Race to Alaska (R2AK) Recap
Team Agile racing would like to thank Pivot AM for being a sponsor of our Race, nay, odyssey to Alaska. It truly was the journey of a lifetime and we couldn’t be more grateful for the support provided by Pivot AM. It’s not a wonder your customers love your AM machine support too.
Much like how Pivot AM helps take the OEM handcuffs off to push their customer’s 3D printers to new levels of performance and capability we truly pushed the performance and capability of the Melges 24 boat we sailed to Alaska. Pivot mentioned many times in their blogs about how the Melges 24 is a day racer. A boat meant to be towed to a race course near land, sailed for a day, and then towed back. Well we figured out there’s reason they say that. Within the 24 hours of the start of the race we decided to diverge from the fleet into the Strait of Georgia. Somewhere we thought would give us an advantage because of the open water and ‘slower’ tides. We couldn’t have been more wrong after the forecast changed and we faced 2 days solid of gale force winds and 8 foot waves (1/3rd the length of the boat). We made the decision to anchor twice, again on a boat that normally doesn’t have an anchor, to rest up, empty 60 gallons of water each time out of the boat, and push on. The ocean may have impressed upon us the OEM specs a bit more than we would have liked but hey, you can’t control everything.
Somewhat perturbed by those first 2 days but not totally downtrodden we got some good weather windows and pushed on North. After absorbing a lot of moisture some sunny days helped us dry out our materials so we could perform better. Much like how if your materials absorb moisture sitting on shelves, Pivot’s drying solutions can help them perform better in your machine. The good conditions also helped us surge back amongst the fleet climbing from 60th place to 31st when we reached Cambell River where we resupplied and waited for a tide window to push through Seymour Narrows.
Seymour Narrows provided one of the most cinematic moments of the trip. A narrow cut between two islands with the whole Pacific flowing through, it felt like the Hot Gates at Thermopylae. To the South was everything familiar – supplies, rescue, civilization. To the North – the great unknown with multi-thousand-foot snow capped peaks rising on either side and not a structure in sight. From there we had a two day sail through the Discovery Passage and Johnstone Strait. Finally emerging into what is essentially the open Pacific and deciding to anchor in the Polkinghorne Islands for a night as we waited out some fog and weather windows.
Waking up in hazy fog with minimal visibility from our anchorage we were off again. Sailing for 24hrs a day for 5 days straight to our final destination in Ketchikan. It was not without event from here on in either. Like 3D printers tend to have common failure points we broke several items on the boat from main sheet clevis pins to our pedal drive. We focused on component level repairs, much like a Pivot service call, to refurbish these subassemblies and continue on, picking off competitors on route to the finish line.
Like the Alaska you dream of it was hauntingly beautiful but wretchedly cold in the latter 3rd of the race. 24 hours straight of rain soaked us to our core while simultaneously depleting the battery power as both sailor and solar panel yearned for sun. No power meant no GPS, no navigation lights, and no Starlink. We were going old-school compass navigation for the remaining 100 miles cutting through shipping channels, cruise ship lanes, and shoals towards the ever more reachable finish line.
After roughly 9 days and 21hours we pulled near Ketchikan harbor and the finish line of the race. However as our fans and followers might have seen we overshot the finish line a bit. We could have used a PM visit from Pivot here to fine tune and calibrate us after we were rode hard for the previous 10 days. Regardless the moment of arrival at the culmination of months of hard work and planning congested into a week and a half of grueling, cold, achingly spectacular sailing was something we’ll never forget. We ended up finishing in 17th place out of 65 starters and 35 finishers.
We can’t thank Pivot AM enough for their support in this journey.
Much appreciated,
Team Agile Racing
R2AK 2026
