It started off swimmingly. The sun was out and the wind was following. Our spirits were high. Our bellies felt normal. We had a sunset beer.
Around eleven p.m., however, the swells got bigger, the wind got colder, and I started complaining.
We were sailing across the Canadian border north of Bellingham, Washington, when my grumpiness erupted in full force. Our crew—three forty-something moms—was halfway through a twenty-four-hour shakedown sail. A dress rehearsal, if you will, for the ridiculous maritime adventure called the Race to Alaska. With just a few weeks before we hit the start line, we were doubling down on preparations for the seven-hundred-fifty-mile journey from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska.
The first order of business: see if we could jigsaw ourselves and twenty days’ worth of food and water into our little boat. The second order of business: see how we fared after sailing a hundred-mile loop through the night.
As the most seasoned open-ocean sailor among us, you would think I
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