The Race to Alaska

Riddle me this, sailor: What do you get when there’s a gale warning out of the west and a 13-year-ebb tide rushing out of the east? If you answered “a bad time” or “a washing machine,” you are correct. Such were the conditions on day 1 of the Race to Alaska (R2AK) that our half-Australian, half-American race team, Vegemite Vigilantes, faced on the start line. The new R2AK tattoos were still bloody on the arms of my fellow crewmates Scott Wallingford, Andrew (Andy) de Bruin, and Trevor (Zam) Bevan. As per R2AK tradition, the fresh ink was from a pop-up tattoo parlor that offers race participants free R2AK tats. My teammates’ ink sent a strong message: We’re getting to Alaska, hell or high water. Around 30% of racers do not make the finish line in a typical year, but we were not going to be among them.

The R2AK is a 750-mile engineless adventure race from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. Sail- and human-power provide the propulsion, with platforms ranging from ultra-fast racing trimarans to stand up paddleboards. We, seeking a respectable podium finish, were aboard Scott’s new Corsair 760 trimaran, Toast. The Corsair 760 evolved from the popular Corsair Dash 750. With longer, more buoyant, wave-piercing amas, the design incoporates the company’s proprietary folding system to make it trailerable. Accommodations would be modest for our crew of four with limited standing headroom and supplies taking up most of the V-berth.

A mere 24 feet 3 inches on the waterline, Toast would need to punch above her weight to win, since multiple teams were racing trimarans and monohulls a full 10 feet longer than her. With the help of friends at Seattle-based Rudnick Manufacturing in Ballard, we created a custom twin pedaling drive that could eek out around 2.5 knots in ideal conditions. We’d depend upon the drives whenever the wind died and prayed they’d withstand the racing life.

The R2AK is split into two legs, the first a 40-mile proving ground from Port Townsend to Victoria, British Columbia. Leg 2 is the meat and potatoes of the event, stretching 710 miles from Victoria to the finish line. While R2AK 2022 was the sixth iteration of the race, it was the first to remove one of two mandatory waypoints on the route—Seymour Narrows. The waypoint removal gave race teams a fateful choice: the traditional route inside up the east side of Vancouver Island from Victoria, or outside up the west side in open waters.

A Rude Awakening

The start was calm in the way a concert hall quiets before a conductor takes the stage, but swap the anxious musicians shuffling sheet music with sailors fiddling with rigging. Fueled by instant coffee and English Breakfast tea with a splash of milk for our Australian crew, we hopped on our twin pedal drives and were away from the marina to the start line. Hundreds of fans watched under the twilight from the pier, a healing sight after the two-year pandemic hiatus.

At the starting signal, the traditionally played Russian orchestral music was replaced with the Ukrainian national anthem for, you know, obvious reasons. Cheers. High fives. We were on our way. As we pedaled onward to Point Wilson, the wind came up, and soon we were sailing. I moved forward like good crew, as weight management helps with performance, especially on this size multihull. The sound of crashing water reached my ears. A wall of standing waves stood at the Strait of Juan de Fuca entrance.

“Hold on!” Zam warned from the tiller.

“Aw, %#@&!” we all said in our own ways. We buried the nose. Next wave? Buried it again. The wind began a-howling. Unfortunately for all souls of the R2AK fleet, what had been dire forecasts appeared to be accurate.

There’s a lot to love about trimarans, but how they handle when beating into winds and heavy seas isn’t included. They tend to ride fast down the crest and slam into the trough. Part of my education through the 2022 race included nuggets of wisdom from Andy and Zam, like how good driving minimizes this a bit, and adding a reef in the main can add lift, thereby paradoxically increasing speed. We did all these things and still clawed our way out of there. Later Zam said that if we took another wave like that in the wrong way, we would’ve gone over.

Others weren’t as lucky.

“What’s that?” Scott motioned to one of the fleet on the edge of the standing waves. “It’s Narwhal!”

We clustered around the VHF. Team Narwhal—a crew of four aboard a Farrier 32—had been dismasted and the crew was being rescued. Our friend and two-time R2AK finisher Li Sung was aboard. The crippled Narwhal floundered as we battled our way north and west, leaving them behind and trusting the SAR system. In any other circumstance, I would never leave a comrade like Li behind in a situation like that. Neither would I be out here in these conditions. But this is what racing is; rushing madly to an arbitrary finish line, normal rationales be damned.

We made it to Victoria, but the day was a humbling reminder of what we’d signed up for. Not everyone was going to make it to the finish line. We’d need to bring our best to the 710-mile leg to Alaska in a few days.

Vegemite Vigilantes on Toast

Team Vegemite Vigilantes and Toast were years in the works. Andy and Zam, both Australian yacht industry professionals usually based out of Vietnam, were long-acquainted racers. Toast’s owner, Scott, is a yacht broker based out of Seattle who met the two in South East Asia through business travels. Upon invitation, Scott spontaneously dropped everything to join them in Thailand for the Phuket King’s Cup regatta. Wouldn’t you know it, they emerged victorious and became proper pals. Scott even has a tattoo to prove it.

When R2AK came up in conversation, Andy and Zam fessed up to being diehard fans of the race since its first iteration in 2015. Stories from Scott’s successful R2AK 2018 finish with Team Wright Yachts must’ve come up. An organic team-up sprouted, and Scott moved forward with his plan to buy a Corsair 760. The regatta-winning Andy and Zam combo would crew/captain a R2AK attempt on Scott’s new boat. The trio patiently advanced chess pieces and planned through the two-year pandemic hiatus of the race to pounce on their 2022 opportunity.

I was one of the crew during Scott’s R2AK 2018 run on Team Wright Yachts and was brought on late in the process for 2022. One lesson he and I learned is that while three people can get the job done, more crew makes life (and sleep) a lot better. Naturally, Scott buttered me up with a few brews at one of our favorite drinking holes. I was an enthusiastic yes.

In addition to being a useful and upbeat junior crew member, my role was to prepare our food rations. I took it upon myself to recertify my emergency medical response credentials, opting to take a NOLS Wilderness First Responder course before the race. Between doing the R2AK in 2018 and my half-dozen or so transits up and down the Inside Passage on gigs ranging from being a commercial tugboat seaman to a luxury charter motoryacht deckhand/guide, something akin to a local knowledge bank was beginning to form. I just hoped to be helpful as I scurried around pre-race.

But we’d be nothing without our faithful steed, Toast, the new Corsair 760. Built in Hoh Chi Minh City, Vietnam, by Corsair Marine International, Toast was delivered to Seattle in the spring of 2022 with a few months to spare. While Toast is the standard Corsair 760 model, there are 760 Sport and 760R (R is for race) models. Toast featured an accommodating interior complete with companionway pop-up but also had the rotating mast option and black racing sails. Scott had essentially made a race-minded cruiser out of the base 760 build. As the crew who would be racing and sleeping on this thing for days on end, I appreciated the approach. Naturally, the new factory cushions were left at home.

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Ketchican or Bust

We made the most of our time in Victoria before the start of the second leg, the long haul northward to Alaska. If we were first, $10,000 nailed to a tree would be ours. Second, a set of branded steak knives. Third? A bucket of nothing proudly presented by the race organizers of the Northwest Maritime Center nonprofit.

We Vegemite Vigilantes gathered on the steps above the Victoria Harbor Marina in front of the Empress Hotel with the other teams. This would be the last time the racers would be in one place like this. The ordeal ahead would separate and cull our ranks. Like a war chieftain from “Braveheart” giving a high school commencement speech, Daniel Evans—the race boss of R2AK—took center stage.

“I want to thank every one of you here on these steps! I want to thank you for coming out with the courage and the passion and the love and the challenge in your heart!” He bellowed to the assembled racers, a ragtag assembly of sunburned faces and nervous yachties, dirtbag pirates, and out-of-their-depth dreamers. “You’re doing something that most people in the world couldn’t even comprehend. What you get to do has never been done before, because each and every one of us creates a story [that’s] unique!”

Cheers from the crowd as he finished with, “This is the best part of our humanity, when we get to come together and celebrate for each other. And we get to race to Alaska.”

The starting horn sounded, and the lot of us half-ran down the stone steps, across the wooden planks, and onto our boats. I cranked up on the port pedal drive, and we were off with the fleet, the human-powered contraptions giving us all a cartoonish Richard Scary Busytown aesthetic. We hoisted sail once it was legal for us to do so outside the harbor. Next stop, Ketchikan.

The Strait of Georgia Log Massacre

Day one was a sunny, low-wind cruise through the Gulf Islands and into the open Strait of Georgia. Think sunglasses and blasting “Starman” by David Bowie while pedaling with a limp spinnaker up. The islands we ducked past were covered in green conifers and golden grassy fields. These low-lying islands would give way to steep rocky cliffs and snowcapped mountain peaks the more northward we traveled. I was treated to genuine Vegemite on toast for a snack. (Pro tip: Spread the Vegemite on the toast conservatively with butter.) Anything positive that I’d henceforth achieve would be attributed to the power of the B vitamins in Vegemite.

The reprieve in conditions was not to last. As we sailed into the wide-open Strait of Georgia at sundown, the winds picked up. The sun rose on gale conditions on the nose not unlike the slog from Port Townsend to Victoria. We charged headlong into the soup with white knuckles, tacking past coastal towns and forests alike. A dangerous surprise awaited us in the form of logs. Not just one or two mind you, but dozens, if not hundreds, of boat-killer-class trees. Many of them lurked like hungry crocodiles just below the frothing, angry green seas. Toast narrowly dodged a dozen race-enders at the last second. We checked in on the other teams via the GPS race tracker, aghast.

“Pocket Rockanauts flipped!” Scott reported. The team of three aboard their wicked fast Gougeon 32 catamaran was out of the race.

“Pestou is out!” he declared. The Corsair Mark II trimaran was an admirable solo effort by Eric Pesty who led us by a few miles. Gonzo.

“Pturbodactyl hit a log and they are out!” Pturbodactyl was a Canadian team of four aboard a Corsair F31R. I was pretty sure they were going to place higher than us. Now that they were gone, I felt less relief than fear.

The bombshell dropped. “Malolo! Freakin’ Malolo took serious log damage. They might be out too.” Team Malolo was a favorite to win the whole thing, a team of four on a custom, Kiwi-built, 34-foot trimaran and R2AK second-place-winning veterans. They’d limp into Comox and declare defeat.

Ruf Duck—a Farrier F9R trimaran owned by friend Jeff Oaklief—hit a log. While they managed to recover and get sailing again, they’d bow out of the race a few days later. The carnage wiped out more teams.

I remember that day, Friday, June 17, 2022, as the Strait of Georgia Log Massacre. Pturbodactyl and Pestou were within a few nautical miles of us when they experienced their race-ending log strikes. How’d we get out in one piece? The gods behave in mysterious ways. We didn’t have much of a choice but to beat to windward and dodge logs.

North With Buddha

With the massacre behind us, we settled into something of a rhythm. Generally, two of us were on deck while the other two took four- or six-hour rests. We managed a front-of-the-pack Seymour Narrows transit to keep us competitive. Seymour Narrows is a bottleneck of the waterway that experiences regular 10- or even 15-knot tide swings. I’ve heard it said that even migrating whales need to wait for the tide to pass. Timing your transit correctly is key to a strong R2AK run, and we did a good job. We had another round of Vegemite on toast to celebrate.

The narrows were blanketed and overcast when we transited, turning the normally green water gray. I felt like we were passing through the doorway to the real north. The mountains grew around us and donned white caps of snow as we tacked into the blustery westerlies whipping through the twisty Johnstone Strait. The wind would go from 10 knots to 30 knots to 0 knots within the same hour. Besides the never-ending mountains to either side, we were often accompanied by another race team falling behind or pulling ahead, or the odd commercial tugboat. Pacific white-sided dolphins played off our bow for an extended session, and I was grateful to be on deck.

Zam and I were on deck during a sunset shift, Andy and Scott shivering in their sleep down below. It smelled like a gym locker down there, especially because we hung our wet clothes where we could fit them. Zam and I wolfed down dehydrated chili mac meals. Lit cigarettes. Scanned for logs. And yes, laughed about our lot.

“Ye know, Nug,” said Zam. (My nickname had become Nugget somewhere along the way.) “It’s all about the vibe.” The dark bodies of storm systems surrounded us save a clean line west where angelic beams of light beckoned.

“There,” Zam said, his hand on the tiller. “The Buddha is showing us the way.” Wouldn’t you know it, but we followed that tack for 10s of nautical miles, finally emerging from nearshore shelter to set up a clean line to the finish. The chill in the air signaled a wind shift. Blessed be, it was favorably abeam for once. We took it, making a more than 120-nautical-mile tack across the last of the Hecate and Dixon Entrance. A rainbow stretched from the waters conquered behind us north to the Ketchikan pot of gold. The sun broke through and we flew with a perfect 10 to 15 knots.

I reflected on the battles fought. The baptism by fire of the leg to Victoria. The Strait of Georgia Log Massacre. The northward brawling of Johnstone and Queen Charlotte and Hecate. But in that moment, thanks to Zam’s Buddha Way, we were on the run of a lifetime to the finish line. The mountains grew even higher after crossing the Alaskan border. Feeding humpback whales and a pod of orcas welcomed us into Nichols Passage.

We finished fourth overall while blasting “Ride of the Valkyries”—first multihull and second boat via the inside route. Right behind us in fifth was Lost But Don’t Care, a team of three aboard a Corsair Sprint 750—the predecessor build of Toast. They nearly caught us in a low at the homestretch. “We were hoping to have Vegemite for breakfast,” one of their crew confessed to me over beers in Ketchikan.

There’s not even a bucket of nothing, which was presented to third-place team Fabulously Late, for fourth place in the R2AK. Nor are there basics like a guaranteed slip or available hotel rooms or unlocked public showers. But we had real Vegemite on toast. We had brews and laughter and a jam jar of Zam’s cigarette butts. We had the Buddha Way and a Valkyries finish. Zam was right, it’s all about the vibe.

Norris Comer is a writer and author based out of Seattle. His award-winning book Salmon in the Seine: Alaskan Memories of Life, Death, & Everything In-Between is available wherever books are sold. Follow along via his Substack newsletter, Norris Note.

May 2023