The text that came through early in the morning from Team Holopuni hit me like a punch: “On Canadian Coast Guard boat after being rescued. All ok. Call shortly.”

I was floored. For the past eleven days, I had been chasing Marty and Chris Fagan and their friend Danny Geiger as they sailed and paddled a Hawaiian-style canoe 690 miles up British Columbia’s Inside Passage on the gonzo cold-water odyssey known as the Race to Alaska, or R2AK. And when I had gone to bed the night before, they had been 90 percent of the way to Ketchikan, the race’s finish line, with no particular sign of trouble.

But as I soon learned, their sailing canoe, Holomoana, had drifted into unruly waves during the night, and they swamped. I shuddered to imagine the three of them clinging to the canoe in fifty-degree water, desperate for deliverance. It would be two hours before help arrived. As they waited, they stared at their belongings stacked on the canoe’s trampolines—dry bags stuffed with clothing, sleeping bags, electronics, paddles, stove, map case. “All the things that kept us safe and alive on an outrigger canoe for eleven days straight,” Chris later recounted. “Suddenly, none of it mattered.”

The R2AK has two rules: no motors, no support. The organizers liken it to the famed Iditarod dog-sled race, only on a boat with a chance of drowning or being run down by a freighter, or, they tout with twisted glee, “being eaten by a grizzly bear” during a stop along the untamed Inside Passage shoreline. Yet for all the competitors’ tribulations, the first place team wins a mere $10,000—maybe just enough to cover expenses, if that. And second prize? A set of steak knives.

“There’s a feeling that comes from conquering the adversity, getting to the end,” explains three-time R2AK veteran Drew Smith. “This isn’t a race against other people. It’s against whether or not you’re going to give up.”

The challenge fit neatly into the Fagans’ adventure résumé, which includes becoming the first American husband-and-wife team to reach the South Pole unassisted. (In 2014 they skied the nearly six hundred miles to the Pole in forty-eight days, pulling two-hundred-pound supply sleds behind them.) As Chris describes in her memoir The Expedition, the practice of “stepping out of the ordinary to realize the extraordinary qualities we all possess” has been integral to their lifestyle ever since she and Marty met in 1998 while climbing Denali, North America’s highest peak.

Within six weeks of that high-altitude courtship, Marty left his job at the Honolulu Police Department and moved to Chris’ home in Seattle. When their son Keenan was seven, they towed him around Mount Kilimanjaro on a tag-along bike, and when he turned 17 they climbed to the top together.

Team Holopuni’s third member, Danny, is a lifelong sailor cut from similar cloth. Like Marty and Chris, he is an ultra-runner in his mid-fifties with a predilection for endurance events. “Deep contentment often comes from hard work,” he tells me. “To others it may look like pain, but to me it brings great joy doing something you love with integrity and passion.”

Conception

The R2AK had been percolating in Marty’s head for a few years, but he wanted to take it on as a physical challenge beyond simply sailing. Having lived in Hawai‘i, he started envisioning doing the race in a customized outrigger sailing canoe.

Along the way, he heard about a model of three-person sailing canoe built on Kaua‘i called Holopuni, or “to sail everywhere,” a modern adaptation of a traditional Polynesian design. The thirty-foot craft, with a narrow hull and ama (outriggers) on each side for stability, can be either sailed or paddled and rides ocean swells easily. Given the Alaska race’s often extreme conditions—dense fog and rain, raging gales and currents, and eighteen-foot tide swings—a vessel that can hug the shoreline is a definite plus. Having nowhere to hide from the elements is another matter completely, but that’s just the kind of challenge the team was looking for.

Eventually, Marty phoned the canoe’s designer, Nick Beck. With a lifetime of his own sailing adventures at 79, Nick was smitten by the spirit of R2AK, which organizers herald as “a celebration of tradition, exploration and the lawless self-reliance of the gold rush.” So he sold his personal canoe Holomoana (“sea voyager”) to the team, and within a couple of months she was clocking long distances across Puget Sound on training runs with her new Pacific Northwest crew.

The Proving Ground: Port Townsend

It’s June 2, the day before the forty-mile qualifying leg across the wily Strait of Juan de Fuca launches from Port Townsend, Washington, a nineteenth-century seaport that had pinned its hopes on becoming the “New York of the West” until the transcontinental railroad was laid to Seattle instead. Today it’s an eclectic community of artists, many of whom can also tie a bowline knot with one hand.

At the docks by the Northwest Maritime Center, which puts on the R2AK each year, forty-six crews are readying their boats—all manner of trimarans, catamarans and monohulls modified with pedal drives, rowing stations, even an old-school paddle wheel. Sixteen of the vessels are under twenty feet long. Six, including two stand up paddleboards, are exclusively human-powered. Twelve people are attempting the race solo.

Aboard Holomoana Marty, Chris and Danny field questions from onlookers: Where will they sleep? (On the canoe’s trampolines.) What will they eat? (Granola, dehydrated meals and snacks galore.) Where’s the toilet? (It’s a bucket named Mr. Dookie.) Meanwhile, die-hard fans get R2AK tattoos and buy t-shirts declaring themselves “Tracker Junkies” after the online map that lets fans follow each boat’s progress in real time.

The racers have all kinds of day jobs: nuclear physicist, engineer, teacher, submarine captain, fisherman. This race, explains Race Boss Daniel Evans, tends to summon “the everyday hero” rather than yachting’s elite.

At nightfall the clang of loose halyards on steel masts echoes across town. The next morning, the race gets under way at 5 a.m. with a gale warning in effect and fifteen hundred spectators on the pier. The teams have a maximum of thirty-six hours to make it the forty-odd miles across the strait to Victoria on the southern tip of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island.

By 9 a.m. the fastest finishers—large sailboats engineered to fly in blistering winds—are already checking in with Canadian customs, but most of the smaller boats decide to wait for calmer conditions. At 11:30 a.m. Team Holopuni makes it to just a couple of miles from Victoria Harbor, but thirty-knot headwinds and a five-knot current force them to take a slow detour to nearby Gonzales Beach, where they pull up next to bikini-clad sunbathers. Photographer Dana Edmunds and I grab a taxi from the harbor to catch up with them.

“It was big water—legitimately six feet, which looks like ten or twelve feet when you’re at sea level,” describes Danny excitedly. “Holomoana was amazing. It was remarkable to watch her slice through gnarly, short-period waves that would have destroyed a monohull.”

After ten hours at sea, they’re famished but in good spirits. They dry out their gear on giant driftwood logs, and Chris puts a call in for pizza delivery. Racers are free to tap spontaneous resources—hardware stores, supermarkets, friendly locals—as long as the assistance is not prearranged by the crew.

As Marty organizes his belongings, he shows us a black-and-white portrait of a handsome man with thick eyebrows that he’s kept tucked inside a waterproof pouch with his phone and passport. “Sir Ernest Shackleton,” he says reverently, gazing at the legendary explorer who kept his crew alive for two years and led them to safety after their ship was crushed by ice during his 1914 expedition to Antarctica.

Shackleton’s resolve is especially meaningful to Marty, who several years ago was diagnosed with a rare type of skin cancer, which later scans showed had spread to both lungs. Determined not to let cancer compromise his identity, he promptly went on a ninety-five-mile solo run around Mount Rainier. The R2AK race, he says, adds to his life legacy: “I like to imagine my son forty years from now, sitting with his grandkids looking at pictures and saying, ‘That’s your great-grandma and great-grandpa. Look what they did.’”

The Starting Line: Victoria

The next morning Team Holopuni paddles into Victoria at 7:15 a.m., well ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline. Floatplanes and water taxis are already crossing the picturesque harbor, which is backed by a stately row of historic buildings and pubs.

The race crews spend the day provisioning for the long haul ahead. Chris packs enough food for eight days and water for three. Danny applies epoxy to part of the stern ‘iako (crossbeam) that has started delaminating. Marty loads navigation soft-ware onto a tablet.

At 4:42 p.m. a burst of applause greets Thor Belle and Pax Templeton of Team Funky Dory as they arrive just under the deadline aboard their sixteen-foot open boat, which had been left to rot in the bushes for a decade before the previous owner sold it to them for a dollar. The two childhood friends from Maine put a thousand hours of sweat and love into giving the old dory a second life in order to race and raise awareness for Pacific Wild’s ocean conservation work.

En route to Victoria, they had encountered waves that threatened to swallow their little craft whole and were forced to bail out its hull with a milk jug most of the way. Right outside the harbor, they got caught in an eddy and flipped over but were able to right the boat, gather their gear and row to the finish line with eighteen minutes to spare.

Two days later, the thirty-six remaining teams line up at noon next to a statue of Captain Cook, who came across the harbor in 1778 on his journey north between his first sighting of Hawai‘i and his second, fatal visit. Following a motivational speech from Race Boss Evans, an air horn blasts. Racers sprint to their boats and shove off in an odd flotilla powered by oar, pedal and paddle, since no sailing is allowed inside the harbor.

Lighter boats, like the 120-pound Finnish double rower raced by Leigh Dorsey and Dameon Colbry of Team Backwards AF—the only non-sailing boat to qualify for the main race—zip to the front of the pack. For Team Ziska: Sail Like a Luddite’s craft, a refurbished 1903 nobby whose solid wood spars, steel rigging and canvas sails weigh in at fifteen tons, it’s slow going. Team Holopuni paddles out somewhere in the middle, unfurling Holomoana’s bright orange and yellow sails as they glide past the breakwater, Alaska bound.

Checkpoint One: Seymour Narrows

The first of two mandatory checkpoints is at Seymour Narrows, halfway up the east coast of Vancouver Island. Captain George Vancouver, who charted the Pacific Northwest coast, called it “one of the vilest stretches of water in the world,” with vicious currents that can be exacerbated by opposing winds.

Boats moving through at the wrong time can encounter dangerous whirlpools, standing waves and extreme turbulence. “It can be glassy and calm, then all of a sudden a circle up to fifty feet wide will develop, and whitecaps just pop up out of it,” describes R2AK media boat driver Daphne Stuart, calling it the “boiling water effect.” Even monster cruise ships time their arrival at the narrows to avoid the tidal current.

Team Holopuni approaches Seymour Narrows on day three of the race, making a pit stop first at the town of Campbell River for water and a bucket of fish and chips. Bellies full, they sail through without issue and stop at Brown’s Bay to wait for a favorable tide and recharge their electronics.

The next afternoon, Dana and I hire the only boat available—a small barge—and catch up with them in the middle of Johnstone Strait. Absent are the thirty-knot winds and anvil-headed waves notorious for breaking boats here. Instead the crew takes long, heavy paddle strokes through the prevailing still water, dwarfed by towering pines on both sides of the two-mile-wide channel.

At dawn on day seven, Team Holopuni has traveled 280 miles. By now ten teams have already crossed the finish line in Ketchikan, with Team Angry Beaver’s sleek monohull taking first place in four days, three hours and fifty-six minutes. Four boats have dropped out, and the rest are scattered hundreds of miles apart along the Inside Passage. With each passing day, exposure and exhaustion take a greater toll. That night I receive a text from Marty: “Low on fuel. VHF dropped. Near miss cruise ship in fog. Cool whale breach. C&M 20 Anniversary today. Spirits high!”

Checkpoint Two: Bella Bella

“Once you get through Seymour Narrows, the people become much fewer and rescue becomes harder,” says Race Boss Evans. “Everything gets farther and farther away until you get to a place where, when you’re screaming, no one’s going to hear you.”

For thousands of years, coastal First Nations have relied on the labyrinth of inlets along British Columbia’s wild Central Coast as roads to resources. Bella Bella, the second checkpoint, is a Heiltsuk community of 1,450 residents located in the sixteen-million-acre Great Bear Rainforest, part of the largest unspoiled tract of coastal temperate rainforest on earth.

On day seven we cross paths with the bedraggled crew of Team North2Alaska on their way to Bella Bella. Their arms are burning from days of continuous rowing, and their camping stove broke so they can’t make coffee, but they’re learning to suffer cheerfully. “There are three kinds of men in this world: those who are living, those who are dead and those who are at sea,” cracks their skipper, Henry Veitenhans, the race’s youngest captain at 19. Henry and his dad hand built their boat, an aluminum sharpie originally designed for oyster harvesting in Chesapeake Bay.

They arrive in Bella Bella late at night and wander into the hospital to ask what time the store opens. Seeing their scruffy reflections in a mirror, they laugh at their own struggle. In the morning they brush their teeth, buy stove parts and prepare to row again.

Marty, Chris and Danny land Holomoana at Shearwater, a fishing resort across from Bella Bella, at 7 p.m. on day eight. A kind employee opens the marine store so they can replace their VHF radio, and they eat burgers and pie at the restaurant, where Raptors fans are watching the NBA finals.

For several days they’ve paddled in seemingly endless two-hour shifts, snatching the occasional mid-stroke nap when their eyelids shut involuntarily. Sailing spurts have been few and far between, and the conditions are testing their resilience. “We live in the northwest—we know how to adventure in a wet climate,” Chris e-mails. “We’ve traveled across Antarctica; we know how to be cold. But the inability to escape the wetness—the need to have our drysuits on constantly—is a challenge.”

Shearwater’s grocery store is closed, and they are a few days short of food. Word spreads quickly over the alpine wireless, and soon locals are donating supplies from their own cupboards. Reinvigorated by the generosity of strangers, the team departs at 5:30 a.m. on day nine. The forecast calls for favorable southerly winds, and they begin to envision the finish line.

The Finish Line: Ketchikan

With an average rainfall of 141 inches a year, Ketchikan edges out Hilo as the nation’s rainiest city. (By comparison, Seattle gets just thirty-eight inches.) Standard attire includes hooded jackets and jeans tucked into XtraTufs, the fisherman’s deck boot of choice. The residents are as rugged as the landscape, though each summer cruise ship visitors roughly double the population.

Nothing underscores this race being all about the journey more than the fanfare-free finish at Thomas Basin, where an R2AK banner is camouflaged in a sea of masts at the end of the Alaska Fish House pier, and a brass ship bell hangs from a stand built from two-by-fours. With plenty of northern daylight left at 8:30 p.m. on day ten of the race, it’s forty-eight degrees and a steady rain is falling.

As Team Seaforth Expeditions nears the finish, a small following from the Ketchikan Yacht Club—which lavishes racers with hot showers, bonfires and salmon bakes—gathers on the dock. The crew hugs the Race Boss, rings the bell and downs well-deserved beers before making off for bed. The dock empties and the rain persists.

Team North2Alaska drifts in shirtless on day eleven, dry suits peeled to their waists, hands wrecked. Their welcoming committee is the family corgi, who licks their salty faces. They’re out of cigarettes, out of food, out of steam. “Time to start looking for a job,” Henry mutters, grinning.

Later that day Chris calls with an update. Team Holopuni has been pushing nonstop since 3 a.m., dodging a minefield of logs and catching some brisk sailing. But she admits that “last night was probably the hardest night we’ve had with rain and cold and extreme tiredness.” Later on she texts, “60 miles to go. Keep watching tracker. Plan to go all night long!!!”

Rescue, Recovery, Resolution

In an emotional phone call from Prince Rupert, the port where the Canadian Coast Guard dropped Team Holopuni off, Chris tells me what happened. Around 8 p.m. they had sailed out to more open water because the inside route was too calm to make decent time. For a while they flew across the ocean, but unwittingly they strayed off course and headed toward Celestial Reef, where the swells are steep and confused.

At 4 a.m. Marty was at the helm when they found themselves in what Chris called “a bathtub of waves going in all directions.” Marty was steering down seven-foot swells when a massive wave pitched over his head from the stern. It knocked off his glasses and blasted through the protective spray skirt, filling the cockpit with water.

Chris tried to bail, but for every bucket of sea she emptied, several more came in. Two big waves hit them with a one-two punch, and suddenly the gunwales were at sea level. “Chris, you can stop bailing now,” Danny told her.

In a suspended moment of disbelief, the reality of their situation sank in: The canoe was swamped, afloat only by the grace of the outriggers, and it was impossible to bail out the water in such waves. Land was ten miles away. The only buffer between their bodies and hypothermia was a drysuit.

They quickly agreed to call for help. Marty pressed the SOS button on their emergency beacon while Danny called the Coast Guard on the VHF radio: “Mayday, mayday. This is Team Holopuni from the Race to Alaska.”

The closest boats were two hours away. The crew waited on the canoe’s trampolines, inches above the water, wrapped in their waterproof sleeping sacks to ward off the chill. Danny, utterly exhausted, fell asleep, but the rush of adrenaline kept Chris and Marty warm and somehow calm.

The radio crackled with an update: “Boats are thirty minutes out.” But when they were within a mile of the reported GPS coordinates, they couldn’t see Holomoana, so Marty sent up flares, channeling every ounce of Ernest Shackleton he could muster. A Canadian Coast Guard Zodiac finally arrived. “We are here to help you,” a female officer offered. “Would you like to board our vessel?” They gratefully accepted and abandoned Holomoana to the sea, hoping to use the GPS beacon to find her again later and tow her to shore.

The following day they mount a search for Holomoana aboard a friendly Ketchikan Yacht Club member’s boat and manage to find her that evening. After anchoring overnight, the entourage returns to the mouth of Ketchikan Harbor with the canoe in tow. In the end the trio paddles Holomoana the last mile across the finish line for closure, although the team is officially listed as non-finishers of the race.

In a closing letter to competitors, Race Boss Evans addresses the eleven crews whose race ended somewhere before Ketchikan. “How can a person be satisfied after pushing up against a challenge, giving everything … yet still coming up short?” he writes. “In struggles as deep as these, you find identity. In this, everyone’s story is valid.”

Over the next week, Marty, Chris and Danny replay the events leading up to their SOS. They agree fatigue, navigation issues and unpredictable weather all played a part. In hindsight Chris believes they should have rested before making their final push, “but the wind was in our favor and the pull of Ketchikan was strong—hot showers and soft beds.”

“Sure, I had visualized ringing the bell, but we don’t feel bad,” she reflects. “Maybe at a different time in our lives we’d say, ‘Let’s get back in that boat where we took it out and finish.’ But now that finish line isn’t what it’s all about. We had a great adventure and that is enough for us.” HH