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  Celebrating sailing's adventures—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond
 | | Race to Alaska Race to Alaska |
The other day I was sitting in my office, contemplating the ways that the sport of sailing serves as a conduit to adventure, when I received a text from a good friend and mountaineering partner saying that he and his brothers were strongly contemplating a late entry into this year's Race to Alaska (R2AK), which begins on June 8 at 0500 hours. For anyone not in the know, the R2AK starts in Port Townsend, Washington, and sails 40 nautical miles across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the seaside city of Victoria, British Columbia (read: the shakedown leg), before progressing another 710 nautical miles to Ketchikan, Alaska (read: the real deal). Racers are welcome to bring any craft they like, so long as it doesn't have an internal-combustion engine, and so long as their journey is entirely self-supported and human-powered (read: sails, oars or pedal-powered propulsion).
Racers can stop anywhere they like en route (just mind the grizzly bears on British Columbia's beaches!), but the first team to Ketchikan wins ten grand, while the runner up receives a set of steak knives. Everyone else gets to sail home with the honor of having completed something really hard, and that likely made them rise to a higher level of understanding, skill and compassion than they began their voyage possessing.
 | | Race to Alaska Race to Alaska |
While most teams spend months, if not years, preparing for the R2AK, my friend is a veteran of the first R2AK (2015) and is one of the toughest blokes I've ever met when it comes to suffering with a smile, be it humping 60 pound packs up glaciers on Mount Rainier or “sleeping” in his dry suit on the nets of a glorified beach cat en route to Ketchikan, but for most people a last-minute whim to enter the R2AK likely wouldn't end well.
After all, the R2AK has a tremendous reputation for spitting-off great sailors and adventurers, much like the tall mountains of Nepal or Patagonia sometimes treat world-class climbers.
 | | Race to Alaska Race to Alaska |
Having enjoyed a firsthand taste of the R2AK in 2015 as an embedded journalist on the shakedown leg from Port Townsend to Victoria aboard a proa sailing canoe that came damn close to sinking, I can attest to the fact that in the R2AK, the water is cold, the currents strong, and the sense of adventure out of this world...and I only tasted the shakedown leg, not the R2AK's true unvarnished experience.
The R2AK is certainly not alone in offering boldface adventure. Other big-name, big-budget sailing adventures include the Volvo Ocean Race and the Vendee Globe, however these events require seven-figure war chests to contest (add a few million if you actually want to be competitive), making them well outside the grasp of most adventure-seeking sailors. Not so with the R2AK, as the past two winners have claimed their ten grand using a borrowed F-25c trimaran (2015) and a structurally reinforced M32 catamaran (2016)...expensive boats, of course, but cheap compared to the new-build costs of an IMOCA 60...or even the mainsail of a Volvo Ocean 65.
 | | Jake Beattie - Race to Alaska Race to Alaska |
Given the harmonic chord that the R2AK seems to have struck in the hearts of sailing adventurists across North America, there's no question that Jake Beattie, the Director of the Northwest Maritime Center (one of the R2AK's main sponsors) and one of the R2AK's founders, and his friends taped into a vein that's both rich and deep in 2014 when they announced the first R2AK.
While the R2AK is currently the jewel in the crown of North American adventure sailing, the Golden Globe Race 2018 takes the cake for the biggest homespun adventure afloat. Here, sailors are attempting to recreate the kind of adventure that Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Bernard Moitessier, and their other competitors faced in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, which was the first non-stop and solo around-the-world sailboat race (imagine NASA's first moonshot and you're on the right page). Heroes such as Sir Robin and Moitessier were minted while their fellow competitor Donald Crowhurst never returned home.
 | | Robin Knox-Johnston aboard Suhaili at the finish of the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race Bill Rowntree - PPL © |
[Editor's Note: Interested readers are highly encouraged to read Peter Nichols' great book, A Voyage for Madmen, or see the 2006 film Deep Water.]
For the Golden Globe Race 2018 (GGR2018), contestants must sail aboard vessels similar in nature to the ones that were used in 1968 (read: 32 to 36 feet, LOA, designed prior to 1988, and carrying full-length keels with attached rudders), while also using the same level of technology (read: no electronic navigation, string sails or satellite communications) that were available to the race's original sailors.
 | | 2018 Golden Globe Race Chart Barry Pickthall |
Instead of focusing on shaving hours or minutes (or seconds) off of existing around-the-world records, GGR2018 skippers will be navigating using sextants, paper charts and parallel dividers, and they will be tackling their weather routing by consulting the clouds and other telltale signs of change. Here, offshore adventure, grit, gumption and downright determination out-strips racecourse competition. While the first of the modern GGR races (event organizers have already announced the GGR2022) has yet to be held, I imagine that, much like the R2AK, anyone who crosses the finishing line will do so a changed person.
 | | Circa 22nd April 1969: Robin Knox-Johnston waving aboard his 32ft yacht SUHAILI off Falmouth, England after becoming the first man to sail solo non-stop around the globe. Bill Rowntree - PPL © |
While the R2AK and the GGR2018 represent high-level adventure sailing, other, more modest events exist across the country and around the world that allow sailors to get back to the basics of wind, current, navigation and seamanship. Finally, for any event organizers out there, strongly consider taking a few leaves out of the R2AK or GGR2018's playbooks, as all signs are indicating that there are plenty of sailors out there who are interested in engaging a bit more adventure than one typically encounters on a Wednesday evening windward-leeward course.
May the four winds blow you safely home,
David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor
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