The marina began to leak signs of life around 4:00 a.m., mostly in the form of errant headlamp beams swinging across the dark and the low, desperate hiss of camp stoves trying to coax water and coffee grounds to a boil. Point Hudson was a dense packing of hulls that had no business sharing the same zip code – multihulls that looked like geometry class whiteboard exercises sitting next to monohulls that had seen better decades, all of them twitching in the pre-dawn light. By the time the fleet began unmooring to limp toward the starting line under oars, paddles, and pedal drives in various states of function, it was clear the giant tidal exchange everyone had been analyzing on paper was already hard at work on the water. Some crews spent their first real energy of the day simply trying to stay on the correct side of the line before the whole thing even began.
The 5:00 a.m. start window opened with the flat thud of a cannon, signaling the beginning of a thirty-minute period where sixty-nine teams attempted to look like they were in control of their destiny. The departure carried a dignified level of low-speed enthusiasm. Mostly, it looked like a lot of body labor conducted by people who were rapidly realizing their expensive tidal strategy software hadn’t accounted for how hard it is to row a sailboat. Team Triple Threat provided an early lesson in determination by getting swept so far down the beach in the wrong direction, that they resorted to a combination of pedaling, paddling, and eventually wading through the surf to drag their trimaran down the stones by hand, crossing the line with thirty seconds to spare.
Then everyone turned toward Victoria and encountered a forecast that had uncharacteristically chosen to tell the truth. It was flat, hot, and devoid of helpful breeze. The wind had clearly found better things to do elsewhere. Temperatures climbed high, turning the Salish Sea into a vast, glassy mirror that reflected a lot of sweating humans wondering why they hadn’t taken up a hobby that involved lawn chairs. For the first few hours, the morning ebb gave everyone the false impression that they were naturally gifted mariners making historic time. Then just around noon, the tide switched to the flood, and the water began reversing the day’s progress with the indifference of an escalator changing direction.
A fleet that had been collectively eyeing the Canadian shoreline found itself marching east, back towards the United States. The water didn’t make much of a fuss; it just decidedly took the boats and put them where it wanted them. Teams were carried past Trial Island, spit out beyond Discovery Island, and in a few notable instances, delivered entirely across Haro Strait. Teams Kostamo and Salmon Hat found themselves executing an unscheduled, passport-free tour of San Juan Island before spending the afternoon clawing back the miles they’d already paid for once. Roughly sixteen teams looked at the shore moving backward, decided dignity was an expensive luxury, and dropped anchor among the southern islands to wait for the planet to reset itself. There wasn’t much else to do.
The human-powered contingent, meanwhile, spent the day demonstrating the superiority of consistent misery over high-aspect sail area. Led by Team Let’s Wing It and Team Rainy in their sea kayaks, the paddlers treated the flat calm like a showcase of relentless forward progress. While the sailors were busy negotiating with sea deities, the paddlers just kept their shoulders moving. By the time the first sailing rigs wallowed into Victoria Harbor looking like they’d been through a light spin cycle, the paddlers had already finished, showered, and found real food.
As darkness came on, the latecomers were still out there solving the same basic math problem with paddles and pedals. Team Moana Mo’Problems spent a substantial portion of the afternoon evaluating Dungeness Spit from the wrong side after missing the gate, while Triple Threat extended their nautical education with a thorough inspection of the waters north of Protection Island before the evening ebb finally relented. By a loose tally of the tracking data, the fleet collectively covered somewhere around 2,000 miles over the course in around 18 hours – a significant percentage of it achieved sideways, backwards, or while arguing with a patch of kelp. The predictions were right, the moon moved a ton of water, and forty miles of flat calm managed to feel like an endurance test designed by a bureaucrat. It worked out in the end, which was highly suspicious, leaving everyone icing their legs and shoulders with a day of stories they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to make sound heroic.
Header Photo by Jim Meyers | Video by Taylor Bayly