Writing these updates gets weird around Day Nine. By the time you read this, we’re already wrong.
Right now there are six finishers. By the time this lands in your inbox, Team Outliers has almost certainly tied up in Ketchikan, and another half dozen teams have booked hotel rooms. Congratulations to all of you, sent from yesterday.
Last night’s arrivals get their own replay. Much Ado About Muffin, Mistakes Were Made, and Minnesorta Nice all found Ketchikan. Minnesorta Nice arrived first… sort of. They sailed right past the entrance to Thomas Basin under kite while the entire finish line squad erupted into a coordinated navigation aid. As they turned around to have another go at it, Mistakes Were Made slipped into the basin ahead of them and stole fifth place by five minutes.
Dogsmile Adventures may be out of the race, but part of their pedal drive isn’t. After retiring yesterday, they cannibalized their own drive to help get Ship of Brothers back underway. Boats rarely get organ donors, but exceptions can be made. Dogsmile’s race is over, but helping another team keep moving north seems about as Dogsmile as it gets.
The next few days will have racers spending a little more quality time with their weather apps. Johnstone has some wind warnings going from Environment Canada (even though some models may or may not agree), but farther north is where things get spicy. A long, skinny front is forecast to shimmy through Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance this weekend, bringing 25 knots, gusts over 30, and enough sea state to remind everyone why the Inside Passage has an inside.
Team Oaracle has been running the same experiment for years: finding progressively slower ways to get to Alaska. This year’s canoe has them about a hundred miles behind where they usually are by now. A racer once described R2AK as “the dumbest thing you can do. It’s like bicycling through the Louvre.” Oaracle appears committed to spending a little more time in the museum.
Header photo by Taylor Bayly | Video by Ryder Booth