Ship's Log: WA360 Daily Update 2021

How do you neatly wrap up a race that involved one team walking their boat by the halyard towards Olympia, another crossing overland on wheels that worked better once the tires were ripped off, crew who left the course to work a few days then came back to finish, human-powered craft leading for three out of the four waypoints?

As of this writing, Team Health Forces Sail is likely burning their dingy, massaging their inboard with Kroil oil while pouring snifters of cognac to celebrate the first time their motor makes combustion in two weeks. Paul and Alexander Brogger make up this duo and were the only team in WA360 to declare the dingy as their alternative propulsion to sail. Hence, the well considered fire.

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. 

Thursday was a turnstile of finishes sealing the question of prize winners in both Go Fast and Go Hard classes, and bringing a raft of hangry competitors riding high-octane boats with their versions of lift kits, custom headers, and oversized exhaust systems. Ruining the lead pack pedigree were rides from a past racing era, saddled with racers that refused to believe they shouldn’t be this fast. (Ahem…Team Fressure).