Team Oaracle

Team members: Janice Mason, Ian Graeme
Hometown: Victoria, BC, Canada
Race vessel: Sea Clipper (Clipper Canoe) 
LOA: 18′
Human propulsion: Paddle
Connect: facebook, instagram

R2AK has always maintained a complicated relationship with numbers. Mostly because numbers keep trying to impose order on a race built around hallucinations, tide rips, and eating cold tortillas in rain gear. Those folks are somewhere right now, quietly unravelling because nobody can say with confidence exactly how many times Ian Graeme and Janice Mason of Team Oaracle have done Race to Alaska. Such facts are lost to time.

Six? Eight? More?

At a certain point, the records dissolve into sea spray, bad handwriting, and stories told around propane heaters while somebody dries socks on a crab pot.

We do know this: they met doing R2AK, which instantly upgrades their relationship into a great modern love story featuring sleep deprivation, tendonitis, and hypothermia-adjacent decision making. Most start with dinner and a movie.

Over time, Team Oaracle has stopped feeling like a race team and now seems more like race folklore. New racers hear about them before they see them. Usually in the tone reserved for sea monsters or tax audits. “Oh yeah. Oaracle. They’re still out there.”

And they usually are. Ian alone has spent roughly 84 days on the Stage 2 race course. Janice isn’t far behind. That’s no longer racing so much as seasonal migration.

This year, they’re doing the race in an open canoe because, apparently, the previous versions were becoming too efficient. Sail, row, kayak—now it’s a Kevlar canoe with a spray deck, mid-60s bodies managing overuse injuries in real time, and Ian functioning as the rudder.

They’re not especially interested in conquering the course. They’re just picking back up their long conversation with it—through tide charts, buttery crackers, stubborn crossings, while everyone else looks onto their persistence fading into mythology.

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First things first, why Race to Alaska?
This is our favourite date. Since we are older than last time we thought that we would try a slower boat option.

What part of this race keeps you up at night?
All of it, but Juan de Fuca Strait triggers considerable anxiety!

Luck/Skill Ratio
40:60

Confidence Level
99.5%