FULL RACE- Port Townsend to Ketchikan
Team name: Team Skiff Foundation Jungle Kitty
Team captain: Benjamin Glass
Total crew: 8 (frigging 8!)
Race vessel: Carbon fiber Fox 44 sloop
Sponsor: Skiff Sailing Foundation (website here)
BIO: Team Jungle Kitty’s application roared across our desk with the most audacious cock sure enthusiasm we have ever seen- and the R2AK draws its share of sure cocks. Their bio was raucous and irreverent, esteemed and accomplished, and possessed a American sized bravado thinly moderated by healthy disregard for just about everything. They touted sailing speeds upwards of 30 knots in the same sentence they humble bragged about the epic inner thigh chafe earned from running a desert half marathon in daisy dukes. Their paperwork claimed bona fides as professional racers, professional mariners, licensed captains, rapscallions, and more bloody selfie pics than anything we’ve seen this side of a snuff film. Some parts didn’t even have words, just native art and plushy pics of women on bicycles.
What the hell is going on???
There were timeline infographics, fake interviews we never gave them, bad jokes – clearly they were gunning not just for the $10k but for one of the coveted billets on the writing staff here in R2AK’s Department of Propaganda. Other than general insecurity we can’t put our finger on the point source of our discomfort, but the folks on Team Jungle Kitty make us genuinely nervous- that quietly reach over and lock the door, shift your purse to the other side, stockpile gold, ammunition and canned goods, walk a little faster, grip your car keys like a punch knife and hum too loudly type of nervous. These folks just ain’t right, we think we like them…but we got two for flinching and then they took our lunch money. Oddly we kind of liked it, at least they were paying attention to us, that they wanted to dominate us so holistically was honestly kinda flattering? Let’s face it, these are definitely the cool kids and we are, well, bookish. We’ll take what we can get.
We could spend as many pages as the internet will give us breaking down their sailing svengali, but we’ll sum up Team Jungle Kitty by the number of R2AK records they already command just from their application:
- Biggest boat ever entered: 44? with 4? bowsprit
- Tallest rig: 65?
- Deepest keel: 11?
- Most sailing world championships claimed by a single team: 9
- Tallest bowman: 6? 6?
- Most expensive borrowed boat in the race: (this is a total guess on our part)
- Largest crew: at least 7
- Most claimed consecutive days without a shower: 42
Their boat is a custom racing sled, a one off carbon sloop built by Portland’s Schooner Creek and on loan from the Skiff Sailing Foundation, a non-profit that bankrolls the campaigns of America’s hot shit sailors… and also this team. Like all non-profits the Skiff Sailing Foundation have a fancy yacht (Wait, what?).
Big boat, big crew, big skill, mad experience, zero showers- Team Jungle Kitty, we welcome your intoxicating rapscallionry to the R2AK. (Please don’t hurt us.)