In March of 2020, at a time when everyone was isolated, Talkeetna resident Doug Smith was also adjusting to life without his wife and sailing partner of 35 years. And while some people took up knitting and others learned how to bake bread or write poetry, Smith decided to build a boat. 

This one took about a year and a half. I started it two winters ago. It was during the first COVID winter and I needed something to do. Ellen had just died, and I was like sitting in this house alone in the dark in the winter and going like, “I gotta get something together.” This Race to Alaska… I found out about it and it was an idea that, you know, I couldn’t quite shake. And I’ve built a number of boats. It’s just sort of a hobby. 

The Race to Alaska, or R2AK, is like the Iditarod, but on a boat. It’s a 750-mile course that goes from Port Townsend, Washington up the Inland Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska. Any form of boat is allowed, as long as it doesn’t have motors. This was the sixth R2AK, and the first one since the pandemic. 

Smith recounts his experiences to me over coffee. We sit at a kitchen table in the log cabin that he and his wife built from the ground up. 

Before the race, I’d have like an interview or two a day from different newspapers and podcasts. And one of them, I was being interviewed with two other people remotely. And one of them was a National Geographic’s adventurer of the year. He was gonna do this race on a stand-up paddle-board, and had done all this stuff around the world. It was amazing. And the other, the woman who was being interviewed, was from New Zealand and had skied to the south pole. And then they have me, who’s done nothing! 

Smith is just a guy with a love for sailing. 

And so they’re asking him. What do you eat? And he’s like “Oh I work with this company that makes custom food based on my weight and energy expenditure and nutritional needs.” You know, and then they asked me, and I went, you know, “I went to COSTCO and bought a case of jelly and a case of tasty bites.” You know, I didn’t know what I was doing and why are they interviewing me? So I felt dumb. I had nothing to say, but they keep asking, just as you were doing. 

As I set up my recording equipment, Smith tells me he didn’t like the high level of press coverage of the race. 

Oh no, it’s the media. They’re back, ahhh!

For Smith, sailing is about getting to places that he couldn’t reach by land, enjoying the scenery, and spending time with people that he loves. 

There are so many different aspects to it. But there’s just, you know, I think back to some like beautiful evenings—sunset, wind-blowing, tent knots, everything is just as it should be. Some great wildlife sightings. There was a pod of orcas that went by me, and there was often seals that couldn’t figure out what I was doing, would follow me for miles and miles. Just being out there where it’s gorgeous, and feeling so lucky to be there at that time. 

What made this sailing trip different for Smith was that he was doing it all by himself. 

It’s the first time. Part of this whole adventure was to see if I could keep sailing. I’d sailed with Ellen for 35 years. We had a larger boat which I sold because I couldn’t sail it by myself, and so this was like oh, can I sail by myself? So that was the test. And it was, yeah it was real interesting. 

There was an active text chain with Smith’s friends from Talkeetna, so when he had service he was able to receive messages of encouragement. And though Smith rose to the challenge of solo sailing, he says that he finds it a lot better with company. 

It’s more fun with other people. I got sick of always agreeing with myself, all my opinions, you know. I needed someone to challenge me a little bit, so yeah, and maybe get me a cup of coffee while I was sailing. 

The boat itself is a masterpiece. It’s small—just 650 pounds—and turquoise, with red sails. 

So in any bay or dock or even just sailing, people would come over and take pictures and go “Wow, what are you doing? Oh, that’s a nice boat.” You know, I’ve sailed a long time. I’ve never had anybody pay me any attention. 

Nell: You had fans. 

Evidently. I’m not sure why. You know, I just went sailing. 

Both Smith and the boat have character. 

It is named Dark Star.

Smith says that yes, the boat is named after the Grateful Dead song, but no, he’s not a Deadhead. His girlfriend made him an electric blue flag with the Grateful Dead skull logo to fly above him as he sailed. 

N: But yeah, there’s like sort of a tradition of expiration, adventure, and this race has been going on for a number of years, right? So did you sort of feel that sense of tradition, exploration? 

I don’t know about the tradition. It’s run by just this really fascinating, interesting group of people that have this big non-profit in Port Townsend. 

The race is presented by Fisheries Supply. Competitors sail in cold water, tidal currents, and winds. 

Bad weather in a little boat is worse than bad weather in a big boat. And I’m old. I got my butt kicked, for sure. If that makes it an adventure. If being wet and cold and hungry and tired makes something an adventure, it was definitely an adventure. 

The first part of the race is a 40-mile stretch from Port Townsend to Victoria, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is a relatively narrow passage between Washington and Vancouver Island. Smith explains that tides pass through that slot every day from Puget Sound and southern Vancouver City. There are always big currents in this area, but these turned out to be the biggest currents of the year. 

And those currents went against or met a gale at the time that this race started, which is like winds to 35-40 knots. It’s really significant. So when those two things met each other head on as we were leaving Port Townsend, everybody knew it was going to be pretty bad weather, but I didn’t know how bad. And I’ve been in some bad weather. 

Four boats had to be rescued and a lot of people quit. 

I had like a rogue eight or nine foot breaking wave wash completely over the boat and fill the cockpit with water. And that’s when I went, “Okay, I am way over my head here. I gotta get the hell out of here.” And so, yeah, then I headed back to shore and tried, rather than crossing the strait at that time, I thought, I gotta find some shelter and wait for this to go away. Which is what a lot of people ended up doing. 

Stage one is supposed to be the “Proving Grounds”—a way to test mental and physical toughness—where the Coast Guard is available to step in if needed. But this year, it was brutal. The second day was equally bad, and so R2AK organizers extended the deadline for the Victoria checkpoint. 

The Coast Guard said “Tell everybody they can’t cross. We don’t want to spend our day helicopter-rescuing people out of the drink,” You know, and so they told us all to hang tight. So we all—myself and a lot of other people, the kayakers and small boat people—were hanging out at Dungeness Spit for a day. 

Smith tells me it takes a certain type of person to decide to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 

There was definitely camaraderie, because it’s a nutty thing. It’s nutty people that would do it, basically. 

After those first days, Smith still had a long way to go.

So the third day, there was no wind. So I ended up rowing this boat, which had hundreds of pounds of gear and is not a rowboat. I rowed it, you know, 23-24 miles across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 

By the time he got to Victoria he was really beat up, and the race had barely started. He only had one night to recover. 

Here’s the good thing about it. It was a good learning experience. When this wave broke over me and I thought, “Man I’m going down.” And there was 35 knots of wind and higher gusts and the mast didn’t fall down, I thought “My God, whoever built this boat, I hope they knew what they were doing.” Because I just kept waiting for something to break, and it didn’t. So I was like, okay, by the time I got through that, I had complete faith in this boat’s ability to save me. You know, the boat was way better at this than I was. And that gave me confidence because there was a lot more of that coming up, later. 

Smith is familiar with the area, and he was happy with how his little skiff weathered the storm. 

Yeah, you know, Ellen and I had two different boats. We bought both of them down in Puget Sound and then sailed them up to Alaska. So I had done, I guess, four trips on the Inside Passage.

Okay, you got to Victoria and you had one night. And then you journeyed on, and you were gone for, you said three weeks right? So can you talk to me about the second leg of the trip? 

I had pulled my center board up to row across the Strait of Juan de Fuca 23 miles, and the next day the race was to Windward. I forgot my center board was up. So as a result, the boat was just blowing sideways, instead of going forward upwind. So everybody was just sailing away from me, and I couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, I got way behind everybody. And then, from then on I was just playing catch up. 

Smith was in last place for most of the race. 

N: So what was a typical day like? What did you do? What time did you get up? What time did you go to sleep? 

Once I started racing, basically I was just waking up in the morning, sailing all day long. Going to bed at night. Waking up, doing the same thing the next day—sailing or rowing. The sorest thing on me was my butt. I am not used to sitting on my butt on a boat all day. When I normally sail, it’s like, “Oh, here’s a beach. Let’s get off, let’s look for pretty rocks, let’s hike up this creek. Look for a lake. Go swimming. You know, go swimming. You know, go fishing.” This was just sail, sail, sail. 

Smith didn’t have time to cook, really. He ate instant oatmeal for breakfast, gorp for lunch, and cans of chili or pasta for dinner. 

So, it worked. But after, you know, like two or three weeks of that it’s like God, I want a tunafish sandwich or something. A piece of lettuce. I mean I was dying for vegetables. That is what I did not have, and I love vegetables. 

Though he was alone and eating substandard foods, there had never been so many people following his sailing progress. 

One thing that was odd about it was that the media was always there. They were buzzing around in boats filming you, dropping off reporters into the boat, and they would talk to you for an hour. And it was like, man! And I’m on this tracker that people are watching. And at first, it felt kind of like, “Oh boy, I’m a celebrity.” It was kind of cool. And then relatively quickly, it was like, “Man, just leave me alone.” You know? It was a little unsettling.

As the sailors were going through Seymour Narrows—a tidal gate where water squeezes into a small space and whooshes at about 20 knots—Smith decided he didn’t want to deal with the media on the other side. So, he took an alternative route over two rapids. 

But it turned out then that the R2AK people called different fishing lodges and stuff they knew. So they’d send different boats out to follow me around. Like for an hour and a half, a boat would be putting alongside, taking my picture and asking me questions. I’d go like, “Oh, I didn’t get away from anybody.” 

Finally, Smith got tired of the whole thing. 

Ultimately, I got to a place where I’d had a really hard sailing morning. There was another gale blowing. I was trying to sail against it. I got really beat up and had to stop. And at that point I realized I couldn’t get to Ketchikan in the time that I had. I didn’t really need to get to Ketchikan. So I decided I would turn around and sail relaxedly—without anybody tracking me—and have time to jump in a creek, read a book, do the things I like to do when I’m sailing. 

N: Yeah, it’s a good lesson in thinking about what you actually like about the sport or the activity, right? And following what you like. Yeah. 

Smith wrestled with feeling like a quitter, but he is ultimately both glad that he entered the race, and glad he decided to stop where he did. 

Johnstone Strait is where I turned around. I just got beat up there and the start was rough, and being by yourself, it’s more than twice as hard as being with two. So I really noticed that. 

After dropping out, he sailed around and revisited a lot of the little bays he hadn’t been to in years. 

I’m just a guy, who had a boat. It’s as much a race as you want to make it. You know, there are people in it to win that are competitive and spend their lives refining their craft. And others think it’s a well-supervised opportunity to camp and see if they can make it. So, that would be me in the latter category. You could do it. Get a kayak and go. 

He says it was a learning experience. 

If you put things off, then they don’t happen. Yeah, especially as you get old and not wise like myself, it’s like don’t put stuff off. If you’ve gotta do it, go after it. I’m so glad I did, and I’ll use the same approach to everything else going forward. 

Smith hoped to sail more this summer, but he forgot his rudder while packing up his trailer in Washington. He laughs as he tells me about his mistake, but says that he’s busy enough here. 

For now, he’s enjoying spending time playing bocce with his friends and relaxing in his beautiful home. He gazes out his bay windows with a view of a large beaver pond, and reminisces about how he and his wife dug up their basement years ago, moved in their wood-burning stove, and made Talkeetna home. 

Yeah, I had not sailed by myself since dingy sailing in college or high school, so yeah, that was a big challenge. Yeah, I had no idea if I could do that.

Though winning or even finishing the race wasn’t Smith’s goal, it was just the push that he needed to sail around a special part of the world. 

For KTNA, I’m Nell Salzman.

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