My thought is that there have always been two different races in R2AK- those with fast multihulls and hi-tech planing monohulls that are "in it to win" and those with small sail or human powered boats that are competing against themselves to see if they can accomplish something difficult, and like the extra safety and camaraderie of doing it as an organized event. People have been doing this solo on SUPs and kayaks since the beginning, obviously those people never had any chance against a carbon fiber trimaran... but neither did an M boat. It has long been a dream for me to do this race, and I still want to. I signed up the first year with my M15 as a team together with my dad but couldn't get the time off in grad school... later on I was in talks with Sal and Gail to do the race as a publicity stunt for Sage, but I couldn't get the time for that either. Now that I have a 5 year old son and a Sage 17, my plan is to enter the race as a father/son team once he is old enough to do it with me... I would guess in about 4-5 years. Maybe even a 3 generation grandfather/father/son team if my dad isn't too old by then. I couldn't care less if someone else has a faster boat or a faster route... I never really expect a Sage 17 to beat a Farrier on any course and I don't care if it can. For me it's about accomplishing the dream of sailing an M boat to alaska, and I will do it even if the R2AK doesn't exist anymore. Now that said, in long term very very light winds (which are possible in that area) there may be conditions where an S17 or an M15 with a massive spinnaker/drifter and a full batten main can compete head to head with those big fast boats. It is light and has a ton of sail area on level with high end race boats, but can't keep up in hull speed. If those boats can't do hull speed either, the S17 may even be able to sail effectively in very light winds where they would be rowing. I have been in light wind races in the SF Bay where my M15 was passing big race boats, because it could ghost along in winds where they could not. Sincerely, Tyler Sage 17 #0 Goshawk ----- Original Message ----- From: "For and about Montgomery Sailboats" <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com> To: "For and about Montgomery Sailboats" <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com> Cc: "john" <john@eco-living.net> Sent: Tuesday, June 6, 2023 5:35:06 PM Subject: M_Boats: Re: R2AK Yeah...a great idea degraded by factors of scale - or size of boats as the case may be. The first time there were multiple big trimarans doing it in 5-7 days that kind of killed the interest for me. I suspect it's killing the interest for most small-boat adventurers as well. What's the point of participating if it's not mostly about adventuring with your 'tribe', so to speak? Not easy to fix the race design...there could be a boat size limit. But how to define the limit is tricky. Can't just say X feet long, because some boat types that were a huge adventure to try the R2AK in - like that six-man outrigger one year, or multi-person rowing boats - would be too long, or, bigger sailboats would still be small enough but 'too big' to really fit the adventure spirit. It was a wild-idea scruffy fringe event to start with and thus drew mostly small-boat adventurers. And, it was only a matter of time until some fast big $$ big boat people noticed it and jumped in. cheers, John