R2AK: Steak knives are forever

The 7th edition of the 750 mile Race to Alaska (R2AK) began June 5 with a 40-mile “proving stage” from Port Townsend, WA to Victoria, BC. For those that finished within 36 hours, they were allowed to start the remaining 710 miles on June 8 to Ketchikan, AK. Here’s the Stage 2/Day 9 report:

When Team Budgie Smugglers crossed the finish line, the rain- and wind-swept huddled welcome committee included R2AK faithful, Ketchikan locals, a seemingly random guy in a superhero costume, and Team We Brake for Whales who showed up after four sleeps and eight parties in the last 24 hours—all to wish them well.

The sum total of all of that humanity was dockside to witness the bell ring and celebrate Team Budgie Smugglers’ second place finish at 7 days 10 hours and 4 minutes.

It was a hard fought race that ended in pedaling, pedaling, and pedaling all the way to the dock to ring the bell, drink a beer, and offer the kind of awkward sincerity only possible after 700 miles of upwind, then downwind, then just “I guess we should pedal?” racing that is the R2AK.

The Budgies on their Shaw 34 Catamaran arrived on the dock in beaming exhaustion, with a sprinkle of Southeast Alaskan wind-driven rain; the weather adding the thankful need for more clothes than their name would suggest.

Like most teams that cross the line, the first thing they meet are questions. Unlike most teams, R2AK high command bore the brunt of them from the internet fans in our living room.

“What’s a budgie?”

It was an honest question from a true blue R2AK super fan who is also a mostly honest seven year old. Our answer: it’s a bird, from Australia, more or less the same size as a chickadee. Brush your teeth and go to bed.

“But what does smuggle mean?”

Sneaking something into somewhere, like when we snuck licorice into a movie theater when we wanted to see the new Little Mermaid. $20 a ticket was fine, but $87 for a pack of licorice was ridiculous so we snuck some in. We smuggled licorice. Yes, you can have a Sprite next time.

“So they are sneaking birds into Alaska?” Uh, maybe…go ask your mother.

****

Awkward banana hammock related questions aside, Team Budgie Smugglers are maybe the most deserving and least predictable Steak Knife winners in the history of the R2AK. We first met Graham Shaw and his boat in his 2018 R2AK manifestation as Team Strait to the Pool Room. That year, Graham and his buddies were the “fun boat.”

If R2AK 2018 was a high school RomCom, Team Strait to the Pool Room would have been the quirky friend to the main character; the odd but hilarious smart girl with glasses that ends up inventing something with and equally bespectacled boyfriend. Why do we make such a sweeping and unprovable allegation? Look at their human power situation:

Port hull: sliding seat rowing machine

Starboard: Exercise bike, complete with flower basket and bike horn.

It is, and looks as ridiculous as it’s actually fine. Between then and now, the team added a second pedal station in the cockpit, but somewhere between the plastic flowers, bike horn, and a team name that’s Australian shorthand for testicular glamping, one thing remains clear: This is a team with a sense of humor.

Honk honk (that was from their bike horn).

The joke of this year’s R2AK almost win starts like this: “Five Aussies, a custom boat, and a guy from Colorado walk into a bar…”

We haven’t worked it out yet, but the punchline is that a boat that no one thought would be a contender for a top (name a number, you’re not wrong) finish ended up the Kamala Harris of this year’s R2AK. Steak Knives for the flower basket boat, and not just barely, definitively. The title is theirs by at least a day. A day!

Adding to the surprise is that this was a boat designed and built 35 years ago by the guy driving it. After trimaran sailing to Australia, Graham had an idea for a catamaran, turned that idea into a 3D reality of sails and hardened fiberglass goo, sailed it and his family to North America, blah blah blahed a few decades, then imported a couple Aussies, lured a Coloradan R2AK veteran from 2018, and sailed his creation to a near win in Alaska.

R2AK ‘23 has been a race of attrition. If a thing could break, it would. If a boat had catastrophic failure in its DNA bucket list, R2AK ‘23 was here to empower it to make that happen. Did you have a beam that needed delaminating? Boom. Bulkhead? Boom. Rudder? Get in line.

We heard no calamity from the Budgies during their dockside download. None. Tired? Sure. Wet? Of course. But broken? Hardly. Maybe we’re projecting, but not bad for a boat in its fourth decade.

We’ve never designed a boat, let alone built one, let alone existed inside our own idea as both our house and then as our sled to Alaska, but if we were Graham we’d be feeling more than a little chuffed at the moment.

His idea-turned-boat proved to be magic mojo of fast and resilient enough to take R2AK’s folk hero prize. Sure they missed the $10k by a day, but in the words of someone smarter than us: “Cash is nice, but steak knives are forever. Those are heirlooms.”

We’ll go one better: Team Budgie Smugglers is the kind of team we imagined when we started this thing. Well, not really. Anyone who remembers our 2015 launch could see we had no idea what this thing would turn into. We thought it would be rowboats, but the spirit of Team Budgie Smugglers is what we imagined when we started this thing: find a boat, race it.

Beyond the racing part of the race, the Budgies are the embodiment of the community spirit that has wormed its way into our cutthroat ideals from the get go. In their last nights of hunkering down and waiting for weather, they shared an anchorage with Team Dogsmile, who abandoned their pursuit of the knives in deference to safety and a breaking boat.

Dogsmile was broken, wet, undoubtedly disheartened, and anchored right over there. Budgies dinghied over a dry mattress exchange to lighten the load, then turned, burned, and sprinted to the finish line.

In the sailing world, Race to Alaska has been called the “America’s Cup for Dirtbags,” a “run what you brung” race for the masses. They’re not wrong.

The intention from the beginning was a race where you don’t need the hottest piece of wind-driven carbon fiber to win, and even if you do that you might get a golf clap and a “next?” Team Budgie Smugglers might be the highest finishing team of that ideal. They put the “ahoy” in the hoi polloi… or something.

Regardless and in support of all of that, well done Team Budgie Smugglers, while we are disappointed in ourselves for not including more Speedo euphemisms in this write up, we are honored to give you the dumbest/best prize in sailing.

Welcome to done.

Race details – Entry list – Tracker – Facebook

The 7th edition of the Race to Alaska in 2023 will follow the same general rules which launched this madness in 2015. No motor, no support, through wild frontier, navigating by sail or peddle/paddle (but at some point both) the 750 cold water miles from Port Townsend, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska.

To save people from themselves, and possibly fulfill event insurance coverage requirements, the distance is divided into two stages. Anyone that completes the 40-mile crossing from Port Townsend to Victoria, BC can pass Go and proceed. Those that fail Stage 1 go to R2AK Jail. Their race is done. Here is the 2023 plan:

Stage 1 Race start: June 5 – Port Townsend, Washington
Stage 2 Race start: June 8 – Victoria, BC

While the Stage 1 course is simple enough, the route to Ketchikan is less so. Other than a waypoint at Bella Bella, there is no official course. Whereas previous races mandated an inside passage of Vancouver Island via Seymour Narrows, the gloves came off in 2022. For teams that can prove their seaworthiness, they now had the option of the western route.

There is $10,000 if you finish first, a set of steak knives if you’re second. Cathartic elation if you can simply complete the course. R2AK is a self-supported race with no supply drops and no safety net. Any boat without an engine can enter.

There were no races in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. In 2022, there were 45 starters for Stage 1 and 34 finishers. Of those finishers, 32 took on Stage 2 of which 19 made it to Ketchikan.

Source: R2AK