PORT TOWNSEND — Call R2AK the Iditarod with a chance of drowning.
That’s how the third annual 750-mile nonmotorized Race to Alaska, hosted by the Northwest Maritime Center and sponsored by UnCruise Adventures, has been described, event organizer Daniel Evans of Port Townsend said Monday, comparing it to Alaska’s exhausting sled-dog race.
The Saturday deadline for R2AK is fast approaching for teams to submit applications to take on the challenge, which starts June 8 at the Northwest Maritime Center dock.
Sail, paddle, pedal or row might be the event’s motto if it had one, Evans said of the longest boat race of its kind in North America, an event that is attracting international attention with teams this year from across the U.S., Australia, the United Kingdom, France and Canada.
Evans said the grueling race’s tagline might read: Will you be ready?
Still, if you keep asking yourself that, “you’ll never get off the couch,” Evans said.
“If you’re always waiting to feel ready, you’ll always be waiting.”
Evans said that as of Monday, 37 confirmed teams have pledged to go the distance in various forms of self- and wind-powered watercraft to Ketchikan, Alaska.
Evans said contestants include Team North2Alaska, composed of three teenagers and two adults from Port Townsend and Marrowstone Island — students Henry Veitenhans, River Yearian and Sean Westlund, and adults Greg Veitenhans and Malachi Church — who will travel in a 26-foot aluminum Sharpie built as part of Henry Veitenhans’ senior project.
Also competing will be Team Grace B, which includes boatbuilder Ernie Baird of Port Townsend and a 26-foot open-design wooden sailboat he built 25 years ago, Evans said.
The Alaska-bound participants do not include 15 additional contestants who will complete only the first leg, a 40-mile trek to Victoria, Evans said.
The long-distance adventurers will proceed from Victoria north by hugging coastlines along the San Juan Islands, Gulf Islands, Strait of Georgia and Bella Bella before making their way to Ketchikan in southern Alaska.
About half the Ketchikan-bound contestants who started the race to Alaska in 2015 and 2016 finished, including last year’s winner, West Coast-based Mad Dog Racing, which completed the race in three days, 20 hours and 13 minutes to win the $10,000 first-place prize.
Last place went to the 26th finisher in a 17-foot mono-modified Swampscott dory with a crew of one, which finished in 25 days, 11 hours and 57 minutes.
Second place is a set of steak knives in a tip of the cap to the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross,” based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about four real estate salesmen, only two of whom will keep their jobs in a sales contest.
“We put a logo on them,” Evans said of the knives.
In addition, a prize of $10,000 goes to the first finishing team that agrees to sell its watercraft within five minutes of completing the race.
Human-powered oats in the competition include a kayak, a rowboat, a paddle boat and a paddleboard piloted by Karl Kruger of Orcas Island.
Kruger, who competed similarly in the 2016 race, will get his nourishment from food pellets.
His only respite, when he’s not standing on his paddleboard that’s about 16 feet long, will be kneeling, Evans said.
“He dances with that board,” Evans said.
Over three years, the most common watercraft have included muti-hull boats including trimarans, Evans said.
“This year, we’re seeing a number of teams go human-powered,” he said.
The course is intentionally tough, as contestants must travel along coastlines.
Teams are required to stop at waypoints at Seymour Narrows at the north end of the Strait of Georgia about 150 miles from Victoria and at Bella Bella, 320 miles from Victoria.
“They exist so teams are forced to stay in islands and deal with currents and other things,” Evans said.
For some, it’s a race.
For others, it’s all about the journey, not the finish line.
“They can do anything they want [even] if they want to look for hotels all the way up,” Evans said.
“Some teams have enough people, they never stop.
“Others camp on the beach.” It’s “whatever works for that team.”
A pre-race ruckus is planned from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. June 7 at Water and Monroe streets in Port Townsend.
The race gun goes off at 5 a.m. June 8.
For more information about the race, go to r2ak.com.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
