Race to Alaska: Whoops

We spent most of Day 1 taking tight tacks westward, hugging the shelter of shore. But after trying and turning back from Dungeness Spit, we decided to turn back and anchor outside of Sequim Bay.

The bay has a somewhat notorious entrance: a tight channel of safe passage with marked but underwater shoals, particularly tricky with tidal currents and today’s gale-force wind.

I’ve been seasick all day, so the shelter of smooth water and maybe even a dock sounds like a haven. But we’re not sure if we can generate enough forward thrust with our pedal stations to steer the twisty passage when the current is running.

We decide to anchor up just outside. It’s relatively protected, and we’ve heard other boats on the radio having trouble getting into the bay.

We’re pretty pleased with ourselves — anchor is holding us steady, I’m making mac and cheese — when a call comes in over the radio.

Race to Alaska is an unsupported race: you can’t have a ground crew, a second boat, a preplanned meetup with a friend to resupply you. But on this first leg of the race, there are people out making sure everybody is okay.

We get one of those calls. They’ve seen us on the tracker and are worried about us. Winds are high out on the point, and they are concerned about our exposure. The safety boat operator tells us he has been asked to “aggressively persuade” us to use the bay we’re in front of.

It’s true that the wind is kicking up; the pot of water that had been level when I put it on to boil now begins to slosh wet noodles across the cabin. My nausea is returning. We talk as a team, circled up in the cabin.

The anchor has been holding strong, but we don’t want to worry the race organizers — and maybe they know something we don’t. We test pedaling towards the anchor, and enough water runs over the rudder that we’re able to steer.

We decide to go for it. Sails are furled, pedal stations in operation, Rick at the bow in case we need quick extra power from the storm jib. We pull anchor.

The way is narrow: most of the water is treacherous, but: red, right, return — if we keep red markers to starboard and green to port, we should find safe passage, albeit close to shore.

We round the first red marker, thin water between marker and beach. I’m keeping an eye on the depth sounder: 35 feet, 25, 17 — we have a four-foot clearance.

It happens slowly, but without control. The tiller stops steering us.

The boat turns shoreward.

We struggle to raise sails to gain power, and never quite succeed. 15 feet, ten, nine.

Four. Straight into the beach, our sailboat grounds and tilts way over.

It’s a very helpless feeling. In a canoe, or even a skiff, you can shove off if you’re quick. But something this big, in the wind that blew us here, is going nowhere. It’s two tons, not including us and supplies. We flounder uselessly as the boat tips further and further over on its keel.

Liam is quick on the radio. And we’re really lucky: the Coast Guard is right there, 100 meters or so away. They deploy a Zodiac and throw us a line, which we affix to the stern cleat.

It takes several minutes of effort on their part, but they pull us back to floating with some impressive revs, their engine timed against the waves. Slowly, slowly, we slip offshore and turn upright.

It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t dangerous. It was a mistake made in an an abundance of caution, and it went as well as it could: close to shore, with ready assistance, no injuries, sheltered from the brunt of the weather. But it’s still a big enough mistake to trigger caution and assessment of crisis.

We as a team, with the blessing of the race organizers, have decided to continue. But it was a conversation, we did need Coast Guard help, and when we did anchor up, Liam had to swim under the boat with goggles to check that everything was intact before giving the go-ahead.

This is the easy part. We’re still learning our boat and our crew, but we have to learn fast. Help will not be so easy to come by later in the course.

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