Blog posts for the 2025 WA360

Day 9…sleep comes in fits and starts. I am dehydrated. Mouth is so dry. I cannot remember when I last ate….

My cat tells me it was 2 hours ago when I kicked her off the bed to get a midnight snack.

My husband is an athlete. He married a drama queen. It works.

Making friends

PandaBob moved up Whidbey Island into the San Juans. Here I will lose track of days and details so forgive me. Let’s just get to the end of this together then Doug and give a fantastic and detailed account of the entire race in blog posts to follow. They battled some brutal headwinds moving up the channel between Whidbey and Camano Islands into Skagit Bay where they passed Goat Island which was a required checkpoint. Now here they had to get up into the Swinomish Channel, but they had to navigate over/around a gravel bar that led all the way out to the island from the mainland. Once they were though they were into the channel. If you ever have the chance to travel up Swinomish Channel into LaConnor, apparently there are some massive homes on the cliffs above the channel. I saw one or two pics of Trish’s and it was insane. I’m looking forward to going back someday with Doug and checking it out. It sounds beautiful.

Once in LaConnor, they had to once again unload the boats and set up camp. Now one of Washington Parks and Rec’s great services is the Marine Trails. This is a series of campsites along the water all around Puget Sound just for kayakers. It’s awesome! Usually. But LaConner wasn’t thinking it out properly when they made a marine trails park up a hill from the water, around a sharp corner due to a giant tree. Folks, you don’t just leave your expensive kayak and gear tied up at the dock overnight while you sleep up the hill. It’s all got to come with you. This is where Team Zunderdog comes in! Robert McCall came here all the way from Leicester England to participate in the race! He had also stopped to camp at LaConnor and was kind enough to help Doug and Trish make the multiple treks up and down the hill with gear and kayaks. At the time this was happening, I had been watching the tracker and saw this guy’s tracker all over the place and thought WTH?!?!? I was sure it was a glitch with his tracker, turns out it was him helping PandaBob! lolololol.

Doug, Trish and Bob all hit it off and spent that evening together at dinner. Unfortunately the local Pub’s kitchen had just closed but they were kind enough to pop a frozen pizza in the oven for the kayakers. The next morning they all went back and filled up on a hearty bacon and egg brekkie before heading back up the channel out into Padilla Bay. Well, after of course trekking all the gear and kayaks back down the hill, around the corner and back to the water. Oh how easy the sailboats have it!!

The kindness of strangers in Bellingham

Padilla Bay and Bellingham Bay saw the paddlers hit with waves coming at them from all sides. They met up with Team 5.1428, a father and son team, and all paddled roughly together into Bellingham at the same time. Now here, I had planned to come up and meet them and spend the night camping. I planned it well and got there about 15 minutes before they rounded the corner from Marine Park in Fairhaven. I tell you I love seeing them paddling in sync. Here they were met by Mario with a bag of mosty frozen Mexican cream popsicles. They were tired, cold and wet but glad to be done for a while!

Now many times the paddlers must rely on ‘stealth’ camping at parks around the Sound, when there are not Marine Trails campgrounds or other campgrounds, and they have pulled up at a beach or park and just need to be done for a while. Unfortunately this day was Fouth of July and the crowds - and park rangers were out and we were told they were not going to be allowing any overnight camping of any kind, nor any overnight parking. That meant I was not going to be stealth sleeping in my car as planned. So now there was a conundrum…what to do with these boats loaded with gear? These paddlers were exhausted. This is where Bellingham kindness came in big time. It may have been Mario, it may have been someone else on the beach, or another paddler. Possibly Bob who had arrived earlier and gone inquiring - I can’t remember. But they learned of the Community Boating Center which was along the shoreline. Mary at CBC was happy to allow them to store their boats overnight in their locked lot. THANK YOU CBC!!! That took care of one problem. Now as Doug and Bob were off trying to figure out the issue of where we could sleep, a random stranger came up and started chatting, asking Trish if she was racing. He is a future R2AK (Race To Alaska) participant. He let us know that the lot behind CBC is pretty private and nobody ever goes back there and we could pitch tents there and be out of the way. We did just that. Though the lot was pretty full due to folks coming out to watch fireworks in the bay, we just waited for it all the clear out afterward then the paddlers pitched their tents amongst old sailboats int he boatyard, and I parked my car in front blocking them in. We had a restless night’s sleep with the train tracks running through right behind but the boats were safely locked in the CBC yard, and all was well.

I forgot to mention Bob - aka Team Zunderdog is on a Bob’s Burger tour while in the States and we went to dinner in Fairhaven and found a pub with a 1/2 pound Elk burger that was pretty damn good he said. And did I mention, he and Doug are long lost brothers?

I am going to leave it here because they are fast approaching the finish line and I need to be there. I am thankful they all stayed together after Bellingham because there was an emergency in the water this morning and Doug was able to be there to help Bob, and all is well. Their friendship is a lasting one after this race I believe. We will have to get over to England some day to visit him.

Farewell and thank you for sticking with this. I am OUT. Mic drop.