Day 8 - Johnstone Straight
Our intrepid rowers start out into notorious Johnson Straight, where they were surrounded by a pod of Dahl's porpoises having a feeding frenzy. Leigh reports it was liking being in an episode of Blue Planet. Made camp in the Broken Islands after 49 miles. Into the Queen Charlotte Strait tomorrow!
Day 7 - Through the Narrows
Through Seymour Narrows a day early! Thanks to a 5 mph following current that had them making 10 mph at times Leigh and Dameon arrived at Seymour Narrows with 50 minutes until low water slack tide. They decided to follow a fishing boat in the hopes it knew what it was doing. Lots of turbulence, boils, and whirlpools, and just after the worst section a whale spouted 100 feet away! They camped at Bodega Pt after making 46 miles. Now comes the Johnstone Straight where tidal currents continue to play havoc.
Day 6 - Air Force Beach Campground
Made 46 miles today, stopping at Air Force Beach campground near Comox, BC....need to fill water bags. Took a midday siesta in the channel between Hornby and Denman Islands. Pushing on tomorrow to stop short of Seymour Narrows!
Day 5 to Gerald Island
Dameon and Leigh continue to push on to the Georgia Strait. After laying up waiting for the tide to turn prior to rowing through False Narrows, Backwards AF threaded their way through Nanaimo Harbor without getting run over by ferries, float planes, or log booms. Making nearly 40 miles this day they camped on a pebble beach on Gerald Island. Backwards AF is the only human-powered vessel left in the race.
Day 4 to Wallace Island
Leigh and Dameon make an impressive run after leaving Victoria, in the lead for the first 2 hours and staying in the front quarter of the pack throughout the day, often making 5 knots. Smooth water and light winds negated some of the advantages of the sailboats. While many of the larger sail boats headed for the main channel leading to the Georgia Strait, Mursu's maneuverability allowed them to cut the corner between Prevost and North Pender Island, then up the Trincomali Channel. With the sun setting Team Backwards AF had only a handful of boats ahead of them. But as they made camp at Cabin Bay on Wallace Island the sailboats asserted themselves and pressed on. There is a video of Dameon and Leigh rowing on the R2AK website (or below).
Getting some love from R2AK!
Victoria- A Small Taste of Victory!
We arrived in Victoria! 24 miles in 4.5 hours. Very challenging water, but Mursu performed well and we always felt in control. 3-6' chop through much of it.
Happy to be in BC celebrating with sushi!
Out of 51 entries 36 made it to Victoria in time, 7 of those needing repairs.
-Dameon
Arrived at Dungeness Spit
Only 11 am and we're done for today....winds were ok this morning but picking back up now and will be close to gale force this afternoon (see weather report from R2AK's instagram below). Made it to Dungeness Spit where we'll spend the night before heading across the Strait tomorrow when the wind is supposed to die down.
The way over to Dungeness was really not bad, but there was some initial drama when we found ourselves on the wrong side of a tongue of gnarly water extending out from Point Wilson, just north of Port Townsend. We thought we could skirt around it but were prevented from doing so by the Vessel Traffic no-go zone (entering it means you are disqualified from the rest of the race). So we had to turn around and buck the increasingly strong ebb current to head back to Point Wilson. All of this time we were in 6-9' steep swells, though we stayed well out of the terrifying area - we'll call it the Tongue of Destruction - where these tall, steep swells were breaking. As we neared Point Wilson again, thinking we'd have to go back to port and wait to try again later, we found that near shore the Tongue of Destruction (aka, the Point Wilson tide rip) was nonexistent, and we were able to turn west along the shoreline and everything was fine after that.
I'm sure this is only the first of many times when local knowledge would have saved us some time....but we're excited to learn as we go. Lots of lessons already today.
A toast to Mursu...and friendship
Sometimes you are given an unexpected gift that fulfills a desire you barely knew you had...until the moment the gift arrives, and you instantly recognize it for what it is: the answer to that unspoken wish. We recently had that experience when our friend Wes presented us, in his very humble way, with the gift of Mursu - not the boat, but a hand-carved walrus to serve as both figurehead and carrying handle on the bow of our new boat. (Mursu is the Finnish word for "walrus"....see the April 21, 2019 post for a very long explanation of why we chose this outlandish name.) The serene and cheerful Mursu that Wes carved is perfect in every way...not unlike the Margalo bird that adorns Wes and his wife Willie's own rowboat...which I had secretly coveted for some time. Thank you Wes for this amazing gift.
The adventure has begun!
Well, for some of us. :-) (I love you Dameon, even if you get to begin your adventure while I finish tying up loose ends here on the homefront.) Yes, Dameon is currently en route Port Townsend, somewhere in Iowa. Pictured above is everything we'll take on the journey: food, clothes, camping gear, rowing gear, etc.
144,000 calories
....is approximately how many calories we are bringing with us to fuel our journey. This is what we would need for 20 days of rowing with no stops to re-supply.
Our strategy for food is to just bring everything we will need for the journey. Though it will make the boat heavier, it will save a lot of time not to have to make detours into towns to seek out grocery stores, shop, unpackage, and repack. And our experience with rowing NORPPA fully loaded is that she handles quite well and we don't feel the added weight as much of hindrance.
The daily menu is something like this:
Breakfast: home-mixed muesli soaked overnight (rolled oats, rye flakes, coconut, almonds, dried cranberries, dried currants, dates, powdered whole milk). 1 cup of this for Leigh, 1/2 cup plus a shake for Dameon. Also 1/2 cup each of freeze dried berries.
During the day: beef jerky or nuts, Cliff bars, gummies, dried fruit, powdered energy drink mix. Breaking every 45 minutes for a quick intake of food and water - 100 calories each time (on average...sometimes more, sometimes less).
Dinner: either ramen with freeze-dried veggies and meat added, couscous with freeze-dried veggies and meat added, or a ready-made backpacking meal. Plus recovery shake and a Riesen chocoloate candy.
Some R2AK quick stats
44 teams: 30 sail boats, 7 human-powered, and 7 hybrid (human powered with a sail) . To be clear, these are our own distinctions - the race has no formal classes. We are in the group of human-powered boats with no sail, along with 2 other rowboats, 2 kayaks, and 2 stand-up paddleboards.
750 miles - starting in Port Townsend, WA & ending in Ketchikan, AK
15 knots - the maximum current through Seymour Narrows
3-5 knots - the amount of current that is present in several areas along the route
4.5 knots - our average speed over the course of a full day of rowing
6 knots - our (estimated) top speed in MURSU if rowing all out
21'4" - length of our boat MURSU
209,000 - number of strokes to get us to Ketchikan (estimated)
145 hours - number of hours of rowing to get us to Ketchikan (estimated)
2 checkpoints - for the entire 750-mile route. Seymour Narrows & Bella Bella.
2 attacking bears - the number we can deter with the amount of bear spray we are bringing
MURSU Nearly Complete!
Oars in the Making
Dameon has made two new sets of oars for our R2AK adventure. Here are some shots of the process, from our friend and fellow rower Wes Reddick's shop (which he generously allowed us to use. Thanks Wes.)
MURSU update
Mursu is ready for work to begin!
The day MURSU came home we had 59 days until the R2AK start gun went off. We not only want to finish the boat but also have a few sea trials to work out the bugs before we headed off for Washington. We'd been thinking of this boat for a long time so you bet we were eager to finish it off and get it launched, we got to work immediately.
A special thanks to Dan Miller at Belmont Boat Works for generously providing us with shop space to work in. Without the indoor, heated space Dan provided us it's difficult to imagine how this would have come together.
First I tackled decking the fore and aft compartments. To try and minimize adding weight we choose to use dacron. Dacron is an amazing material that is used for sails and to sheath airplane wings. When heated it stretches tight and can be waterproofed by painting it. Pretty cool stuff.
The value of these additional compartments can't be understated. We've rowed a lot of miles in wet,windy conditions and bailed many buckets of water during these rows. The boat is just under 22' long, these compartments will cover 9' of the interior and shed rain water and allow some of the water from waves breaking over the bow to wash over instead of just filling up the boat. They are a very welcome addition!
Next post will be be about the oars I've built to go with MURSU....
-Dameon
Thank you!
A huge thank you to our first several donors, who have collectively sent us 40 miles across the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the qualifying leg of the race! (These numbers according to our estimate that every mile of the 750-mile race will cost about $7.) Thank you so much for helping us turn this dream into a reality.
41 days till we are setting off across the Strait of Juan de Fuca for that first 40 miles. If you'd like to help us make the next leg, please click here to go to our GoFundMe page. And thank you! Anything we raise in excess of our goal will be donated to ComeBoating!
It's a BOY!! The making of MURSU
(Yeah, boats are normally female, but MURSU is...different)
As we started to seriously consider participating in the Race to Alaska we knew we needed a boat specifically designed for longer, expedition style rowing. The boat we have primarily rowed for the past few years is a Savo 650D designed by Ruud van Veelen. These boats are mainly raced on large lakes in Finland. After completing our 260 mile row along the coast of Maine in 2018 we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted out of a boat to feel comfortable taking it safely on a 750 mile row up the coast of British Columbia.
We love the boat we row. Her name is NORPPA. She's fast and light and everything one wants in a boat designed for racing, and racing was what she did for many years. As Leigh and I started doing longer rows that required overnight stays, this meant bringing camping gear and additional supplies. We found NORPPA handled this additional payload and performed very well under various conditions we found ourselves rowing in. Need to go out in 3-4' whitecaps or 6-8' swells, no problem. So what if we could take NORPPA's sleek, fast, lightweight design and incorporate all the things from our expedition boat wish-list into it......
Enter Walter Baron of Old Wharf Dory, the man who built NORPPA. We began talking with Walter last fall and told him we wanted a custom built Savo to row in the Race to Alaska. Turns out he's a bit of a R2AK tracker junkie himself so he was immediately interested. So what additional features did we want our Savo to have?
- The biggest feature was the addition of watertight compartments in the bow and stern. These will provide flotation if the boat capsizes. They also create some super handy dry storage and shed rainwater rather than it just pooling in the boat.
- Additional frames in the hull for extra strength.
- The gunnels were made of white oak instead of pine.
- The inside passage where the R2AK takes place is rather notorious for logs and other floating debris, stuff that is unfriendly to row boats 6mm thick! So to protect the boat and ourselves from strikes we had the stem made of epoxy and kevlar instead of pine and the inside of the bow planks fiberglassed.
Walter began construction in February and on April 5th I picked up MURSU and brought him home. What is Mursu you ask? Norppa is Finnish for "ringed seal" so we thought of this new boat as a beefed-up, heavier version of the original. So we named the new boat Mursu which is Finnish for walrus.
Here are some pics of Walter's handiwork.
Photo courtesy of Walter Baron. 
This last photo is how MURSU looked when Walter's part was done and we brought it home. We decided early on we'd like to finish off the boat, this means decking the compartments, making hatch covers, varnishing the interior, painting the exterior and installing the sliding seat system. Oh, and we thought we'd like to make 2 new sets of oars for the trip...more on that later.
That gets us to April 5th. I'll put up another post later this week to show the work we've completed on MURSU since then.
-Dameon
Bio posted!
Our bio was just posted on the R2AK website - click here! We've been anticipating this day (probably way too eagerly) because we love reading the ridiculous bios the R2AK organizers "lovingly" craft for each team....and because we're dorks. Caution, reading them is oddly addictive.
Hello world!
We're launching this website to share our love of "adventure rowing," and also to keep people updated on our status as we prepare for the biggest adventure of our lives to date: the Race to Alaska! (aka, the R2AK)
The R2AK begins June 3, 2019 at 5 am in Port Townsend, WA. We have A LOT to do between now and then...pretty much every spare moment between now and then will be devoted to finishing the boat, preparing our food and other supplies, and planning our route and strategies for covering the 750 miles as quickly as possible. (Even if it is mainly a sailing race and we have no chance of winning, we're still very much in a "race" mentality.) We'll post updates on this blog so you can follow us through the process of preparing for this 750-mile self-supported row.
Thanks for your interest! Please get in touch if you have questions, comments, and most importantly, words of advice for rowing the Inside Passage!
-Leigh & Dameon
