Sometimes, while watching tracker dots and tails spread across the map, there’s a moment where a team that has been making steady progress — let’s say 7 to 9 knots through open water, with reported five-foot seas and 20ish knots of wind — comes to a sudden dead stop, and then begins drifting exactly the way you’d expect a boat to move if it had, hypothetically, one less mast than it did a few minutes earlier.
Saturday afternoon, Northbound Nutters gave us this kind of shortness of breath. About 30 miles offshore in Hecate Strait, the race leaders came to a halt and began sliding slowly south. For those lamenting the 100+ miles separating the leaders from the rest of the pack, a non-zero amount of schadenfreude entered the atmosphere.
The universe wasn’t being that generous, however. The Nutters needed to drop their mainsail to repair a main halyard lock. Ho hum. About an hour later they were underway again, still quite comfortably in the lead, as finish-time betting pools moved from measurement in days to hours.
The Knife Fight that developed on Saturday got more interesting, though: Teams Wet Leg and Celerity, sometimes within loud-hailer distance, were joined by Team Pas si Vite on their Olson 30. These three teams are within about 20 miles of each other — close enough that some bad tacks or a long lunch could have a big impact on who gets the blades.
At the other end of the race, despite the growing list of DNFs elsewhere in the fleet, not a single human-powered team has called it quits.
Absolute kayaking monsters, Team Let’s Wing It and Team Rainy, roared through Seymour Narrows on Saturday afternoon and continue to put up mileage that would make most people reevaluate their relationship with physical exertion. Behind them, a whole cluster of human-powered teams is lining up for the next round with the tides. At the time of writing, Team Notes and Team Lillian Signed Up To Suffer were staged behind Maude Island awaiting the next favorable push through Seymour, while Teams Perseverance, Bangarang, Apple Bottom Boy, and The Bristol Bear were all within striking distance of the same gate.
If you’re wondering what it means when a team’s little boat icon on the tracker goes grey, we’ll tell you: they’re done. Finito. And three more teams have turned grey in the last day:
Team Hell ‘N Ready became the latest victim of pedal-drive disintegration and were last seen on the tracker heading the wrong way out of Nanaimo under tow. Dammit.
Later Saturday, Team Against Limits Sailing located a rock of the Nankivell Island chain while executing a lovely set of tracks on the north side of Queen Charlotte Strait. The resulting hole in the boat allowed the water, normally occupying space outside of the hull, to begin aggressively relocating itself inside. The mighty Canadian Coast Guard arrived on scene, and under tow the team made their way to Port Hardy. Special recognition goes to Team Vantucky, who heard the distress call, saw they were the closest vessel, and immediately turned around to render assistance. Bravo, mariners.
Also Saturday evening: another DNF. Team Makika Masala likewise pulled into Port Hardy after their mainsail track and mainsail experienced a difference of opinion regarding continued cooperation. Without a specialized counselor capable of repairing either the relationship or the hardware, the team ended their race.
Finally, a note on race coverage. As the fleet stretches thin toward the north, the volunteer boats that have been pounding their kidneys to pieces chasing these dots have to turn around and head south before their own bosses forget what they look like.
We’ve used up a substantial portion of our volunteers’ goodwill, which was always a critical component of our media strategy, so coverage will increasingly come directly from the racers themselves. Fortunately, they have phones, cameras, and increasingly sky-internet.
If you happen to have a fast boat, an excess of fuel, and a desire to see how much salt your upholstery can take, we’re still taking applications. Mostly because we haven’t thought of a second plan yet.
Header photo by Taylor Bayly | Video by Garret Weintrob