Alright everyone it’s Monday! Week two! The racers that remain have been out there for NINE whole days—that’s a long time to survive on pure grit and energy bars! 52 teams have finished, two have won themselves some artisan-crafted, totally-custom, rather fetching bronze-and-leather wrestling belts, twelve 1180 Awards have been achieved, and 26 teams have bagged it for reasons many and varied.
As of this writing, we’ve got only 8 teams still out there—average boat length: 19 feet. The big boats with a lot of people on them have long since come ashore, had some pizza, gotten salt out of their ears, and slumbered away the long weekend. The folks that are still out there are doing this many-day, multi-hundred mile, pretty darn mentally and physically demanding race in really small boats, many of them, all alone.
Normally, as you know, in a Competitive Context like this—everyone’s out for themselves. It’s a RACE, after all. It’s about beating other people. Being better-faster-stronger-smarter. Eeking 0.2 more knots out of whatever conditions exist than the other guy can.
One of the great joys of WA360 (and for that matter also in R2AK—only 11 more months to go, race fans!) is that the competition, for so many teams, is against themselves and the waters of Puget Sound & Admiralty Inlet—not against each other. It’s anti-one-design, anti-PHRF, anti-yelling, anti-rules. There are so many different ways to approach this race that it’s impossible to compare them. You can (pretty much) come in any boat you want (as long as you can convince us you know what you’re in for); you can bring as many people and as many snacks and sleeping bags and nautical do-dads as you like—just no engines, please.
Now, during the second half of the race, once the ‘winners’ have won and all that hullaballoo is out of the way, it’s so fun to watch this anti-competitive competition unfold. Alert and detail-oriented members of Tracker Nation may have noted that yesterday’s first finishers were a neat trio, having joined up somewhere along the way and traveled the last couple days together as a group: Team Sporting Chance (1180 Award winner having completed SEVENTY48 just weeks ago—the first to complete all three races under human power only!*), Trash Tramp (she picks up trash while she paddles!), and Team 500 Paddles (another very-recent SEVENTY48 finisher!) hit the Northwest Maritime beach together and told us they wanted to share 39th place.
Team Manspeed (a father and son duo with R2AK dreams) joined up with Nothing to Sea Here (another delightful pair who list their core competencies as Suffering and Patience—sounds about right) in Point Roberts—they’re both on Hobie Tandem Islands—little boats that have proven themselves much tougher than originally intended. Turns out, after 300 miles, similar boats travel about the same speed. Now these new friends are scooting south in the hopes of finishing later today.
Teams Pandatrax and Trishkabob are related in real life (and come packing serious adventure resumés), and picked up Team Zunderdog (a delightful Englishman with multiple R2AK attempts under his belt) and Team 5.1428 (two Seattle dudes who also love making themselves miserable for fun on the weekends). Four kayaks, five people, all making their way through a fairly gnarly set of islands, currents, and wind conditions, not to mention midnight shove-offs to catch a favorable tide—together. Early this morning Race HQ got word that Zunderdog had rolled his boat near Deception Pass. That water is cold—low 50s. You lose manual dexterity quickly. Getting dunked out there alone—even in a dry suit—is a serious issue. But this squad stayed together—no thoughts of optimizing finish time or beating whoever else on the course—pulled over on the beach south of the Pass to regroup, and were tidied up and under way soon after.
All along the course, connections are being made both on the water and off. New communities are getting connected to the excitement of cheering folks on. In 6 months, we’ll all be talking more about the great stories and the honed skills and the new relationships than we will about epic finish times or tight tactics at the windward mark (which one is that anyway?). It’s so fun to have a community to share all this with!
– Katie Oman, Chief Operating Officer at Northwest Maritime
*Edit: Scott of Team Sporting Chance is actually the first solo finisher to receive the 1180 award, while Ken Deem & Dameon Colbry of Team Toad’s Wild Ride were the first human powered.
Fresh Footage
Video by Garret Weintrob, Header photo by Ryder Booth