While one mantastic musher has already sealed his fourth consecutive Iditarod victory, another far more unlikely sled dog jockey is still on his way to Nome, and Jimmy Buffett, along with the entire nation of Jamaica, is cheering him on.

No, you haven't seen this Disney movie before, but that doesn't mean Cuba Gooding Jr.'s agent hasn't already called about the possibility.

We first ran into the man behind this awesome story while walking among the throngs of heavily bundled sled dog fans at the Iditarod start, where we heard a boisterous "Ya mon, ya mon" echoing down the trail.

That was followed by a sharp-looking dog team and sled draped in the Jamaican flag, driven by Newton Marshall -- the first-ever Jamaican musher.

In the two weeks since then, Newton has faced 40-below-zero temperatures, crossed the tallest mountain range in North America, and is now racing up the coast of the frozen Bering Sea -- a place where hurricane force winds are common and wind chills of -90 degrees are not unheard of.

But where's the Jimmy Buffett connection in all this? Well, it's a long road from a small Jamaican coastal village to Alaska -- and it ain't cheap. Newton works for Chukka Caribbean Adventures as a guide for their tropical dog sled tour business. When owner Danny Melville struck on the idea that having his guide race in Alaska would be a good deal for the company, Newton's future as the first Jamaican to run the Iditarod was sealed.

Racing sled dogs is expensive, especially when you live in Jamaica and quarantine laws won't allow you to bring your dogs in and out for the races.

Luckily, the idea of a Jamaican dogsled team was just wacky enough to get offbeat musician, storyteller and restaurateur Jimmy Buffett on board to help finance the operation through his "Margaritaville" restaurant chain.

With financial backing from the far-cooler famous investor by the name of Buffett, Newton was off and running.

In 2006 he spent the winter training in Minnesota to get a handle on the cold weather skills he'd need just to survive the race. Then in 2008 and 2009 he hooked up with four-time Yukon Quest champion Hans Gatt to perfect those skills and run the 2009 Quest, where he finished 13th.

Next up was Iditarod, and there's no better man to coach you for the 1,100-mile race than the current Michael Jordan of mushing, Lance Mackey. Danny Melville contracted with Mackey to train and lease the dogs for Newton's 2010 Iditarod bid. So far it seems to have been a brilliant choice.

As this story goes live, Newton is zeroing in on Nome. He's doing it in fine style, too, running one of the largest dog teams still in the race. He's also turning in some of the fastest run times between checkpoints.

Both the number of dogs on his team and the speed he's running are signs that the Jamaican beach boy has come a long way from taking tourists for swims in the warm waters of the Caribbean -- he's truly become an Iditarod musher, and along the way he taught an entire nation to dream, uh, again.