Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader
Wednesday, June 15, 2016 • C 1
Race 2 Alaska THE RACERS - THE ROUTE - THE RUCKUS - OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Dare to the world: Come Ruckus with us JAKE BEATTIE R2AK CENTRAL COMMAND
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t started as the best beer-infused bad idea we’ve ever had: a $10K double dare designed to challenge every maritime wing nut, armchair dreamer and hardcore adventurer to hurl themselves to Alaska on any boat they could find.
The rules were intentionally dead simple: • Get a boat without an engine • Start in Port Townsend • Race unsupported up the Inside Passage • Finish in Ketchikan • If you’re first, we’ll give you $10,000. If you come in second, you get steak knives. We launched the challenge on the Internet and waited to see if anyone would pick up the gauntlet. In total, 53 teams toed the line in 2015’s inaugural Race to Alaska. All told, 35 tried to get all the way to Alaska. If you were part of the crowd that came out to celebrate their bold spirits and last-minute preparations at the Pre-Race Ruckus, or were part of the traffic jam that sent them off at dawn, you saw the same menagerie of racing sailboats, outrigger canoes, tiny dinghies, rowboats, home-built wonders, all piloted by the high hopes of world champions and amateurs alike. There were the boats, a bonfire, alleged skinny dipping and a couple of guys serving oatmeal from a paddleboard. Then the gun went off and
Team Discovery – Roger Mann – was the first solo finisher in R2AK 2015, and 11th overall. Among other travails, Mann spent 20 hours a day on his trimaran, stitched up his own thumb twice and was washed off his boat at night in Seymour Narrows; he’s been lauded as an R2AK hero. Mann is registered to compete in 2016. Courtesy photo by Dieter Loibner
the fleet rocketed into the first Race to Alaska the world has ever seen. The stories from the race were epic – masts broke, boats sunk, people got cold and gave up when they got fed up with the misery. But 15 teams “won” the race to Alaska by crossing the Ketchikan line, and the rest successfully failed
Race starts June 23
Brave or crazy? C2
along the way. Human triumph, worldwide enthusiasm, we didn’t go broke, and nobody died. There was simply too
much good that came out of the first race not to do it again. This year the race, which starts June 23, has attracted some of the fastest boats on the West Coast, Olympians, fast women, a robot, a guy on a paddleboard and every kind of cocksure theory in between. Even if Larry Ellison never re-
turned our calls, this is going to be totally badass. Welcome to this year’s R2AK, Port Townsend’s dare to the world: Will you be ready? (Jake Beattie is executive director of the Northwest Maritime Center)
Race to Alaska draws speed demon PATRICK J. SULLIVAN THE LEADER
Join the pre-race Ruckus on Wednesday, June 22
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he Race to Alaska motorless boat challenge, born on the Port Townsend waterfront and back triumphantly for a second year, has drawn one of the fastest sailboats to ever grace the Salish Sea. Team Tritium Racing sailed its 73-foot custom trimaran the 2,225 miles from California to Hawaii faster than last year’s R2AK winner covered the 750 miles from Port Townsend to Ketchikan. “The speed, technology and skill aboard is rarely seen outside of a major race,” said Jake Beattie, executive director of the Northwest Maritime Center and R2AK brainchild, describing Team Tritium Racing. “I can’t think of any time when a boat of that caliber has been in our region.” Could Tritium Racing swamp the competition? Certainly, being its trimaran is easily capable of 30-knot speeds. Could the high-tech yet fragile craft break down in rough seas or from a driftwood strike? Certainly. After all, big boat or small, that is the challenge of this adventure race. John Sangmeister of Long Beach, California, owner of Tritium Racing, said that while his team aims to win every race entered with this boat, which was built to set records, he appreciates everyone willing to take on R2AK. “I love the novelty of the race,” he said in a telephone interview from California. “I think [the Northwest Maritime Center has] done a great job in marketing sailing, and have made sailing interesting again. How
Team Tritium Racing’s vessel is a 73-foot trimaran designed and built in France to go fast and set records. In 2013, its owner came within a few hours of setting a record in racing from California to Hawaii. Now, the boat takes on the Race to Alaska challenge starting June 23 on Port Townsend Bay. Courtesy photo Tritium Racing
often do you have a starting line where at one end, you have a 73-foot trimaran and on the other end, a guy on a standup paddleboard?” RACE TO ALASKA The R2AK is a two-leg adventure race that launches at 6 a.m., Thursday, June 23 on Port Townsend Bay. The first leg covers 40 miles to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, from where the racers who choose to, head north another 710 miles to Ketchikan, Alaska. Last year, Team Elsie Piddock’s 32-foot F-25c trimaran, skippered by Al Hughes, won the R2AK after five days, four hours and 17 minutes on the water from the start in Port Townsend. Tritium Racing is centered on a trimaran (73 feet long, 60 feet wide, with a 100-foot mast) with a nineperson crew that in 2013 raced the
“I can’t think of any time when a boat of that caliber has been in our region.” Jake Beattie EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NORTHWEST MARITIME CENTER
2,225-mile Transpacific from Los Angeles to Honolulu in five days, two and a half hours short of a world record. The boat was designed in France by VPLP, built in 2002 to race with an offshore multihull racing association. The class of boats dissolved “because they were prohibitively expensive and too fragile,” Sang-
meister said. In 2011, Artemis Racing bought and reconfigured the boat as a way to test new foils and wing designs for an AC 72 America’s Cup yacht. The boat weighs about 15,000 pounds, yet cruises in the 30-knot area and has hit 40 knots. “It may be the fastest sailboat ever to be in these waters,” Beattie noted. Sangmeister, owner and skipper, describes himself as the crew’s “weak link.” Otherwise, crew members include veterans of the America’s Cup, Olympians, world champions, national champs, a runner-up for the Rolex Sailor of the Year Award, and R2AK veteran Tripp Burd, half of Team Freeburd, which finished fourth in the 2015 R2AK on board an Arc-22 beach cat. Beattie describes Team Tritium
All are invited to join the teams at the Race to Alaska Pre-Race Ruckus for excellent nosh, superb swill and loud music from 3 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 22 at the Northwest Maritime Center and Pope Marine Park. It’s all free. More than 40 boats and watercraft are to be on display, many at Point Hudson, others on trailers along Water Street, near the plethora of food and beverage vendors, and the music of Seattle soul band Down North. And if that’s not enough for a party, a tattoo artist offers free R2AK tattoos. (Yes, permanent tattoos.) New to the Ruckus this year are Feats of Strength competitions, such as the Ocean Rodeo: Watch an R2AK competitor don a drysuit and submit to an 8-second blast from a fire hose. Also slated is the Tabasco challenge, involving the speedy consumption of shots of the spicy sauce. And Race Boss Daniel Evans and R2AK idea man Jake Beattie, NWMC executive director, also mentioned putting one racer into a bear suit and making him or her run on a treadmill, competing for endurance against another racer on a rowing machine. Does the bear catch the rower? Come to the Ruckus and see.
as a “Goliath” that could quickly outdistance the many smaller “David” competitors. “Everyone else could be racing for the steak knives,” said Beattie in reference to R2AK second prize of a set of steak knives. The first boat to finish wins $10,000. “Maybe we’ll just be the gentle giants instead of the Goliath,” countered Sangmeister. “Hopefully we can be a goodwill ambassador for this type of sailing, and I think that, speaking for our crew, we’ve all enjoyed some great adventures and success and built some friendships around the world through sailing, and if there are some kids out there who are interested by this race, then See TRITIUM, page 7▼