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ANACORTES — It was all hands on deck Saturday as groups of sailors from around the Puget Sound and British Columbia converged at Seafarers Memorial Park to participate in the Pacific Challenge.

There were plenty of sore hands and weary backs when the competition ended Sunday after two days of events.

“It’s tough,” said 14-year-old Jackie Pleus of Olympia, a crewman aboard the longboat Elder Spirit. “This is my first Pacific Challenge and it was a blast.”

The Pacific Challenge is an annual event hosted each year by a port community. Anacortes also hosted the event in 1995 and 2000.

Other venues have included Coupeville, Vashon Island, Grays Harbor, Astoria, Olympia, Bellingham, Seattle and Sooke, B.C.

Debbi Kenote and Reilly Wynn are members of the Anacortes High School Rowing Club. Kenote, a senior, and Wynn, a freshman, are wrapping up their first year rowing and sailing aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure.

“I’ve been a member of the high school sailing team for three years,” said Kenote. “I had a couple friends rowing in this club and they told me it was a good time. So I signed up. It is a lot of fun — except for having to get up early for practice.”

In Wynn’s case, her older sister rowed in the club.

“She told me I should do it,” said Wynn. “I’m glad I did because it has been a great time.”

The Pacific Challenge is designed to test the nautical skills and knowledge of mariners ages 13 to 18 aboard traditional wooden longboats and gigs.

The crew of the Elder Spirit practices twice a month as a 4-H club. That’s not a lot of on-the-water-training compared to the hours the crew spends aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure.

“We are out on the water Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 a.m.,” said Kenote. “Then we practice Friday at 3 p.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m. It’s a lot of work. But I love to row.”

Longboats, which have eight to 10 rowers using 11- to 13-foot oars, are also capable of sailing.

The Elder Spirit had a crew of 12 aboard a boat that is 22 feet long and has a six-foot beam. It has eight oars.

The competition brings together youth, their maritime mentors and community supporters. The competition strives for teamwork, leadership and a mastery of rowing, sailing and seamanship through friendly competition rooted in long-standing traditions.

Anacortes’ boat proved to be a strong one.

“We did very well,” said Kenote. “We took first in sailing and came in second in rowing. I don’t think we really had any home-course advantage. Everyone had to deal with the
wind and tides.”

For many of the crews, the Pacific Challenge marks the end of a year of studying and training with their home maritime programs.

The crews were put to the test on the water and on land where knot tying took center stage.

In the navigational challenge, crews charted a course and estimated a time of completion. The challenge took place on land and sea.

The on-water mail bag toss demonstrated the traditional method used to pass mail and materials among longboats and tall ships.

A heaving line, complete with a monkey fist knot on the end, is tossed and a mail bag must be passed without the parcel getting wet.

A heaving line is a smaller line tied to a larger one. To make it easier to throw, crews often tie a weight on the end of the line — usually a stone, lead ball or a small bag of sand.

Or in the case of the boat Bounty of Krister, a small cannon ball.

“We have a cannon ball in the middle of our monkey fist knot,” explained Avio Brooklyn, coxswain/gunner on the boat owned by the Vashon Island Historical Society. “That makes it easy to chuck to people either on a dock or on a boat. The key to throwing is in the coil. You coil the line, split it in two, one half in each hand, swing it back and let it go.

“And for us, keeping the sack dry was important because our navigation information was inside it. If it got wet, we were going to be in big trouble.”

The Bounty of Krister is a replica of the launch used when William Bligh and 18 others were forced from the Bounty in the infamous mutiny.

“With 19 people in a boat of this size, that would have been a tight fit,” said Brooklyn, a 16-year-old sophomore at Vashon High School. “This boat is 23 feet long with a seven-foot beam, two masts and drafts 18 inches.”

In the rowing portion of the competition, crews stroked out to Saddlebag Island, a distance of about 21⁄4 miles.

“Then we had to do a navigational race,” said Brooklyn. “You have to sit down with a chart and estimate how much time it was going to take to circumnavigate Huckleberry Island. It was a really good test.

“And we did very well. We were only a couple of minutes off our estimated time.”

“The judges watch how you row,” explained Pleus. “If you crab (get an oar stuck under the water) or not.”

The Elder Spirit had bigger problems than just a crabby oar. The crew found themselves taking on water after a displaced plug allowed water to gurgle in.

“We didn’t do so good in the rowing,” said Pleus. “Our plug came out and we had to stop and bail water out of the boat. That didn’t help our time. And rowing is the toughest part.”

Brooklyn agreed with that.

“Your hands just get rubbed raw,” he explained. “And it’s all upper body. In these boats, you sit on a bench and row. You pull as hard as you can and you move about three feet. It’s painful. But, hey, if captain Vancouver could do it, then we have a duty to do it as well.”

The crews ate lunch on Saddlebag Island where they also competed in an onshore navigational scavenger hunt for flotsam and jetsam.

Sam Tower was one of several adults aboard the Elder Spirit. The experienced sailor was impressed with how his crew handled themselves.

“It went very well,” he said. “We basically had one emergency and the crew handled it well. Lucky for us, the judges’ boat had a plug. So we were able to remain afloat. For as young as this crew is — they are probably the youngest here — they showed a lot of maturity.”

In the man-over-board event, the crews had to retrieve a semblance of a crewman (buoy, etc.) in a timely and safe manner. 

“In that, you have to drop sail, bring out the oars and head back,” explained Pleus. “Then you have to show you can sail, tack and things like that. Then there are the knots. There are a lot of knots.”

The pass-and-review event gave competitors a chance to demonstrate their rowing skills as well as offer salutes to the judges. Salutes came in various forms, including a blast from the stern-mounted cannon aboard the Bounty of Krister and a SpongeBob SquarePants sea chantey from another boat’s crew.

The blast from the Bounty of Krister boat was lit by Brooklyn.

“It went very well for us,” he said. “We felt like we had a good race. It’s always good to get out and row and sail. The crew performed very well.”

And the cannon?

“We are very proud of it,” he said. “It sets us apart from the other boats.”

Something else that set the Bounty of Krister apart from the others was the fact the boat was sailed to the event by Brooklyn and an adult.

“It costs $150 to ferry over,” said Brooklyn. “It was cheaper just to sail. It was a little rough. We ran into 35-knot winds and took on a lot of water. We had to do a lot of bailing.”

The inaugural Pacific Challenge took place in Port Townsend in 1992. The activities that year celebrated the bicentennial of Captain George Vancouver’s explorations of Puget Sound.

Three boats competed that year. That number doubled the following year. The Pacific Challenge has steadily grown to where it now boasts up to 15 boats.

“It’s just a blast,” said Kenote. “We have so much fun and have learned so much. The challenge went really well for us.”

Vince Richardson can be reached at 360-416-2181 or by e-mail at .