Race to Alaska Day 1 on Bad Kitty

We had a couple of hot, busy days in Victoria before the main race start. Checking out the boat and "fine tuning" the rowing and pedalling stations. Most of the other crews were doing the same thing, clearly no one has yet perfected the "human power" aspects of the boats. On Sunday we had a "Le Mans" style start, running down the pontoons from the starting line outside the Empress Hotel. Untie and pedal/row away. I was filming while pedalling, hence the jumpy video! Despite being almost the last to leave the dock we were very pleased to find we were about 4th boat out past Ogden Point, when we could hoist sails. We even overtook several small rowing boats. Fortunately a light, albeit patchy, wind filled in and we were able to sail. We had some very close, intense racing up past the San Juan islands and, as evening fell, the Canadian Gulf Islands. Even in very light winds modern multihulls go to windward well. The tide was on the change so we decided to go through Active Pass to the Strait of Georgia. Incredibly we found that, after 9 hours of racing, we were overlapped with Mail Order Bride as we pedalled out of the pass. We heard someone on shore shouting "don't go that way, there's a back eddy" so we gybed away. MOB didn't hear and 30 minutes later as night fell we were 1/2 mile ahead. More in the next video and see r2ak.com for more on the race.