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The r2ak Is Getting Interesting-er

The 25 teams that remain in the fourth annual Race to Alaska are finally getting some wind. For the first three days after last Saturday’s high-noon start, the fleet sweltered under a blob of high pressure that, if nothing else, gave the human-only powered craft their, ahem, day in the sun — and left everyone else wishing they’d brought more sunblock.

Since then, the race has gone to the swift, the crewed, the sail-powered, and the single-hulled. And for the moment, it’s a guys-versus-gals bout. The lead boat at this writing is Team Wild Card, a Seattle based Santa Cruz 27 (recently bought off Craigslist), with four guys aboard. Duking it out for second and third are the Melges 32 First Federal’s Team Sail Like A Girl, an eight-girl crew out of Bainbridge Island, and Team Lagupus, a Canada-based Olson 30, with four male crew. Close on their heels is Team Ptarmigan, a Colorado-based F-28 trimaran with two guys and two gals crewing. As of this morning, the leaders had covered about ¾ of the racetrack and could start finishing by this weekend if they get breeze.

Team Sail Like A Girl, lookin’ good somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

© 2018 Katrina Zoë Norbom

Interestingly, in its four previous runnings, no monohull has ever won the r2ak. So it should be interesting.

Timing is everything on the r2ak — well, okay, not everything, but it’s especially important about a third of the way into the race when the fleet has to negotiate Seymour Narrows, a 3.1-mile-long, roughly half-mile wide bottleneck between Vancouver and Quadra Island, where the current runs faster than the hull speed of just about any production boat ever made. Here’s how it’s described on the race website:

"Seymour Narrows is a fabled tidal river that flows with 14 knots of authority. When the tide goes out, it’s the escalator to Johnstone Strait and the next level wilderness beyond. On the flood, Seymour is the bouncer that sends you to the back of the line, makes you hang out in Comox while everyone in front of you gets six hours farther ahead, everyone behind you gets six hours to catch up, and you get a chance to think about your choices. No fighting it; even the 20,000-horsepower engines that cruise ships wrap themselves around take a number and wait."

As in all three previous runnings of the r2ak, getting through the Narrows shuffled the fleet quite a bit. (The early leader, Russell Brown’s Gougeon 32 cat Team PT Watercraft, is currently running mid-pack, although he is still the front-running singlehander.) As of this writing, all but five teams have made it through the Narrows.

Bringing up last place is Team Dock Rat. Jim Edmark of Friday Harbor is solo-sailing his Canadian-built Haida 26. By all accounts, the Haida is a great little boat. But for reasons unclear, he did not equip the boat with rowing stations like every other sailboat in the race. When he runs out of wind, Jim puts his dinghy in the water and tows the boat.

We don’t normally favor one competitor over another in our race reports, but just this once, we’re going to wish an extra special "Fair Winds!" to Jim.

Correction: We originally said that Team Sail Like A Girl has six crew (they have eight). We also said that the Seymour Narrows are 3.1-miles wide — that’s the length of the Narrows; they’re about a half-mile wide. Thanks to reader Dana Dupar for pointing these errors out: "In my opinion, the r2ak race is awesome and I’m glad to see three mono’s in the lead ahead of the multies, although I was rooting for PT Watercraft as he is singlehanded," Dana wrote. "Some day a paddler will win, if the wind doesn’t blow. Latitude 38 rocks."

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