Nineteen over the line, nineteen still out there redefining the word “speed,” and twenty-five who have traded Clif Bars for a warm room and are already telling the story the way it ought to have happened.
The latest addition to the ledger of unfinished business: Team Against All Oars—composed entirely of Dutch soloist Ron Straver—has officially called it a race. Traveling from the Netherlands to compete in R2AK is a logistical feat before the race even begins: finding a boat, assembling gear, and somehow explaining to friends back home that this is a vacation. If memory serves, Against All Oars is the first fully Dutch team to enter R2AK. Faced with the choice of grinding until the Grim Sweeper found him in some rocky, cell-service-free cul-de-sac or turning around on his own terms to enjoy a civilized cruise back to Victoria, he chose the latter. Well raced, Ron.
Meanwhile, R2AK has another winner. The Oaracle Blister Prize goes to Team Boogie Barge.
This finish is years in the making. Conceived and relentlessly iterated by Captain Blake Hansen, the Barge has spent season after season evolving through SEVENTY48 and WA360, where every year brought another tweak, rebuild, or refinement. Last year, it claimed top honors in THE MUSCLE GROUP at WA360. Just last month, it finished second overall in the 2026 SEVENTY48. Now, on its second attempt at Race to Alaska, the Boogie Barge has finally done it.
Until now, the $1000 Blister Prize has arrived as roughly eighteen pounds of lovingly polished Canadian loonies in a bag with dollar symbols sharpied onto it. This year, Team Oaracle (who puts up this prize) decided preparing for the slowest race of their lives in a canoe was a better use of time than polishing coins, so the prize instead arrives in crisp twenty-dollar bills.
A few days south, John and Chris are still grinding Team Chiliwilliwa north in an Angus RowCruiser. If they make the dock, they’ll be only the fourth boat of that design to finish this thing, and they’re pacing to be the second fastest ever, trailing only the guy whose name is on the blueprints. Good hustle. This puts them in line for the Small Craft Advisor / Turn Point Design 20 and Under Award, which comes with a grand and a set of titanium sporks—handy, because by the time you finish this race, you’ve often lost your mind and your cutlery.
The Grim Sweeper leaves Port Townsend tomorrow at noon, grinding north at seventy-five miles a day with the steady, unblinking focus of a bank foreclosure. According to the math and the schedule, it will reach the general patch of water Team Oaracle is occupying right now somewhere between July 3rd and 4th.
No, it doesn’t have a tracker aboard. Every electronic device placed on the vessel eventually succumbs to the peculiar misty fog that seems to surround it wherever it goes. We’ve stopped trying to explain it, and simply accepted that some things belong to older, darker laws of navigation.
Photos by: Taylor Bayly, Taylor Amble, Lynnette Oostmeyer, and Elleyna Thompson