JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
For over a week, teams and boats have been traversing the 750-mile span of water between Washington state and Alaska, and they've been doing it with no engines. It's part of a human- and wind-powered competition known as the Race to Alaska. The winning team crossed the finish line last night, and KRBD's Hunter Morrison was there to greet them.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Welcome to Ketchikan.
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HUNTER MORRISON, BYLINE: It's a rare sunny evening at a boat harbor in the heart of downtown Ketchikan. A few dozen spectators cheer on the Northbound Nutters, a team of four men aboard a yellow multihull sailboat that's gliding toward the dock. Nigel Oswald steps off the vessel and rings a bell...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: All right.
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MORRISON: ...Marking his team's completion of the journey.
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MORRISON: A bystander hands him a well-deserved beer. Oswald says the race started long before hitting the water.
NIGEL OSWALD: It was a huge amount of boat work, prep and planning and logistics. And to know that we hadn't screwed it up and everything worked, and we got here, it was just a huge emotional relief, more than winning or not winning.
MORRISON: The route from Washington to Alaska traces the inside passage, a network of waterways weaving through the islands of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
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MORRISON: It can be an unpredictable and rough trip with rain, wind and heavy currents.
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MORRISON: If people need to be rescued, it can take hours or days.
JEANNE GOUSSEV: Because it's so unpredictable, you just don't know where you're going to be next and how long it's going to take to get there.
MORRISON: That's Jeanne Goussev with Northwest Maritime, a nonprofit devoted to educating and engaging people with nautical culture. They sponsor the race. Goussev is also a former race champion.
GOUSSEV: It's a lot of reading the weather in motion and making calls as you're going through the course.
(CHEERING)
MORRISON: The first place winners get a $10,000 cash prize. Second place gets a set of steak knives. Oswald and his winning team wanted to take on the challenge of the race to see what they were made of. And they're proud they were able to finish in a boat built for much shorter journeys.
OSWALD: Getting that boat that isn't designed for this kind of thing, with these guys, to here, just feels awesome.
MORRISON: This year, over 60 teams entered the race. They're expected to trickle in or tap out over the next few weeks.
For NPR News, I'm Hunter Morrison in Ketchikan, Alaska.
(SOUNDBITE OF KOFFEE + KANDEE SONG, "LOTS OF FUN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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