Benefield: Sonoma County kayaker completes big race in tiny boat

When encouraging participation, race organizers tend to promote the romance factor - touting fast courses, gorgeous scenery and top-shelf post-race treatment.

Not the Race to Alaska crew. Read this, from their “About the Race” section of their website (under the heading “750 miles of 50-degree water”): “It’s like the Iditarod, on a boat, with a chance of drowning … being run down by a freighter, or eaten by a grizzly bear. There are squalls, killer whales, tidal currents that run upwards of 20 miles an hour, and some of the most beautiful scenery on god’s green earth.”

Sounds like a blast.

What sounds even better? Doing it in a kayak.

Who would be bananas enough to sign up for this?

Meet Mike Higgins.

Higgins, an experienced expedition kayaker and west Sonoma County resident whom his friends have dubbed “Czar of the Left Coast” for his epic paddling trips covering the coasts of Washington south to Baja, queried his buddies: Who wants to do the inaugural Race to Alaska?

“I got a resounding silence,” he said.

Though, he admits, one or two of his pals did chime in a bit.

“A few people were saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’?” he said.

Higgins, 62 and a retired computer programmer, would not be deterred. He decided to go it alone.

“I have done a lot of wilderness solo trips,” he said. “I’m comfortable being alone.”

At the official race start in Victoria, British Columbia, June 7, Higgins, whose P.O. box is in Cazadero but whose home is closer to Duncans Mills, lined up his 17-foot Prijon Kodiak with a pop-up sail next to sloops and trimarans. His was the smallest vessel in the race.

“I was racing against specially designed carbon-fiber racing boats,” he said. “I knew, from the very beginning, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I could win the race.

“The only boat I was racing was the sweep boat,” he said.

The course, which took racers up the rugged and wild Inside Passage, had two checkpoints and few rules. First and foremost: no motors. Racers could stop at a store or hotel (if they found one) but they could not have pre-planned “drop boxes” waiting for them. They could accept the aid of strangers, just so long as it was a luxury open to all racers.

“It’s sail, paddle or row,” said race boss Daniel Evans. “No motors, no outside assistance. You can’t have a cache of gear or food; you can’t have a van waiting for you.”

If you break down you can borrow tools, but you have to restart the race where you broke down.

It’s based on the honor system.

“There was no way we could police all of this,” Evans said. “Be honorable. Why would you want to win anything like this by being dishonorable?”

Like it says on their website, “This ain’t professional cycling.”

Higgins camped most nights but accepted the hospitality (and laundry services) of strangers tracking racers’ progress online on a few nights.

“I’m usually pretty happy camping anyway,” Higgins said. “It wasn’t even, ‘Boy! I can have a shower?’ It was more, ‘I can have a shower? Great.’?”

That’s the way Higgins rolls.

Evans figured that while the race route is officially 750 miles, participants likely covered hundreds more.

“It was all upwind, you could easily have gone 1,200 miles,” he said. “The amount of tacking upwind to get there?”

The race covered “some of the most treacherous water you will ever encounter,” he said.

When I asked Evans if there were any serious mishaps in the race, he casually mentioned “a few dismastings,” some gear failures and a boat ramming the rocks. Other than that, smooth sailing.

Higgins says he was never in pain and only in distress - if you want to call it that - once. Higgins had traveled outside of the channels that most racers passed through in search of better beaches for camping, he said.

But exposed like that, the wind - finally at his back - was gale force. His little kayak was sailing down rather impressive waves.

“I thought, ‘I should get off the water.’ I was really discouraged because I was going to lose half a day off my schedule,” he said.

Other than that, Higgins’ only bummer was not having time to stop and see the splendor he was racing through. He was trying to stay in front of the sweep boat.

The winner, who crossed the line in five days, got $10,000. Second place got a set of steak knives. Higgins, who disembarked in Ketchikan 26 days after he left Victoria, got a six-pack of beer.

Of the 35 who qualified, only 28 actually started the race. Only 15 finished. Higgins came in 14th.

“Mike is an uncommon human,” Evans said. “I have spent most of my life outdoors, as guide, captain of a ton of ships; I know what to recognize in people who walk their talk and Mike, my God, does he walk his talk.”

In addition to the beer, Higgins came home with something else: A wheezing cough that was painful to hear.

“My doctor thinks I got bronchitis,” he said. “Some people think I wore myself to a frazzle, especially in the last three days of the race.”

His doctor told him he’s 20 pounds lighter than when he left.

When Higgins stepped on the dock in Ketchikan to ring the finishers’ bell, he said two things.

“I’m not last,” followed by “Never again.”

From his home outside of Duncans Mills this week, heavy cough and all, he was, perhaps, rethinking.

“I said, ‘Never again,’?” he said. “But of course, memory fades.”

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.