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Let’s start with the facts. Forty-four teams started with dreams of glory and sea spray, fears of the rugged places, and pedaling-induced injuries. Of those, 32 aimed for the whole enchilada: the 750-mile gut-punch to Ketchikan. And to start the thing off, the Proving Ground didn’t disappoint. A perfect blend of (almost) Coast Guard-free waters…
Upon the news of the final finish, a sad foghorn was heard somewhere north of Bella Bella as the Grim Sweeper gave up its chase. Yesterday, two incredible solo teams etched their names into the R2AK annals with finishes that exemplified tenacity. Ohad of Team Spirit of Nevetz, on his XCAT (which received its share…
The good folks of Bella Bella are advised to keep off the water as the Grim Sweeper passes through sometime this afternoon. Team Outtaspace arrived in Ketchikan last night at the precise hour of “We’re not tired; you’re tired.” The trio of Caleb (son), Carlin (mom), and Olin (other guy), hit the finish line with…
The Grim Sweeper will pass near Port Hardy around noon today. We hear it’s been blasting Norwegian Black Metal on its unholy sound system. Day 17 of R2AK 2024, and the race continues. Yesterday, Team Victory Oar Duff rowed their way into Ketchikan, grabbing the 22nd finishing spot with a time of 16 days, 10…
From the depths of the R2Archives, we present a Daily Update written in 2018, updated for modern times. (Hey, you’ve read Siddhartha a half dozen times, perhaps you may not have squeezed all the juice out of our written words.) — We’re keeping busy, thanks for asking. The following is an excerpt from a fictitious…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 16: Talking To Ourselves, a Wood Stove Finish
Grim Sweeper Update: By noon today (June 27), the nasty fumes of the GS will reach Comox. Yesterday in Ketchikan was the first 24-hour stretch with no racer arrivals since Team Malolo rolled into town. The lull sent everybody’s minds and tracker screens back down the course to check in on the five remaining teams:…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 15: Metal on Metal, Mid-channel Napping
Greetings, race viewers and tracker fans! Brianna, from Team Sail Like A Mother, here for a friendly Daily Update takeover. We thought you might like to see a snapshot of the finish line from a racer’s perspective. First, let’s set the scene: the home stretch. Racers have been crammed together aboard a small vessel for…
Ketchikan. The city where “done” lives isn’t just a place; it’s a whole freakin’ vibe. Equal parts Wild West and Disney Funland, it’s a town where summers are measured in numbers of tourists (1.5 million a year), pounds of salmon candied (a bunch), First Nation totem poles (over 80), and amount of rain—measured in feet…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 13: City of Fish and the Glory of 19th
R2AK and the Pacific Crest Trail are two grueling endurance events where ambition defies comfort, and participants trade soft beds for whatever flat surface they can find. Both start with a spark of inspiration, a mess of logistics, and the struggle to fit big dreams into small lives. Gear is bought, plans are shuffled, and…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 12: Sun-Squinting; Soloing an Oval
Halfway point, folks. The moment where some next level magic happens, or the gremlins in the gears start dancing. It’s at this point minds begin to wander back to the start in Port Townsend, even as their eyes stay glued to the Ketchikan finish line. Sitting somewhere in a dark corner, perhaps an old woodshed…
[record scratch] Here on Day 10, the sequitur-less stylings of the masked scrivener of R2AK must give way to my far less metaphorically-driven reportage. Notice a shift: less meandering BS, more facts. And maybe a couple hundred fewer words. —Race Boss [resume play] The happenings on day nine of this Alaska Race provide a punctuative…
Continue Reading Stage 2, day 10: Racing because of things; Dynamite Required.
Like the difference in the water between calms and storms, R2AK can be drastically different experiences—even in the same year, even in teams finishing close to one another. Day Eight’s finish line proved a study in stark contrasts. We can’t make this stuff up. The Kids. In the three hours between 06:00 and 09:00 local…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 9: The Kids, the Stench, and the Comfort
The finish line was active for roughly the last 36 hours between Team Stranger Danger’s Day 6 finish and the early morning finishes of the High School Armada. (They got in too late to make the press deadline, more on them tomorrow.) Working backward from time of arrival, here are the rest: Day 7, 22:43,…
Hey, you with the screen. Before you plunge brains deep into this latest update, think about this: this update and this race, are created by a team of Top Ramen and coffee-fueled humans who work long into the night to keep the racers safe and the story factory churning. There’s no paywall because we love…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 7: Cash, Knives, and Two Buckets of Nothing
The world of media coverage needs things simple. Life is complicated. Depending on how you tilt your head, today’s top story was both. After somewhere between five days and nine years of hard-fought effort, Team Malolo crossed the line and rang in their rightful place in the annals of R2AK. It would be easy to…
It’s a big day for the Santa’s elves in Race to Alaska’s High Command. In all likelihood, today is the day when the tidal wave of racer energy washes onto Ketchikan shores and the first teams cross the finish line, ring the bell, and flop exhausted into the warm embrace of the 49th’s first city.…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 5: Just Live in Liquid Suspense
Either this is the most wind-starved Race to Alaska in recent memory or we’re suffering from early onset whatever it’s called. Seriously though, it’s like the wind was cut off because we forgot to pay the bill. Not a great look for a race that bills itself as “the most hardcore, go if you dare,…
By all accounts Seymour Narrows is one of the few made guys in the R2AK mafia. There’s never been enough evidence to convict, but Seymour has a well earned reputation as a tidal maelstrom with a rap sheet a mile long that includes massive whirlpools that suck under humans and small boats alike. When all…
Not that we had a solid bid to begin with, but whatever chance there was for the Race to Alaska to be inducted into the Society of Normal Sailing Races may just have been destroyed during the course of Day 2. Our inside source said that given the heavy weather and safe resolution of the…
Continue Reading Stage 2, Day 2: The bikiest sailing race on the planet
If you were to have invented, patented, then produced a new geiger counter that measured the levels of nervous energy instead of radiation, then deploy that device on the docks in Victoria for the 24-hours between noon on Tuesday and noon on Wednesday at least two things would be true: You would have spent a…
Race to Alaska is a lot of things, but it’s at least a race. Yes to Alaska, but first prove you can get to Victoria. To get there, you need to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We’re public school graduates here at Race Command, but we all agree that in addition to being…
If you haven’t been, if you weren’t there, the Port Townsend start of the Race to Alaska is as magic a moment of early morning ridiculous as you could possibly imagine. 3 AM wake up? Ridiculous. The thousand-fan community lining the docks in predawn camaraderie? Ridiculous. The Unexpected Brass Band that shows up like clockwork…
Continue Reading Stage 1, Day 1: Start, Gales, and the Right Turn to Nowhere
Mic check, testing, one two, one two. (*Ahem*) Welcome to Race Day, you gender-non-specific and glorious bastards of the R2AK. Time to dust off the dopamine receptors, set your decoder rings to 11, and rise and frigging grind—it’s June and there’s a Ketchikan to catch. It’s been a while: 364 agonizing sleeps since the last…
Continue Reading Pre-Race Update: Ruckus? You Hardly Know Us.
Dear adventure artists, tracker hounds, dreamers of terrifying dreams, As you know, we, the cobblers’ children of Race to Alaska, pride ourselves on delivering an experience that’s as unpredictable as Johnstone Strait winds and makes failure but a tasty appetizer to triumph. With that spirit in mind, we’re announcing the next evolution of our beloved…
