PORT TOWNSEND — The starting gun for the second Race to Alaska was fired at 6:05 a.m. Thursday.
By 4:11 p.m., 47 contestants had safely arrived at the Port of Victoria, according to the event’s Facebook page.
The 40-mile trip to Victoria was the qualifying leg of the race, sponsored by the Northwest Maritime Center of Port Townsend.
Those who arrive by 5 p.m. today will proceed on the remaining 710 miles to Ketchikan, Alaska.
“It’s been really smooth,” said race boss Daniel Evans.
“The weather was good, and there were no mechanical failures.”
Without use of legs
Among those who arrived in Victoria on Thursday afternoon were the three wheelchair-bound members of the Team Alula crew, who sailed a 27-foot trimaran.
The information page on the R2AK website dealt with the topic straight-on: “Adaptive sailing might just have a new high bar . . . having functional legs hasn’t got thing one to do with being a bad ass.”
Team Alula arrived in Victoria in 36th place.
According to the rules of the race, as long as the boats lack motors, they can carry a crew as large — or as small — as they wish.
Team Navocean took a minimalist tack with a 6-foot unmanned craft controlled by a robot.
Navocean, a Seattle-based company, builds robotic craft that is used for ocean monitoring.
The boat was accompanied by a control ship, which left data points for the robot to follow in its voyage to Victoria.
As of midafternoon Thursday, the small craft was running dead last and was still in the Port Townsend vicinity.
Beginning of race
The water was choppy when the race began. The wind speed was 8 mph to 10 mph from the south.
Several hundred people assembled along the Port Townsend waterfront to watch the take-off, arriving at about 5:15 a.m., according to event spokesman Jared Scott.
This is the second year of the race, which was open to nonmotorized craft racing from Port Townsend to Ketchikan under their own power.
The first team to arrive in Ketchikan will earn a $10,000 cash prize, while the second will get a set of steak knives.
Evans said three boats backed out just before the race, leaving a final count of 58 boats, 42 of which intend to go all the way to Ketchikan.
“The surprise is how wonderful the start went,” Scott said.
“It was pleasantly quiet as soon as the boats went around the corner and we switched to the tracker map.”
The real-time map is viewable at http://tracker.r2ak.com.
Race committee boat
At the start, a race committee boat was situated in the bay just south of Port Townsend.
The boats began lining up before 5 a.m. and could be anywhere in the harbor as long as they looped around and passed the committee boat before 7:05 a.m., Scott said.
Team Archimedes was the only participant that was not able to cross the starting line, Scott said.
The contestants were split between those making a fast early start and those still in the harbor; the gap narrowed within an hour.
No exact finish times were available Thursday afternoon.
Team MAD Dog Racing took an early lead and arrived in Victoria less than three hours after the starting gun.
Last year, Team Elsie Piddock, which did not compete this year, won the race by completing the full 750-mile race in five days.
Participating behind the scenes was an East Jefferson Fire-Rescue crew tracking real-time data from a room in the maritime center’s boathouse.
The fire department kept a tight watch on the boats and their progress and intends to use the collected data to create water rescue simulations, according to Deputy Chief Ted Krysinski.
“We will use this information to determine which public safety resources are most accessible to different locations,” Krysinski said.
Krysinski said his team was ready to help in an emergency.
Any racer needing physical rescue would be disqualified on the spot.
Jake Beattie, Northwest Maritime Center executive director, said sponsoring a race in 2017 has not yet been decided.
If the race occurs, details will be announced at the Wooden Boat Festival, which is set for Sept. 9-11.
For more information, go to www.R2AK.com.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
