In short order, the R2AK has joined the world of legendary yacht races - except that it doesn't happen in yachts. Those who survive would certainly then be qualified to run yachts but, for some reason, we imagine hot showers and an icebox aboard wouldn't appeal to this group. Regardless, they'll all be sailing on June 18th as they make their way north in the R2AK race from Port Townsend, WA to Alaska where the sun never sets so there's no 'off watch.'
If you're still trying to figure out what to do to celebrate sailing on June 18th you have until April 15th (tax day) to sign up and join the sail to the all-day sunlight. Here's a little more explanation and one of the profiles of an already entered participant:
Race to Alaska Explained
Stage 1 Race start: June 13, 2022, Port Townsend, Washington
Stage 2 Race start: June 16, 2022, Victoria, BC
Application deadline: Tax Day baby! April 15th
The inside passage to Alaska has been paddled by native canoes since time immemorial, sailing craft for centuries, and after someone found gold in the Klondike the route was jammed with steamboats full of prospectors elbowing each other out of the way for the promise of fortune.
It’s in the spirit of tradition, exploration, and the lawless self-reliance of the gold rush that Race to Alaska was born. R2AK is the first of its kind and North America’s longest human and wind powered race, and currently the largest cash prize for a race of its kind.
Trigger warning: Childhood labor, trucker speed, trimarans, and well-qualified teams… also self-pleasure.
Maybe we’re losing our edge.
Since the time we launched this thing until whatever version of right now that you’re reading this, the secret weapon of the R2AK has been our singular ability to goad otherwise responsible people into the questionable act of taking engines out of boats and going to Alaska. People have learned to sail, bought boats, moved cross country, quit drinking, ended marriages, all because we offered up some version of: This is dangerous, we’re not helping, please stay home, give us money
We can’t tell if we’re that bad or his white knuckles are that good, but either way, other than the pandemic excuse we’re shocked that Team Pestou has resisted the Race to Alaska for this long. He was born for this.
Usually, there is at least something out of place when a team applies. There’s some boat detail that doesn’t fit, they don’t have all their crew or all the skills, they lack the experience. Sometimes it’s all of the above—there was a kiteboarder who wanted in but had yet to learn to kiteboard. Hard no. Team Pestou is the opposite; examining his life from conception to now, there seem to be few things that he has done that weren’t unknowingly linked, optimized, and aligned to doing the R2AK, solo, in a trimaran.
Skills, experience, nothing out of place—Team Pestou is the weatherman hairdo of R2AK 2022.
He was born to a father who sailed solo across the Atlantic in the ’72 OSTAR race back in its scrappy, wild-west glory days when multihulls were starting to dominate, someone tried rolling solo on a 128’ three-masted schooner, and half the fleet didn’t make it. Pesty the Elder’s 55’ trimaran finished mid-pack and would become the younger Pesty’s childhood home and training academy. Starting early, Eric started winning races on Hobies; in his first race, he grabbed his first win by out-sailing the fleet of older sailors on his Hobie 14. He was 14, and already four years into his gig as watch officer for the family charter business, running deliveries between Caribbean islands on the big tri—island-hopping he also did solo on his Hobie when he had a day off from his day job and homeschool declared it a holiday.
For the rest of the story on Team Pestou.
For the record, we’d like to retroactively transfer into his homeschool.