Hello friends! I’m not sure about your family’s traditions at this time of year. For me, it’s a time of connecting with family, avoiding fruitcake, then pouring a hot toddy and smiling nostalgically at the year we’ve just had. It’s been a great year here at Northwest Maritime, and rounding out my 13th year at
By Tracy Thompson, NWM Volunteer Coordinator Thank you! Northwest Maritime is able to achieve its mission to engage and educate people of all generations in traditional and contemporary maritime life, in a spirit of adventure and discovery, thanks not only to a dedicated and diverse staff, but also through the outstanding support of a fantastic
“…We all row as a part of Bravo Team, a part of Bravo Team, a part of Bravo Team. We all sail as a part of Bravo Team, a part of Bravo Team, a part of Bravo Team” ~sung to the tune of Yellow Submarine We are eight weeks into Team Longboat (formerly Bravo Team)
We’ve been saying it from the beginning: this race is the biggest adventure you can have in your own back yard—assuming you live in Washington State, that is. And so today we give you an update dedicated to the 360 miles of glorious #pnwonderland that make up this race course, in reverse order. Photos courtesy of our insanely talented media team, including Liv von Oelreich, Jeremy Johnson, Nick Reid, Sean Trew, and Heidi Baxter. Enjoy
We have finishers, non-finishers, and those still moving forward in this race. Thursday found some of each. Team Lost Cat decided the big wind predicted over the next few days was less fun than hitting up Jalapeños for a parrillada and mojito, signed his resignation and headed to B-ham. Teams Fun While Lost and Heath Forces Sail kept traveling
Day 9 of WA360! A day of no finishes—incomplete, undone—an absence of activity. It’s actually a lie of perspective, like a swan on the water, cool and calm up above with a frenzy of activity below. It’s a lazy eye that scans the blue-grey landscape of our tracker and only sees stationary boat symbols of bygone finishers scattered in the littoral of the race course. Even now, the Hammer brothers—and who doesn’t immediately love that name for a pair of rowers
Of the six teams in the field on Monday, two crossed the finish line, leaving four teams on the course—three sailboats and one pair of rowers. Team Time and Tide, are a pair of brothers from Petersburg, Alaska, rowing in a double-ended dory aptly named Pleasure and Peril. Jens claimed an innate ability to enter a “happy berserker” like trance, which we are guessing serves them both well as they push through the longest open water stretches of the race course.
While we were flipping through our old school Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition™ waiting for Team Fingers Crossed to short tack their way down the coast of Whidbey Island—because the only thing that takes more patience than sailing is waiting for a sailboat—we found ourselves reflecting on the immortal question, “How many dimples does an average golf ball have?”
At age 4, horses are just hitting their prime years, guinea pigs are entering the position of stately elder, but humans are still learning language, the right way to put on underwear, and how to draw faces that look less like exploding potatoes and more like depressurized soccer balls. EmmyLou of Fisheries Supply Team Unicorns with Pretty Horns,
In the last 36-ish hours of the race since Thursday morning, we have witnessed a few things: winners done won, sailors done sailed, and the top three teams of the human-powered navy grunted their way into history books as the first fastest teams to finish the WA360 on meat-power alone. Sometimes glorious, sometimes gross, but impressive nonetheless.