Race to Alaska: Start
“Are there any weather parameters that would postpone the start?”
There is a beat in the skippers’ meeting before the Raceboss replies with a concise “No.”
One perk of puking up absolutely everything is that you can lay down to dry heave without making a mess.
That’s been an important perk for me today. It’s been rough weather, gale warning all day and probably the next few. 4am wake for an empty-stomach start was pretty rough.
The start line itself was lovely, calm and flat as all fifty boats lined up and crossed. 5am and yet somehow there was a cheering crowd, waving and yelling as the brass band played.
But then, just out of sight of the crowd, whitecaps. Big waves and wind, splashing over the deck, just at the corner of Fort Worden.
I’m up on the foredeck with Graham, watching tide rip waves meet and splash over our gear, over the tethers that clip us to the boat. “Good thing our families didn’t see this part,” I comment. “I don’t think they’d like it.”
The first stage, the “proving ground”, isn’t really a race. You have to make it to Victoria by 5pm Wednesday or you’re out of the race, but it doesn’t matter who gets there when. The game is to figure out where and when to cross- and what’s right for other boats and crew may not be what’s right for yours.
Our team, Rho Your Boat, has a firm sense of self: stubborn perseverance, but nothing risky. We’re of one mind, even since last night, that a crossing in a gale warning is not what we want to do. So the question is only: how far along the north edge of the peninsula will we go, to set ourselves up to cross in safer winds?
The Windy app shows the worst winds just between Port Townsend and Victoria, but not so bad if you go all the way to Port Angeles and up. So we’re heading in that direction to figure out where we feel safe and what feels like too much.
We’re tacking back and forth relatively tight to shore’s protection, chop by nauseating chop. It’s slow going, but I feel like we’ve got our heads straight with this.
Or, something there is that doesn’t love a wave, that wrings me out from the inside. So I’m not much more than company as I oscillate between horizontal and over the rail positions. I’m enjoying it, despite the opinions of my body, though, and I’m proud we haven’t been pulled by the thrill of the chase.
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