Row Like a Mother
“It’s like the Iditarod on a boat with the chance of drowning, being run down by a freighter, or being eaten by a grizzly bear.”
In 2016, four women, all over 50, became the first all-women’s crew to Race to Alaska (R2AK). The 750-mile sail/paddle from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska, prohibits motors and outside support. Violent winds and 30-foot tidal waves are obstacles. But the 2016 race was brutal in another way. Stillness. No wind meant rowing till your wrists throbbed, dropping anchor when currents changed, and rowing again. Only 26 of 64 boats finished. Sistership placed fifteenth, after 11 days, 2 hours on the water.
Days before they went back for a repeat—keen on shaving four days from their R2AK 2017 time—I met with Captain Michelle Boroski and Johanna Gabbard, plus a new crew member, Stephanie “Scout” Mayhew. I was newly the host of my own radio show (on UCSB’s college radio station, KCSB 91.9 FM). I was longing to get back on the road. But I wanted to be a “productive member of society.” Didn’t that mean staying put?
“We Are Sistership” is one of the songs Johanna Gabbard, crew member and musician wrote. When the crew uploaded this recording made on the water to the R2AK site mid-race, it nearly crashed the site. The response of the 13 million enthusiasts from around the world tuning in, especially women, was among the reasons Johanna and Captain Michelle Boroski decided to do it again.
On June 8, 2017, Michelle, Johanna, Scout, and Stephanie York were off to a stormy start. The first stage is a qualifier: To go on, boats must cross the Juan de Fuca into Victoria, BC, Canada, in 36 hours or less without needing a rescue. With 10-foot waves and winds gusting over 50 knots, the 2017 start made it clear the stillness of the previous year wouldn’t be repeated. Racers huddled around the San Juan islands, rather than making a straight shot of it. Some quit. Some boats would need repairs before stage two. Team Sistership’s 27-foot trimaran made it into Victoria at 6:50 am June 9.
Not quite halfway to their first check-in at Seymour Narrows, Sistership hit some rocks. A broken centerboard left the foursome without steerage. Slide-slipping to a stopping point, they then turned south to retrace 25 miles to Nanaimo, the nearest port.
When I’d asked what they’d been told about women and strength, Johanna had recalled being super fit in her twenties but hiding her well-muscled body to avoid being ostracized or seen as “unfeminine.” In high school, Michelle ran track. “Don’t try so hard,” her mom would tell her, worried her muscular legs would make her unattractive.
For me, it was independence I’d been told to keep in check. If I didn’t need a man, he wouldn’t see me as potential, not long-term anyway, right? One more reason I needed to stay put. I was 40, four years out from my last partnership. So, I flipped through online dating profiles. Just for curiosity’s sake, I checked listings for vans converted into homes.
Today, eight years on, my search history is full of abstracts and medical databases. Three months ago, I was diagnosed with a chronic disease of the spine that, just decades ago, was untreatable. There’s still no cure. But now, a family of medications can significantly slow progression and ease pain. A few tests determine whether you’re a candidate. Rare results on one of those tests indicate a tiny chance the treatment could trigger another serious illness. It’s up to me. I can start the treatment, along with another medication for protection. Or I can wait for another test. Either way, all I can see on the horizon are questions.
In Nanaimo, Michelle and crew jury-rigged a repair with some wood. Then Scout got sick and couldn’t go on. Team Sistership was behind and down to three. The backtracking would add 50 miles to their race. Their seven-day goal was shot. Michelle had already found herself thinking, If a whale breached and broke the boat, that wouldn’t be so bad. Then came the forecast—more gale-force winds. They could quit.
I score an appointment with an internal medicine specialist. My questions are good, she says. But she doesn’t have the answers. She thinks I should wait. If a third test has the same results, she’ll refer me to a different specialist for answers.
Outside her office, I ease into my car, aching for the seat’s heat to soothe my hips and back. Rain, a wet brush, spills from my windshield onto a pallet of umber and fuchsia strewn over pavement and parked cars. Only a few blossoms cling to mostly bare branches. I don’t want to wait. I type out a message. “Can you please refer me now?”
Screw it, the now three-woman team Sistership decided, we’re not stopping. “Let’s see how fast we can go,” Michelle said. Throwing themselves into the storm, it wasn’t long before they’d put miles of ocean and some 15 boats behind them.
Back in Santa Barbara, I collected clips from protests and rallies, interviewed guests in the sound booth, became a founding member of a budding low-power, bilingual radio station. I made lists of van musts: Tall enough to stand in. Stripped or partially built, so I could make it my own. Solid engine. And I sat across tables from “matches,” clinking glasses or sipping from lukewarm mugs.
Stephanie “Scout” Mayhew on a training race in Ensenada shortly before R2AK 2017 that had shown the crew just how wrong things could go and that they could go on anyway.
“Regret,” Johanna wrote in her report from day 13, “is the closest thing to hell on earth.”
After only three hours of sleep, Team Sistership left the halfway point, Bella Bella, at 5:30 am on June 19 to catch currents out to the next big straight. Winds were to build to “just” 25 knots, with no gusts. The seas of Hecate Strait were still restless from the previous day’s storm. Wet clothes clung to wet skin, and the air was frigid.
As they attempted to round the point of an island, the winds picked up, reaching 35 knots and pushing them toward the rocks. They tacked and jibed, the island’s sharp edges taunting them. For seven hours, Michelle managed the tiller, while Johanna and Steph crewed from the boat’s back edge, counteracting its list with their weight.
Around the corner at last, they had to decide: Stay in open ocean or duck between islands for a break from the weather. “Each choice is a gamble,” Johanna wrote. “And you have to live with the consequences immediately.” They opted for the islands, where they headed north until the 5- to 10-knot winds died at 10 pm. Still, they inched forward on a current—that would turn at 1 am. When it came time to find a place to anchor, thick fog hid nearly everything. But ahead, they spotted a light and steered toward it. The rising tide came in like a flood. The boat bobbed. And the light disappeared.
Daylight would come in four hours. Till then, they knew what they had to do: Control the boat. Don’t drift into the rocks. Keep exhausted eyes peeled for the light to peep up over the tide. They counted the minutes, floating in place. Delirious and tense, they hit each other to stay awake and coherent. They sipped hot chocolate and munched stale crackers. They laughed. They dazed out. They kicked themselves for not anchoring in daylight. For not staying in the open sea. For their broken centerboard. For being here again. “We had lost our ability to fight off this hell, and regrets were everywhere,” Johanna wrote. “Alone, tired, cold, and wet, we sat until the sun came out, wallowing in our self-induced misery.”
My phone pings. The specialist referral is in. Gearing up to push for a consult soon, I dial. The woman who answers is gentle but firm. They won’t see me. My rheumatologist consulted with them; she repeats my options. But I have questions no one else can answer. It does seem like a tough choice, she sympathizes.
I think of my conversation with my therapist the other morning. I laid out the branches either path could lead to, the contingencies I’d need to make. “I don’t know how to know which is the smarter risk,” I said. We sat in silence for a long moment. “I know you want to game it all out,” she said. “Sometimes, just setting out on a course of action is all we can do.”
I turn back to Johanna’s words on my screen. “Each choice, a gamble.”
My two-year-old niece’s voice floats up from the deck below. “Where’s Auntie Holly?” I open the window and call her name. She circles, looking in all directions. “Look up, baby girl,” I say. Finding me, she throws her arms into the air. “Carry you?” she calls, her syntax not clear on you versus me, believing I could stretch my arms two floors and sweep her into them. I think of how, even on the same floor, I have to stoop to “hold” her these days. “I’m coming down,” I say, vaguely aware I’m also saying to myself, I’m choosing now.
Team Sistership on the serenity of the open ocean and how it enables you to just let go.
The night of treading water over, daylight brought another decision—one made easily. No more slow torture. The whims of the open ocean it would be. The early morning current flood reversed itself. And Sistership glided into “the kind of sailing everyone dreams about.” Under clear skies, the wind a gentle 10 to 15 knots, the crew slid past desolate landscapes of the First Nation people. Sunlight soaked into socks, gloves, and skin; charged solar devices; and sparked visions of Ketchikan by the next evening.
Our conversation back before they’d left had turned to the quiet moments and the depth of peace you could find, away from constant stimuli. Near Alaska, whales are everywhere, Michelle had said. “At night, even if you can’t see them, you can hear them blowing around you. It’s like being on your own little spaceship. Everything you need is right there with you, the hot water, the food, the people.” I’d felt momentarily pulled into their bubble, sighing as she added, “So many people in life have never ever experienced that.”
Some 40 miles into Sistership’s smooth sailing, the wind went out like a snuffed candle. At 10:30 pm, Team Sistership watched a private show from their tiny spaceship. The still water glowed saffron, tangerine, and gold, the clouds a dusty pink. Then came the dreaded call from the captain. “Row.”
A slight turn of the tiller plays tricks on eyes and minds, moving the landmarks just so. So, it took awhile to realize they weren’t moving. After five hours of rowing, they’d gained a quarter of a mile. It was “like being on a perpetual rowing machine with no option of getting off or stopping.”
By spring, I hadn’t yet found the right van. But I was wallowing. I sublet my apartment through summer, tuned up my bicycle, loaded my saddlebags with gear, and boarded a train. It was while cycling down the Oregon Coast that a friend told me about a ruby red 1996 Ford Econoline van I might want to check out.
At last, Sistership sailed into Ketchikan. Grins lit their faces as they stepped onto the dock and rang the bell.
Watching a video of the moment, I think of driving Ruby the van into Alaska at the northern tip of the Alcan Highway after days traveling through the remote Yukon. And then I hear my therapist’s parting words the other morning. “You’ve been adapting at every new turn,” she said. “You’ll keep adapting.”
I call the specialty pharmacy and order the new treatment, message the nurse to schedule a visit to learn how to use it.
In 2018, Team Sistership took on a new name, Sail Like a Girl. That year, the new crew of SLAG took first place.
Today, June 9, 2024, at 5 am PST, 37 boats will set off from Port Townsend for R2AK, aiming for Ketchikan. Three are all-women crews—Team Loose Screw, Team Sail Like a Mother, and Team Orco. Follow their progress here.
This essay and the tale of Team Sistership 2017 came together thanks to former R2AK race analytics; Sistership’s Facebook page, where I found Johanna’s poetic updates; and “R2AK Stage 2: Global’s Racers Weather the Storm.” As for my podcast episode, you can find it at “Women in a Boat: Team Sistership.” The clips included here are the highlights.
Holly, you made an inspired choice joining Sistership’s story with your own as you navigate your illness through so many unknowns. Meeting unknowns has been a strength of yours. May it serve you well in both senses of the word.
This was a gripping read, Holly. I was casually skimming my inbox while standing in my kitchen but this one I could not put down. I hung on every word. I love how you wove two heroic stories together - theirs and yours. This captures uncertainty and adversity — and sisterhood — with such visceral realism, I felt like I was there. Love the name Sail Like a Girl - reminds me of Lizzo’s song “Like a Girl,” which has gotten me through many a half marathon. Thanks for your brilliant writing.