The docks in Ketchikan are quiet. The finish line bell is hanging moribund upon its post. The remaining beers are sitting around, warm by now because nobody has been down to check on the ice. Meanwhile, several thousand tracker enthusiasts are using industrial-strength Visine in a spray bottle to continue staring intensely at the four remaining dots moving north. Like they have been for three weeks.
The winning sailboats finished in a quarter of that time. Those canvas jockeys raced hard, slept little, then wrung themselves out. They’d ploughed through their GORP but barely touched their dehydrated beef stroganoff. There is a massive difference between a weeklong sprint and three weeks of waking up every morning to discover your body is still the equipment. There’s a dose of psychological violence when you know others have finished, celebrated, flown home, mowed their lawn, and resumed life while you are still out there eating damp space food in the rain.
Monday started at 5:30 AM when Team Notes pushed off from the north end of Grenville Channel. After a long stretch of traveling with Lillian, they had gone separate ways the day before. There’s no knowing from a tracker if that was a tactical choice or just the pivot solo racers sometimes make when they can smell the barn.
A couple of miles away and just slightly to the north, Team Apple Bottom Boy and Team Belly Full of Tea (Apple Full of Belly Tea Boy) left their spot in the Gibson Group and pointed themselves toward Telegraph Passage and the mouth of the Skeena River. The route probably offered some protection from the day’s gusty nasties – maybe just a way to get it to punch with a slightly smaller fist.
Lillian, suffering, started a bit later and chose differently, keeping to the west and ending the day on Porcher Island. Locals welcomed her in, and it was good timing, since the sky had begun one of BC’s favorite games: using rain to pretend the land is actually underwater.
Notes took some less-than-true local advice. Someone in Port Edward told him that the tidal rapids on the backside of Prince Rupert were “chill,” so Nathan went that way. Chill, much like reasonable, affordable, and just around the corner, is a word whose meaning depends on who’s doing the talking.
Apple Bottom Boy and Belly Full of Tea (Tea Full of Belly Apple Bottoms) got to Prince Rupert, and it looked like that might be the end of their day. Then Esther promptly left again after only a few hours. This time, alone. And just like that, for the first time since before Cape Caution, the four remaining racers were all traveling solo. That was the original idea, of course, but soloists moving at similar speeds tend to find each other out there – for safety, for sanity, and for another human brain that can remember the actual lyrics to the song that has been driving them crazy.
As of sunrise Tuesday, all four are within striking distance of Ketchikan. Lillian has the most work ahead of her – roughly 75 miles, which is coincidentally the exact distance the Grim Sweeper covers in a day.
With the deadline hunting right behind them, the time for resting up before each big push is done. Now it’s all push: through weather, through fatigue, and through the strange interface of the tracker, where an eight mile crossing looks like nothing from a couch and feels like the entire Old Testament from a paddleboard.
There is also the final prize left to claim. The Hecate Solo Star Award is a crowdsourced, one-time-only Sidebet that will go to the first woman solo finisher in Race to Alaska history. The prize is $2,000, plus a star named in her honor.
It is frankly ridiculous and a nasty trick of luck that Race to Alaska has gone this long without a woman completing the race solo, but such is life and here we are. Two women are still moving north under their own power, with two days left, four racers on the course, one Grim behind them, and one star still waiting for a name.
Header photo by Lynnette Oostmeyer