The Greatest Boat Race Ever (Dreamed Up Over Beers) - Outside Magazine
Source: www.outsideonline.com
The Greatest Boat Race Ever (Dreamed Up Over Beers) The rules: Pilot a boat 750 miles from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska—no motors allowed. The result: Seven capsizings, four lifesaving Big Macs, one dramatic coast guard rescue, and a cast of oddball adventurers who reclaimed the salty heart of ocean racing. On a concrete ramp near the pier in Port Townsend, Washington, Alan Hartman pulls on his eye patch. It’s uncomfortable, but the doctors say it’s necessary to keep salt water out of his right cornea, which the 47-year-old fisherman recently speared while chainsawing brush near his remote Alaska cabin. He drove himself an hour to the nearest hospital, where he encouraged doctors to cut out the eye so he could make it into a necklace, but ten stitches saved his sight. Hartman hauls his boat, a 18-foot trimaran, down to the beach and squeezes his rain-barrel torso into the two-foot-wide cockpit. He dips a paddle into Port Townsend Bay and raises a flimsy sail. His tent and sleeping bag are strapped to the hull without any weather protection. “This race is going to change my life,” he says. It’s 4:30 a. m. on June 4. The predawn light slowly turns the sky from charcoal to slate, revealing clouds on the water and a total of 53 vessels making final preparations for today’s 40-mile crossing of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the first leg... The teams have 36 hours to reach Victoria, British Columbia. Those who make the cut-off will continue racing up the coast. The boats that take too long or require assistance will be disqualified. There are small boats, big boats, strange boats, solo racers, and crews of up to six men and women, all competing under a chosen team name. Six Canadian rowers are Team Soggy Beavers. Alan Hartman opts for the more literal Team Hartman. Three sailors on a lightweight carbon-fiber trimaran call themselves Team Elsie Piddock, after a children’s-book character. The name may be tame, but the crew is not: their captain is Al Hughes, a Seattle sailor with immense hands who lives on a boat and has completed three solo races across the Pacific. Looking around, he is amazed at the motley fleet assembled. Of some concern to Hughes is a shining 22-foot catamaran emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes and the Sperry Topsider logo. It’s crewed by Team FreeBurd: Tripp and Chris Burd, 31- and 27-year-old -brothers who live in the sailing mecca of Newport, Rhode Island, and look like they just stepped out of an Abercrombie ad. Tripp, who has swept-back blond hair and a square... Nearby, George Corbett and Mike McCormack, thirtysomething buddies from Squamish, British Columbia, are futzing with their neon yellow 17-foot trimaran. Corbett, a thin engineer with a crew cut, and McCormack, a long-haired sailing guide, found it on a beach in Mexico, full of sand, after a hurricane. It’s a foiling boat, like the ones used in the most recent America’s Cup , meaning that when it catches enough wind, a submerged hydrofoil elevates the hulls out of the water, reducing drag and radically increasing speed. This one, however, is rather spindly and not intended for open-water odysseys. Looking at it, Al Hughes is dubious about its chances. They have dubbed themselves Team SeaWolf, after the legendary predator that feeds on salmon up the British Columbia coast. About 20 yards down the beach, a small crowd hovers around another 17-foot catamaran that looks as though it was inspired by the Millennium Falcon. In the cockpit is a pedal drive assembled from old bike parts. On the bow sits a piece of amber of the sort that Vikings used to take to war. The creators of the vessel are two boat-building aficionados from Seattle: Thomas Nielsen, 53, a medical consultant with pipe-cleaner eyebrows, and Scott Veirs, a 45-year-old marine biologist. Calling themselves Team Sea Runner, they are out to prove that money and technology do not always rule the day. Nielsen and Veirs take a long look at the weather report. A westerly wind has been blowing at 30 knots all night, forming steep six-foot waves. This is a delicate matter, because the sails—which are cut into crab-claw shapes inspired by ancient Polynesian vessels—are made of simple tarps, and the mast is constructed from an old windsurfing spar and more.