RACE TO ALASKA IS A PROJECT OF NORTHWEST MARITIME
For three weeks, Team Let’s Wing It and Team Rainy have existed for the civilized world as two boat-shaped clusters of pixels on a screen. Every morning emerging from another knot of islands, every evening dissolving back into some anonymous cove, and almost always within a pixel of each other. If you spent your days…
Team Old Farts arrived in Ketchikan on Friday in the Ketchikan way: under a heavy, unrelenting gray faucet, thoroughly soaked, with a small crowd of family and friends watching them skid into Thomas Basin. They had big smiles, an un-broken boat, and dragging near the rudder, a commercial crab pot buoy they’d picked up somewhere…
Yesterday we said Team Chiliwilliwa was about to finish, and then they did, which is a relief when you’ve committed to a prediction in public. By hitting the dock, they collected the 20’ and under Sidebet put up by Small Craft Advisor Magazine and Turn Point Design: $1,000 and a pair of custom tactical sporks.…
Every bell ringing in Ketchikan is now performed by people who have spent a full fortnight on the race course, and currently look (and aggressively smell) like it. Yesterday dragged four additional survivors across the line: First in was Sea Peas, the third and final Olson 25 to reach Racer Valhalla. Greg and Michelle stepped…
While HIGH COMMAND continues its important work – specifically, sitting in a lonely Ketchikan hotel room with a typewriter and fingers gently drumming the table while waiting for Sea Peas and Jackalope to appear – we’ve turned to what every serious sporting organization does in moments like these: statistics. Or at least things that have…
Well. Now the Boogie Barge is in Ketchikan. Yesterday’s update took a calculated gamble by announcing their arrival before they had technically done the arriving part. As it turns out, while that email was making its way through inboxes, Team Boogie Barge was still busy enduring what they would later describe as the HARDEST DAY…
Nineteen over the line, nineteen still out there redefining the word “speed,” and twenty-five who have traded Clif Bars for a warm room and are already telling the story the way it ought to have happened. The latest addition to the ledger of unfinished business: Team Against All Oars—composed entirely of Dutch soloist Ron Straver—has…
Yesterday we traded tracking dots for a brief reminder that this whole enterprise runs on the goodwill of people who think a race this poorly conceived ought to exist. Thanks to everyone who threw money at the bucket. Back to the boats. The last team we logged in Ketchikan was Outliers, which happened about fourteen…
Today’s Daily Update is available exclusively to paying subscribers. We’d like to thank all of our paying subscribers for making this coverage possible. Unfortunately, there are zero of you. Which means today’s update will necessarily be brief, skeletal, and missing its soul. Here we go: A boat did a thing. Another boat also did a…
Writing these updates gets weird around Day Nine. By the time you read this, we’re already wrong. Right now there are six finishers. By the time this lands in your inbox, Team Outliers has almost certainly tied up in Ketchikan, and another half dozen teams have booked hotel rooms. Congratulations to all of you, sent…
Team Celerity has claimed second place and the sharp stuff, crossing the finish line in Ketchikan at 8:48 AM on June 23 with an elapsed time of 6 days, 21 hours, and 48 minutes. The Canadian crew of five, led by Robert Quade, rewrote the Hobie 33 chapter of the R2AK record book—their time beat…
Continue Reading June 24: The Steak Knives Have Left the Building
Last night, Team Northbound Nutters won the 2026 Race to Alaska. Perhaps the least surprising thing to ever happen in R2AK: The big yellow trimaran was the boat to beat from the start, but that shouldn’t take anything away from the way they sailed. Captain Nige Oswald, Michael Holt, Gavin Brackett, and Rob Woelfel finished…
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…
A milestone quietly slipped astern on Saturday afternoon: every remaining team is now north of Dodd Narrows. Salish Seasters was the last to tick the box, passing through around 3 p.m. Saturday and officially moving the entire fleet into the next chapter of this particular bad idea. About fifteen teams are currently winding their way…
Racers spent the last 36 hours or so learning a very R2AK lesson: sunshine is not your friend. Sunshine is just wind wearing a nice outfit. Having parked itself for a few days like a retired uncle with nowhere better to go, the high-pressure system west of Vancouver Island did its job: a day and…
Continue Reading The Great Northern Ass-Kicking and Other Vacation Choices
Race to Alaska has entered its Things Falling Off Boats phase, which is either deeply concerning or a cherished tradition, depending on your relationship with marine hardware. Triple Threat’s rudder is now somewhere near Waldron Island. Without a rudder the boat doesn’t steer, and without steering you’re not racing to Alaska. They’ve DNF’d. Moana MoProblems…
It’s Game On: after a forced layover in Victoria between the Proving Ground and now, 65 teams remaining after crossing a relatively placid Juan de Fuca are officially in the fight. The start itself was a delightfully congested exit from Victoria Harbour. Bells ringing, spectators yelling, adorable miniature water taxis idling nearby. However, waiting outside…
For a race that spent months threatening to destroy boats and people, Race to Alaska 2026 has so far chosen a different method to its madness. The forecast for the full race continues to play coy, draping isobars lazily across the chart as if nothing dramatic could possibly happen. At HIGH NOON tomorrow, 210 humans…
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…
Race to Alaska started this morning under suspiciously cooperative skies. Warm. Calm. A formal sendoff from a plane overhead. The vessels slipping out of Port Townsend into water so flat it was almost an insult. This is the Proving Grounds. Victoria, BC in 36 hours or go home. The inside passage doesn’t care how nice…
