Photo by Heidi Baxter. Team Fun While Lost.
Final Finishers. Huzzah!
June 20 2021
On Day 13 of the inaugural WA360, two teams started the morning posted up on Lopez Island getting ready for the final push.
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. Some lessons are only truly learned through experience, and they have a way of sticking, which is exactly why, when we read their choice of alternative propulsion, half the WA360 staff immediately opened the betting pool for which teammate would first fling themselves from the boat, swim to shore and vanish, raving, into the wild deserts of Eastern Washington. See, we’ve tried that too.
The truth is, after the first human tried towing their vessel with a rowboat, Zeus immediately flew to Hades, plucked the boulder from Sisyphus’ hands and dropped him in a dingy in front of a 27’ engineless Bayliner Buccaneer 10 miles from shore. It’s that bad. Physicists, trying to determine how all the rowing effort actually resulted in negative force, gave up long ago, folding its improbable effects into some part of Planck’s theory of quantum absorption. Whatever. It just sucks. Alexander’s last-minute addition of oars to the San Juan 28 they sailed saved not only their sanity, but allowed them to finish the race in under 14 days, if at all.
On Friday, HFS’s final competition gave an incredible push: an alpine start for Andy of Team Fun While Lost, who departed Birch Bay just after the start of the day and headed into the San Juans participating in a macabre route of race and destination hot spots—Sucia Island, Doe Bay Resort, Spencer Spit—to finally land ashore at the south neck of Decatur Island just before the calendar flipped yet again, giving Health Forces Sail a run for the penultimate award. Instead, Andy got caught in a windless Mad Tea Party ride off Whidbey Island. His tracker pointed in every direction for at least an hour.
Andy was already dipping into an empty energy tank after rounding the Point Roberts buoy, so it’s easy to imagine the Andy Jacobs we met at the Finish Line is not the Andy Jacobs we bid fair winds to at the Start Line. Really, the only utterance was something about walking his boat a mile into the underrated Swinomish Slough. Do anything solo for nearly two weeks and it can break parts of you. Do WA360 for the same amount of time and you’re looking at transformation.
Yes, Saturday is a day of Final Finishers and a moment to reflect on what that means. People who are particular with words bridle at our aversion to the term ‘last.’ Constantly assailed with Little League gibes or confronted by sailors and parents at every street corner, ‘last’ is a reality and position to work up from. We’re not soft pedaling losing nor are we cushioning the apparent blow to the personal egos of racers who came in at the bottom of the tally sheet. The truth is we have no idea why racers are on the water. We watch teams go aground, run out of drinking water, witness their boat slowly rip apart, move at speeds that embarrass earthworms, and wonder why the hell they are still out there. We’d have better luck divining a teams’ motivation by shaking a Magic 8 Ball, and in the end we only know two things: Finish is a fact. Last is a guess.
So here’s to the two teams who have spent more time in this race than anyone who has ever lived. You closed this chapter to WA360 with heart, tenacity, and sacrifice. Huzzah!
WA360 will be taking a break tomorrow to refill our adrenal glands and eat something else besides coffee. Look out Tuesday for a brilliant, really incisive and panglorious race wrap-up, accompanied by the absolute best Day Done video ever created for WA360. Totally unique, riveting.