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Field Report photo: Team Pure and Wild by Thomas Hawthorne First things first: without the huge support from our Presenting Sponsor—Fisheries Supply—and Mustang Survival, First Fed, The Ketch, Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, Ketchikan Visitor Bureau, Baranof Fishing Excursion, Outpost Ag, British Columbia Ministry of Tourism, MapTiler, and Victoria Harbor Authority this race would be…
photo: Team Sockeye Voyages by Lynnette Oostmeyer The last of the “Small Boat Nation” came in yesterday, roughly two hours apart, and ended the same way they began, racing against blips and trading leads until the final moment. After 21 days of tacks, hundreds of miles of rowing, boat repairs, countless meals, and campsites, Fix…
Continue Reading Day 22: Frankenstein for everyone. Speed recalculated.
Field Report photo: Team Fix Oder Nix by Jim Meyers We bounced around the idea and can now avow, “We have never seen a match race for the final finisher like we are tracking at this moment.” Both Sockeye Voyages and Fix Oder Nix found the nitrous button by the bilge pump handle and are…
Continue Reading Day 21: Numerology, the risk of specificity, and turbo-charged leisure
Field Report photo: Team Sockeye Voyages by Rebecca Ross Fix Oder Nix and Sockeye Voyages. Two teams who know this race differently than any others. At 20 days they are the only ones left on the field, with the Grim Sweeper at Rennison Island by noon today. The best communication only gives up snippets, like…
Field Report | 24-Hour Fact Sheet photo: Team Oaracle by Lynnette Oostmeyer No Daily Update yesterday due to obvious reasons. Because of our shoddy work ethic, you may have missed the legends coming into Ketchikan. Janice and Ian of Team Oaracle (pausing a moment for genuflection) crossed the finish line on July 3rd to claim…
Field Report photo: Team Don’t Tell Mom by Rebecca Ross It may not be true, but yesterday was the hottest it has ever been in Ketchikan. At 7:03 AM AKDT, when Team Don’t Tell Mom pulled their final boat length of water to become the first human-powered finishers in 2022 and the first all-women rowing…
Continue Reading Day 17: Oars finally stop. Snow in Ketchikan.
Field Report photo: Team Don’t Tell Mom by Lynnette Oostmeyer CORRECTIONS: Before we get to the business of the day, let’s recenter. Calling the R2AK out on being factually inaccurate is worldwide the most predictable kind of “Duh.” Saying we got a fact wrong is like blaming gravity for going downhill, like calling out a…
Continue Reading Day 16: Human horsepower and the art of wrong
24-Hour Fact Sheet photo: Team Oaracle by Rebecca Ross Today, without a single finish in Ketchikan, we are down to six teams. James of Team Bangarang pulled into Bella Bella, unclenched his hands from his oars, turned his head from the water to the sky, and counted the days. Life has its fair share of…
Continue Reading Day 15: The Bella Bella off-ramp, mindfulness, and a guess we got right
Field Report photo: Team Seas the Day by Julian Laffin Seven teams are on the playfield as opposed to five in 2019 at the same juncture, and two teams found their way to done yesterday, in two different ways. Team Seas the Day (still not totally happy about puns for team names) sailed into Ketchikan…
Continue Reading Day 14: Falling titans, toes for math, and the Grim Sweeper
Field Report photo: Team Goldfinch by Rebecca Ross Nine teams are still hunting for the engineless version of the gas pedal, and one ticked off their last mile to Ketchikan yesterday. Caleb McDaniels and Sam Bonauto of Team Goldfinch picked up 13th place after a night anchored extremely close to Ketchikan—claims of adverse current abound,…
Continue Reading Day 13: Dinghy sailors smile ‘til it’s true
Field Report photo: Team Sockeye Voyages by Jim Meyers 42 years of combined therapy taught us everything to ensure a fulfilling life can be found on the internet. Like on this page—where the curative hand of our beloved bodhisattva Gwyneth Paltrow is obviously felt. However, amidst the mental salve of “Intuition can guide you in…
Continue Reading Day 12: Life by the drop; the other you and four-letter weather
24-hour Fact Sheet photo: Team Loustic SuperSonic by Lynnette Oostmeyer Let’s be clear: there are dumber ways to get to Alaska. For the few hundred words between here and whatever version of “R2AK, out” we see ourselves smug enough to use as our puffed-up sign-off, it’s more than likely that these keys and fingers are…
Continue Reading Day 11: Team Loustic, pronounced like glue stick
photo: Mustang Survival’s Team Rite of Passage by Michael Dougherty Update by the Race Boss Three teams made it to Ketchikan in the last 24(ish) hours at time of writing, starting with Mustang Survival’s Rite of Passage, Wraith 2AK, and ending with Rho Your Boat making a just-past-midnight landing looking a little too fresh for…
Continue Reading Day 10: Mustang Survival’s Team Rite of Passage: I’m not crying, you’re crying
Field Report | 24-hour Fact Sheet photo: Team Kootenay Pedalwheelers by Jim Meyers Update by the Race Boss Day 9 in Ketchikan—with mercury high-fiving the 70º mark—started seeing the R2AK reunion in full swing with ten teams now in, two of them late/early enough today to find themselves wrangled into the total. Mere miles from…
Continue Reading Day 9: Moon shots, time-traveling, and a human named Odin
Field Report photo: Team Zen Dog by Lynnette Oostmeyer Whether it takes four days or 24, Racing to Alaska is a feat done largely in isolation; self-contained human pods floating along at least miles but often horizons away from the closest team. Even when on the tracker they look like they’re right on top of…
Continue Reading Day 8: Fish and chips, steak knives, itchy bits
Field Report photo: Team Elsewhere by Thomas Hawthorne There are plenty of ways to Race to Alaska. Brute strength, brilliant tactics, and reveling in the full experience of the coastline are at least a few. If you take it on faith that Team Pure and Wild’s winning time is the extreme end of proficiency, the…
Continue Reading Day 7: STEAK KNIVES, Miller Lite engineering, R2AK media loses our GD minds
24-Hr Fact Sheet photo: Team Don’t Tell Mom by Rebecca Ross Update by Race Boss The bookies over at the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce are divvying up the cash stakes everyone laid on the off chance they would be the ones to precisely predict the arrival time of first place. The total winnings are undisclosed,…
Continue Reading Day 6: Bookies, prize fighting, and acid rap to eat with
Field Report | 24-Hr Fact Sheet photo: Team Pure and Wild by Thomas Hawthorne It’s been years since Ketchikan welcomed R2AK’s finishers to its shores, but by the early hour of Team Pure and Wild’s crossing of Dixon Entrance, you could tell that things were happening in welcomed and familiar ways. As their tracker blip…
Continue Reading Day 5: Pure and Wild for the win, secret weapons, breakfast lasagna
Field Report | 24-Hr Fact Sheet photo: Team Fashionably Late by Rebecca Ross Team Pure and Wild continues their downwind romp after passing Bella Bella in Day Three’s early morning hours. God and driftwood willing, it looks like they’ll mow down the miles and arrive in Ketchikan midday today. Since mileage-wise Bella Bella is effectively…
Continue Reading Day 4: Midterms, more departures, and monohulls look to sweep
Field Report photo: Teams Wraith 2AK and High Seas Drifters by Laura Bennett Before we get to the daily dose of R2AK’s blathering fever dream, we need to set the record straight: if you don’t know, we probably don’t either. To be clear: we are hustling. Up and down R2AK’s elongating geography, we’re hustling via…
Continue Reading Day 3: Big milestones, everyone finds their race, unknowing runs rampant
Video | 24-Hr Fact Sheet photo: Team Malolo by Rebecca Ross If BC’s timber industry cheerleaders are to be believed, British Columbia accounts for roughly 40% of Canada’s softwood lumber production. If racers, media boats, and the coastal BC community of pro mariners are to be believed, roughly 40% of that annual production is floating…
Field Report | 24-Hr Fact Sheet photo: Team Let’s Row Maybe? by Rebecca Ross While all of us here in R2AK’s Mobile Command will deny it and fight you if you press the point, even as we cringe at what might politely be called “Hippy Shit,” we’ll begrudgingly concede that there are moments in life…
Continue Reading Day 1: Casting off and our chakras begrudgingly do a yoga
Field Report photo: Mustang Survival’s Team Rite of Passage by Lynnette Oostmeyer To state something that sounds as stupid as it potentially is, water is different than land. Go ahead, smart-aleck away with all the versions of “No shit, Sherlock” that are running through your head right now. We earned it. Once you’ve got it…
Continue Reading Stage 1, Day 3: Water is different, the Great Canadian paddlewheel race
Field Report photo: Team Dark Star by Lynnette Oostmeyer If your day was anything like ours, the second day of the R2AK 2022 started with a 5 am call with the Coast Guard just to make sure things hadn’t gotten worse. TL;DR: They hadn’t. Talk to The Man, then peel back the eyelids with cup…
Continue Reading Stage 1, Day 2: Brunch fatigue, learning curves, and the citizens of Dungeness Spit
Field Report photo: Team Narwhal by Jim Meyers First, most important: everyone is ok. Us, you, 100% of this year’s racers, and the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard and R2AK support vessels that affected four rescues in the Race’s first four hours. Everyone is ok. Bruised egos, dashed dreams, but body…
Continue Reading 2022 Stage 1, Day 1: The fast, the smart, and the broken
We’re back. 829 days since the world was cancelled by the murder sneeze, R2AK Central is shaking off the cobwebs and getting back in the saddle for a long delayed year of engineless hard charging to Alaska. Thank god. Deep in R2AK’s command bunker we’re Rip Van Winkling our way out of forced hibernation. Our…
