Recap of the Washington 360 Race - Part 1
Dameon and I have thru-rowed the coast of Maine unsupported, have rowed the Race to Alaska both together and separate, and have sprinkled in little row-camping adventures throughout our seven-year obsession with adventure rowing. We have rowed thousands of miles along unfamiliar or barely familiar coasts in wooden boats piled with gear and food. Yet we knew the Washington 360 would be different.
One, we’d have a bigger team. More people, more opinions, more personalities. Four rowers and a coxswain.
Two, we’d have a bigger boat - our Savo quad, a one-of-a-kind expedition boat designed with R2AK in mind and built by Dameon himself.
Three, our other trips have had an orderly schedule of rowing all day, sleeping all night. This time, we planned to get about 3-5 hours of sleep out of every 24, and that the sleep would happen at whatever time of day we happened to arrive at our designated stopping places.
Four, there would be human habitation all along the way. (For anyone who has closely followed our other journeys, you know that we prefer to deal with bears and wolves.)
Chuck Dorsey, father of Leigh & Clare, coxswain, navigator, and singer of sea chanties.
For the information junkies, here’s our race by the numbers:
Total distance: 290 nautical miles (330 statute miles)
Total time: 5 days, 11 hours
Total time in the boat: 72 hours (3 days)
Total strokes: 73,500 (estimated)
Saturday June 28:
1100 start - Port Townsend
2100 stop - Lisabeula Park on Vashon Island
47.5 nautical miles (54 statute)
10 hours on the water
Sunday June 29:
0300 start - Lisabeula Park on Vashon Island
1700 stop - Lisabeula Park
60.2 nautical miles (70 statute)
14 hours on the water
Monday June 30:
0400 start - Lisabeula Park on Vashon Island
1800 stop - Camano State Park
47.6 nautical miles (55 statute)
14 hours on the water
Tuesday July 1, part 1:
0400 start - Camano Island State Park
1300 stop - Saddlebag Island
27.5 nautical miles (31 statute)
9 hours on the water
Tuesday July 1, part 2:
1800 start - Saddlebag Island
2300 stop - Fairhaven (Bellingham Bay)
14.7 nautical miles (17 statute)
5 hours on the water
Wednesday July 2:
0800 start - Fairhaven
0930 stop - Fairhaven
7.3 nautical miles (8 statute)
1.5 hours on the water (no forward progress)
Thursday July 3:
0900 start - Fairhaven
2030 stop - Matia Island
45 nautical miles (51 statute)
11.5 hours on the water
Friday July 4:
0300 start - Matia Island
1000 stop - Port Townsend
41 nautical miles (47 statute)
7 hours on the water
Home stretch! Approaching Port Townsend after a smooth(ish) crossing of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Day 1 & 2
Our race got off to a slightly messy start. In all of our thinking and preparing for the race, we hadn’t thought much about the 30 seconds leading up to the starting gun going off. Definitely didn’t practice that part. So it was a surprise to all of us when, at the sound of the cannon blast, we started rowing as if propelled by demons, without waiting for our coxswain’s permission. Within approximately two strokes, we had blasted ourselves right into Team Meatball Jack’s 2-person pedal-drive catamaran, ramming the side of their center hull with our bow. Dad was not amused with his rowers’ mutinous exuberance and quickly and decisively brought us in hand as Meatball Jack sped away.
We spent most of the rest of the day feeling guilty and hoping we hadn’t done any damage. When we later saw they’d pulled out of the race, it felt as though our worst fears had come to pass.
A quick call and confession to the Race Boss around 7pm assured us that Meatball Jack had pulled out for other reasons. Whew.
For four out of the five of us, the Washington 360 race course covered all new territory. We are from New England. We have never rowed in any part of Puget Sound, unless you count the bit of Admiralty Inlet we’ve traversed in the first few miles of the Race to Alaska Proving Grounds. Thankfully, one of us - Ken Deem the Wave Forager - is from Tacoma and intimately familiar with the Sound and the vagrancies of its tides and currents.
I don’t know how many times we muttered to ourselves “The tides don’t do this on the east coast.”
Thanks to Ken, and his clever use of the Deep Zoom app, we were extremely keyed in to the direction of the currents at any given time, the places where we might find counter-currents along the shore, and the parts of the course that were tidal “gates,” where an opposing current would effectively close off the course for several hours.
The first 36 hours in particular were planned around the tides, and specifically Tacoma Narrows. And pretty much, that part went according to plan. From Port Townsend we rowed 54 miles to Vashon Island, slept at Lisabeula Park, and rose in the 2am darkness to pound overnight oats and coffee and launch by 3am to ensure we would pass through Tacoma Narrows around the time of slack water at 4 am, and then flow southward with the rising tide toward Olympia. If we could make it to Olympia Shoals and round the race buoy by 8am, we would then have the outgoing current pulling us back northward.
We flew through the Narrows with a good current already pushing us along, and made excellent speed for several miles past the Narrows. Winding through the southern sound toward Olympia, we passed many teams coming and going…mostly sailboats becalmed and chugging along with their pedal drives and oars. The last hour became baking hot as we crept, slower and slower it seemed, toward Olympia. Finally we rounded the mark and headed north again, happy to have at least the idea that the current should be with us again.
We sat in the boat in this order: Clare in one-seat (bow), Ken in two, Dameon in three, and Leigh in stroke at the stern. Dad coxed most of the way, except for a few hour-long change-outs with Leigh and Dameon in the first couple days. I felt far away from Clare, who is quiet most of the time but especially when concentrating on rowing. Every so often throughout the day I would call back, “Clare, how are you doing?” And she would answer, “Fine.”
The rest of that day was long and became harder and harder. By the time we were back to Tacoma Narrows, a northerly headwind had picked up, and was stacking up the waves in the Narrows where the outgoing tide went most strongly against the wind. We had a bouncy but fun ride through the Narrows.
A motor boat approached us through the choppy waves, and we recognized familiar faces! Ken’s family had come to cheer us on, his younger daughter Lucy bouncing in the bow and laughing with glee as the waves gave her a roller coaster ride. It was a well-timed pick-me-up, but sadly they couldn’t stay with us forever. At Point Defiance they turned toward Tacoma and we kept heading north up Colvos Passage, hoping to feel a continued push from the current.
But the headwind against the current was a little much. I didn’t think I could go another 12 miles to Blake Island, our “stretch” goal for the day. The second day into the race, my body was exhausted and had not yet acclimated to the long hours at the oars. After rowing 69 miles, we decided to stop again at Lisabeula Park, 10 miles short of Blake.
There is no water source at Lisabeula, and it was time to refill our water bags. Dad, always resourceful, quickly scanned the crowd of day visitors at the park and selected the nicest-looking person among them. Luckily, his instincts were correct, and our benefactor Kim very kindly took Clare and all our empty water bags to her house to fill them up. In exchange, the team helped Kim load her kayak on her car. Thank you Kim, if you’re reading this, for your gracious assistance!
Day 3
Now, we were off the original plan, which had had us stopping at Blake Island briefly, then getting up in the middle of the night to row past Seattle in the dark.
Instead, we slept till 3am and left at 4 am headed for Camano Island State Park over 50 miles away. For me, it would be the worst day of the race. My body was still adjusting to beast mode, and not quite there yet. The morning was still and cool and lovely, but later the stillness meant hot, hot rowing weather. We stopped twice along the shore to stretch and stand in the water, bringing our core temperatures down.
We played chicken with a ferry at Edmunds (they love it when rowboats do that) and experimented with blasting tunes from the JBL-GO portable waterproof speaker to take our minds off our misery as the relentless sun beat down. (The tunes worked surprisingly well to relieve the monotony. Why had we never done this before? I don’t know.)
Our breaks got longer and longer as we found excuses to avoid getting back on our seats…more sunscreen, more electrolytes. There is a particular aching discomfort in the buttocks caused by long hours at the oars that no amount of contoured seating and cushions can prevent. I chalk it up to the fact that you’re cutting off blood flow to muscles that are actively in use.
At times when we needed it, Dad would sing us one of the many sea chanties he’d learned just for the journey. Thankfully, he has a good voice and can stay on key with only the wind and waves for backup. It was interesting to feel our strokes become more synced up, and smoother, every time he sang to us.
In the afternoon that day, we noticed an interesting phenomenon as we rowed past Columbia Beach on Whidbey Island. The flags at the south end of the beach were blowing with us. A few hundred yards to the north, in the middle of the row of beach-front homes, the flags were standing still. And a few more hundred yards past those, the flags were whipping in the opposite direction to the first set of flags! The light tailwind we’d picked up on the south side of Whidbey changed abruptly to a head wind. It was mild at first, but as we approached Langely it grew steadily stronger.
The last eight miles were tortuously slow as we northward, hugging the shore of Camano Island in a vain attempt to find a lee from the wind. Dad made the mistake of telling us we were two hours from the state park where we planned to stop for the night…then 30 minutes later telling us again that we were two hours away. We decided then that the coxswain would only tell the rowers “miles to go,” not “hours to go.”
My favorite chanty of my dad’s was a simple one that repeats many verses of “A fill-in-the-blank-luxury wouldn’t do us any harm…” The chorus “And we’ll roll the old chariot along,” literally rolls along in a rhythm clearly created by someone who’d spent a very long time on the waves. It was the perfect cadence for our long, slow, ground-covering strokes.
Yes, you may have heard it on the Fisherman’s Friends soundtrack.
After running through the more traditional verses - a drop of Nelson’s blood, a dram of whiskey, and so on - we would come up with our own. On this day, I suggested many food-focused verses, culminating in “a slice of pizza wouldn’t do us any harm, Oh, a slice of pizza wouldn’t do us any harm…a slice of pizza wouldn’t do us any harm. And we’ll all hang on behind!”
As we neared the steep headland that defines the state park, the waves kicked up to three-foot short choppy seas. We had no choice but to plow onward. After what seemed a very long time, we arrived in the calmer waters on the south side of Camano Island State Park. I have rarely felt so completely spent as I did then. We looked about and wondered where to bring the boat ashore, then noticed a small motor boat with a family of four approaching slowly (which is the way we love for curious motorboats to approach!).
They pulled within shouting distance and began to cheer for the Toads! And then, miraculously, we heard the words “We have pizza for you!” In their hands were individual slices wrapped in tin foil! Still warm!! Making expert use of a long-handled net, they delivered five slices of warm pizza and five still somewhat frozen popsicles! The were the sister, neices, and brother-in-law of one of the members of Team Salish Seasters, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for giving us a boost when we really, really needed one. The day’s 55-mile journey felt every bit as draining as the previous day’s 69 miles.
It was probably another 45 minutes before we finally had the boat pulled up on shore at the park, and began to go out meeting our needs for bathrooms, drinking water, hot food, and rest. It’s a busy park, and we’d come ashore in the busiest area, skipping the kelp-infested waters of the marine trail campsite (where we feared we’d tangle and damage our rudder) for the wave-infested boat ramp on the park’s west-facing shore. The ranger let us keep the boat there but at 9pm made us take down our tents and move our sleep-deprived selves a quarter mile away to the marine campsite. (He was only doing his job of course.) Clare and I walked with our sleeping pads and sleeping bags crumpled in our arms, spread them out in the ranger-approved spot, and slept under a starlit sky until our alarms went off at 3am. Dameon went somewhere, Ken somewhere else. Dad remained huddled almost underneath Merisusi’s hull, the ranger having mistook him for a pile of drybags.
Lucky conditions on the Strait of Georgia on the day we rounded the mark at Point Roberts
Day 4
If Day 3 had been a trial to see what we were made of, Day 4 was our reward. Or, at least the first part of it was. We set off from Camano State Park in darkness, vowing never to return again (not the park’s fault, but it had been a stressful stay).
Calmness and light winds greeted us in the early morning. We zipped up to Skagit Bay and found ourselves with enough water covering the mudflats to make a diagonal beeline across the bay to the hole-in-the-wall at Goat Island, where we snuck between the breakwater and the island and entered the narrow approach to Swinomish Channel. Dad said it felt like approaching the entrance to Brigadoon… Certainly a portal of some kind, as within a couple strokes we transitioned from the wide open wilds of Skagit Bay, through a narrow, cliff-rimmed opening into the placid calm of Swinomish Channel, which was lined with neatly kept homes and marinas.
The current was with us as we glided along, feeling almost guilty for how easy the miles were.
With self control, we resisted the urge to stop on the docks of La Conner and find the nearest shop selling cinnamon rolls (for Leigh and Ken) and beer (for Dameon, Clare, and Dad).
Team Salish Seasters drifted by while we were taking a break and threw us a bag of cookies! An hour later, the team aboard the sailboat Muffin tossed us an 8-pack of the boat’s namesake baked goods. It seemed humans have an innate instinct to shower long-distance rowers with carbohydrates. Which is great for us!
The good weather and easy rowing continued all the way to Saddlebag Island, a little ways northeast of Anacortes. We stopped there around 1pm, after only about 30 miles, with what we believed to be a genius plan: sleep through the hottest part of the day, get up in the early evening and row through the night. Dameon waxed poetic about his previous night-rowing experiences. The winds would die down, the moon would come up, we would glide along on the dark silky surface, leaving puddles of swirling phosphorescence with each dip and splash of the oars. The weather forecast seemed to confirm this vision.
So at 6 pm (after discovering that I actually don’t really sleep well in the middle of the day, even when I’m physically exhausted), we left a perfectly beautiful and delightfully uninhabited island (complete with composting outhouse) and headed out. The weather was fair for the first hour or so, and then a breeze began to build.
We skirted huge anchored freight ships in Samish Bay, where the wind continued to increase. Now a stiff southeast breeze blew across Samish Bay, driving steep two- and three-foot waves before it. The waves were coming off our starboard quarter, and we glided along in the troughs fairly well without any negative impact on our speed. Dameon and I had been out in waves like these before and knew the boat could handle it. But it was getting a little nasty.
At one point, an especially forceful wave triggered our rudder’s kick-up mechanism. Dad called the rowers to stop, and we used the oars to position the boat perpendicular to the steep waves, to minimize the rocking. This was key, since Dad had to get up, turn around, and lean far back over the aft deck to shift the rudder back into its proper position. He did it on the first try, and we were soon underway again.
The wind continued to gradually build as the sun set and the twilight fell. Apparently Bellingham Bay is known to be a bit of “washing machine,” but we didn’t know about that reputation. We just couldn’t figure out why the forecast had been so wrong. Still, as we came into the wind shadow of the mainland shore around Chuckanut and then Fairhaven, things calmed a little. We were tricked into thinking maybe we could continue.
A sailboat, which we assumed was part of the race, was just ahead of us. They rounded the yellow buoy that was the mandatory race checkpoint, and headed back toward the opening of the bay. We followed suit, rounding the yellow marker as the last of the light drained from the sky.
Within a few minutes of rounding the buoy, we noticed the seas picking up again as we got further from the lee provided by the shore. It was after 10 pm now, and dark. Steep, three- and sometimes four-foot breaking waves were hitting us directly on the port beam, sometimes dumping in gallons of water.
We tried a slightly different heading…but it wasn’t any better. It was clear to me that it wasn’t a good idea to make the crossing to Portage Island, and after a quick discussion with the crew, we turned to port and headed into Fairhaven. Ken knew of the Community Boat Club there, and a dock. Within 10 minutes we were in flat waters, and soon tied up on dock, so protected from the waves that my brain could hardly justify the alarming experience of twenty minutes early with the quiet calm of the harbor.
It was around 11pm. So much for peaceful night rowing! We stumbled around in a bit of a daze, chatted with a local who assured it we’d be safe sleeping there for the night, and rolled out our sleeping bags on the dock. Freight trains roared by about every hour or so, maybe 60 feet from our heads. Strangely, I rested better than I had at Camano State Park the night before. Perhaps sheer exhaustion was finally paying off, at least in the sleep department.
