Congrats Team We Brake for Whales - LM40 wins 2023 R2AK
by David Schmidt, Lyman-Morse 23 Nov 2023 10:11 PST
2023 Race to Alaska © Anthony Woodley
Sailing wisdom holds that distance races are won and lost before boats leave the dock. By this reckoning, Team We Brake for Whales became serious contenders for the 2023 Race to Alaska when owners Jeanne and Evgeniy Goussev entered Gray Wolf, their Roger Martin-designed custom Lyman-Morse 40, in this human-powered distance race.
Claiming the race's prize purse, however, required a marathon of team meetings, online to-do lists, shake-down races, more meetings, new-sail orders, and the (re)construction of an efficient pedal-drive system.
If pedaling doesn't sound like sailing, welcome to the Race to Alaska, an adventurous and quirky Pacific Northwest event that takes the fleet from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. The format is simple: Complete the 40 nautical mile "Proving Ground" leg from Port Townsend to Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island's southern tip, before venturing another 710 nautical miles north, to Ketchikan. The first team across the finish line wins $10,000 in cash, nailed to a chunk of wood.
The second-place team gets a set of steak knives; everyone else has their memories.
Teams can race whatever vessel they like, so long as it doesn't carry an auxiliary engine. Publicly available resources are fair play, but support vehicles and private aid are forbidden.
Then there's the course: 750 nautical miles of frigid-cold water, massive tides, and desolate shorelines. Teams are free to plot their own courses north, but they need pre-approval to sail west of Vancouver Island, and they have to check in at Bella-Bella, BC, enroute.
If this sounds hairy, the Goussevs knew the score: In 2018, Jeanne skippered Team Sail Like a Girl to first place aboard a Melges 32, upsetting the wisdom that the R2AK was a multihull contest. Jeanne built another all-women team in 2019, finishing in fourth place.
Flash-forward through the pandemic, and the Goussevs again started thinking about racing to Alaska, but this time with some proper belowdecks accommodations. "This is her kind of race," says Jeanne of Gray Wolf, noting that the boat is built for offshore racing and carries water ballasting, a deep keel, and a free-standing rig.
While R2AK rules stipulate that vessels cannot carry auxiliary propulsion, they can employ human propulsion; for Gray Wolf, this means crewmembers spinning propellors via stern-mounted road bikes.
"Evgeniy is a marine mechanic and engineer," says Jeanne, referring to her husband as the team's not-so-secret weapon. "He designed and built our bikes." This carefully planned exercise involved building 2.0 versions of the pedal-drive system they'd previously installed on the Melges 32 during their 2018 victory, this time designed for the mechanical needs of Gray Wolf, and then experimenting with different gear ratios. "That was a huge part of our preparation."
Finding six other crewmembers—Maisie Bryant, Remy Lang, Andy Kleitsch, Lindsey Lind, John Guillote, and Nikki Henderson—willing to participate wasn't so hard, but it was important that everyone share a philosophy and work ethic: "Safety first, fun second, and speed third," Jeanne says of the team's little-picture goals. Big picture, however, all eyes were on Ketchikan, starting with their preparations and training. The final mix, she says, involved "way too many captains", but the personalities clicked. "We had the right people on the boat," she says.
Leg One featured much bark and minimal bite, but, upon arrival in Victoria, the GRIB files started painting a brutal picture of Leg Two. "We were geared up to go outside of Vancouver Island, but it came down to the weather reports, which were variable," Jeanne says, noting that Gray Wolf was one of five boats cleared for the offshore route. "They were predicting everything from five knots northerly offshore to 50 knots northerly offshore."
Ultimately, Team We Brake for Whales elected to turn left out of Victoria Harbor and join the scrum of vessels fighting to make the critical tidal gate at Seymour Narrows, just north of Campbell River. No one cleared this hurdle—where the tide can rip at almost 16 knots—before the water turned negative; instead, anchors were deployed.
"We had to steer the boat on anchor, the current was so strong—we were in a river," says Jeanne, adding that there was a whirlpool 15 feet to starboard.
Team We Brake for Whales escaped the park-up in the dark hours, but close combat with two fast trimarans persisted as conditions built.
"There wasn't a lot of variation in wind direction—we were pretty much upwind the entire time—but a lot of variation in our windspeed," says Jeanne, noting that the team used all 13 sails that they carried in rapid-fire headsail changes.
Conditions continued to deteriorate as the boats pressed north. Three of the trimarans dropped out due to breakage; the others couldn't touch the LM 40's ability to punch through the seaway. "Being a strong, heavy offshore monohull, it was really our conditions to do well," says Jeanne.
If the boat had a weak spot, pounding upwind for six days would find it. And if the crew had a weak link, spending six days with seven other souls aboard a heaving, sail-stuffed 40-footer would break it.
Chalk it up to great preparation: Neither happened.
Conditions reached the "nautical" phase as Gray Wolf arrived in the upper Hecate Straight, which separates Haida Gwaii's desolate shores from mainland BC. The team sought weather relief and the chance to play some back eddies behind Banks Island.
Instead, they found steep, square-topped seas.
"We were belly-flopping Gray Wolf," says Jeanne, adding that the wave's height and frequency meant the boat was sometimes simultaneously negotiating three waves.
No one slept for the last 24 hours.
"I could feel her bones when we were falling off those waves," says Jeanne. "I knew she could handle it, but it still hurt to hear the noises that we were hearing."
The team carefully pressed on, and things relented once they escaped the often-rowdy waters of the Dixon Entrance for the lee of Prince of Wales Island.
Six hours later, the team received their nail-pierced $10,000 and celebrated their hard-fought win at the Alaska Fish House.
The consolation cutlery wouldn't be awarded for another two days.