PORT ANGELES – Don Wilson, 71, isn’t worried about holding up during Friday’s 41-mile round-trip personal watercraft race across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“I have plenty of stamina to get me across,” the Port Angeles man said.
“I’m more worried about my Jet Ski than me,” he joked.
“I hope they hold up.”
The former commercial fisherman took up the sport just a couple of months ago.
His first race will be from Port Angeles to Victoria and back again during the personal watercraft races, which will begin at 11 a.m.
It will be the first time that personal watercraft will be raced across the Strait and back during Strait Thunder, which will have its fifth annual edition of hydroplane races this weekend.
The round trip from Port Angeles to the outer harbor of Victoria is more than 41 miles, said Roger Harnack, organizer in conjunction with the Peninsula Water Sport Association.
“I came up with a round trip of 41.5 miles,” he said.
“If you can hold a GPS heading, that’s what it is. That’s the optimal route.”
“The whole race is on an incoming tide, so people are going to be pushed east,” he said.
The race is the only race of its kind in the Pacific Northwest.
A similar race from Long Beach, Calif., to Catalina Island takes about three hours, said Harnack, who is also the editor of Sequim This Week, sister newspaper to the Peninsula Daily News.
That’s a distance of 46 miles, “so we’re hoping it’s about a three-hour race.”
