Race to Alaska: Victoria
The airhorn makes everybody jump. It’s two minutes to race start and we’re all ready to go, clustered in little knots at the top of the dock. Little conversations break out, but they’re just to while away the moments. One minute now.
The end of leg 1, into Victoria, was almost anticlimactic. The first two days had such rough seas that one trimaran even did a cartwheel in the waves. But when we wake at 1am to pull anchor outside of Sequim Bay, it’s flat calm.
I’m on paddle duty, two stand up paddles off the bow serve as all-hands backup to the propellor bikes on the sides. My paddle leaves bioluminescent trails in the water.
It’s somehow bright enough to see despite the hour and cloud cover. Someone is dancing in front of car headlights at a party still whooping on shore. But we’re focused. Today’s the day we cross the notorious Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria.
The wind picks up as we come out to Dungeness Spit, just as we had planned. We’re making our move in the wee hours so we can raise sails; wind will drop in the morning, and we’ll be back to manual power.
We are the only boat on the sea for hours, and it’s smooth sailing, good wind and no waves. Team Rite of Passage, the 16-year-old crew, shows up as pink dawn breaks. We’re halfway across, and we watch them deploy their pedals. Us, too. The main sail is luffing uselessly; we hitch the bike stations into place.
It’s a long, sunny pedal across the water. You can see Victoria’s white buildings from far offshore, but you can’t see the sideways current the tide pulls across the harbor mouth. Our GPS keeps reading our heading as due west as we pedal pointed due north- but we make two-knot progress and manage the crossing. Rite of Passage, more strategic about the current than us, slips in front of us at the harbor entrance.
The docks are a din of camaraderie: cheers as boats come in, banging repairs, sharing of tools and sailing stories. We end up docked by our friends on Goldfinch and Louistic Supersonic, and make new friends in the harbor: the kayakers, the rowers, big fast trimarans, monohulls like us.
We get about a day to repair, resupply, recover. We make a long trek to the marine supply store, and a short one to a place with fresh salads. A family friend kindly drives some of our crew around for groceries and ice.
A little re-stow, and it’s time. They want us off the docks 15 minutes before the start time.
Two, one- the airhorn blows, and we’re off, teams in a mess of good-natured running down the stairs, down the ramp. I cast off the bow line, shove from shore, jump onto the bow. I’m ready at my paddle shift, Rick already pedaling, port side pedal station coming online.
It’s wonderful to be surrounded by the mix of warcraft. The sun has come out and pedals are turning, oars rowing, paddles flashing through the water. Boats of all shapes and sizes cheer each other on as we all make our way out to the sea.
We have a checkpoint in Bella Bella, but we don’t have to stop. Past that, it’s the Ketchikan finish line — hopefully in a couple of weeks!
I’m off-shift for now, so I should be resting. As a five-person crew, we’ve built a shift schedule of four hours on, six off, continuous, staggered so there are always two people on. So we should be steady, northward, day and night. You can watch our progress at r2ak.com — look for team Rho Your Boat!
Previous: Race to Alaska: Gale Wait | Next: Race to Alaska: Strait of Georgia
(The links above are “friend links” and shouldn’t cost you views on Medium)
