nancypants wrote:Glad to be aboard - thanks for the welcome, Lisa.
Welcome to the team! A little know fact about TimbukTOO is that we were originally formed in 1984 as a beatboxing team anchored by a man known as Big Buff Love. Buff Love went on to form a popular rap group featured in the 1987 Warner Bros. film Disorderlies.
With the departure of Love, TibukTOO was a ship without a captain. They tried their hand at several competitive endeavors including traveling the country playing in tournaments based on the parlor game Boggle. As a last act of desperation, the team passed itself off as a cohesive family unit and made it on the set of Family Fued. While the episode never aired, the team did win $2,000 and a 32-foot catamaran.
TimbukTOO used the prize money to hire famed sailing instructor Joseph Hazelwood. Based out of Rockport, Texas, the team saw immediate success and was even featured on the cover of Sailing Today. Despite fielding a competitive team and gaining some positive exposure in the press, Timbuktoo was never able to secure the coporate sponsorships necessary to continue as a going concern.
The assets of Team TimbukTOO Sailing Ventures were sold at auction and the proceeds used to fund an athletic scholarship at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. While many team members had hoped to establish a collegiate sailing club at the school, the scholarship committee was able to draw national attention to the school’s annual Marathon Rowing Championship.
A minor federal investigation into accounting irregularities did force the scholarship committee to disband, but not before a love of rowing had taken hold of the group. Timbuktoo is today reborn as a virtual indoor rowing team.
