that the benefit to my own life as a result of my involvement with the Piper's Angels Foundation is huge. My life is unrecognizable now compared to where it was in 2017, both in terms of who I am as a person and in terms of my engagement level with people and my relationships with them."
Paul's boat, the 2006 Pursuit 3480 Center Console, has become a key part of his involvement with the Foundation.
He purchased it in 2016. "My daughter was with me and convinced me to drive around and try to look for boats for sale. We happened upon this one dealership which ended up not having anything we were looking for, but they had a customer who had just signed for a new boat and was looking to sell his current one. Within the first five minutes of talking to him, I turned to my daughter and said we're going to look at that boat. The moment I saw it, I knew we would be taking it home. It was one of the cleanest, most well-maintained, most solid boats I'd ever seen in my life. It was a blessing!"
In 2019, Paul repowered his boat with a pair of Yamaha 300s, an upgrade from the previous twin 250s. The old set of engines had certainly earned their retirement, however, with multiple trips around the Caribbean already under its keel. "It has been to the Dry Tortugas and back five times and to Cuba and back three times!" Paul revealed. "This boat was a hardcore fishing platform that had seen a lot of fish by the time I bought it. Its original name was The Bloody Gaff but it has since had several name changes in honor of the Piper's Angels Foundation and their events. From 2020-21 it was Piper 1, and then in 2019, we wrapped it with the Angel's Wings and some sponsor names. It's currently named Celsius One, which it received in 2021 after we signed Celsius, one of the Foundation's flagship sponsors."
Since owning his boat, Paul has made multiple long-distance trips too. "It's been back and forth to the Bahamas 21 times altogether. This will be Paul's sixth time doing The Crossing with his boat. In addition to those trips, in 2019 he did eleven supply runs taking relief aid to the Bahamas following the hurricane there.
The Crossing is the foundation's biggest fundraising event. "It's the most significant driver of fundraising activity for us; it's really the engine, the heartbeat, the soul," said Travis. It's a project so full of passion that participants eagerly return year after year. "We always say, 'Come for the challenge, stay for the cause'", Tatiana explained. "Many people come because of the cause that we represent, because it has impacted them in some way, but I'd wager that 75% of the participants don't have any connection to CF initially. However, they stay around for the family that we have built here," she added.
The Crossing is funded through fundraising efforts by the individual participants. Each participant is required to raise a minimum amount of money to participate in the event. Those individual fundraising efforts have themselves created a whole attraction and a whole community. "They're doing golf tournaments, yoga events and so much more," said Tatiana. "The activities span the US and even the world. It's become a huge community-building activity and has made The Crossing a real destination event!"
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For the athletes participating in it, The Crossing is no small feat. It's hours and hours of paddling across the Atlantic, most of it far from the sight of land. Participants must confront their own fears, vulnerabilities and capacity to complete the physical task ahead. According to Travis, the enormity of the challenge is what makes The Crossing and its participants so special. "Seeing so many people step into courage is what makes this event so beautiful. It's a defining characteristic of The Crossing. Everyone who participates has a certain level of courage and daring that it takes to go out and do this."
In closing, Tatiana highlighted the importance of courage in advocacy for the Cystic Fibrosis community. "Courage is the starting line for advocacy and participating in this event or one like it is the springboard for becoming an advocate for something that you may not have had any knowledge of before. Therefore, we pride ourselves on being not only a world-class endurance event but also something that brings people's passion back into their lives."
If you would like to become an advocate for Cystic fibrosis and assist with raising awareness of this devastating disease, the team at Piper's Angels Foundation would love to chat with you. Contact them on their website or on their social media platforms where they are very active with regular posting.
Alternatively, if you would like to participate in The Crossing, you can find more information about the next event and view photos of past events at its dedicated website here.