The Math of WA360

A favorite quote in our household:

The sun will rise and set regardless. What we choose to do with the light while it’s here is up to us. Journey wisely. ~ Alexandra Elle

It doesn’t feel 100% truthful to call this journey “wise”. But the rest of the quote holds true.

Not even 2kts

Did you know that in order to complete the WA360, you only need to average around 1.4 knots for every daylight hour of the race? Add in the more than 18 hours of civil twilight that the PNW gets over the duration of the race, and just about 1.3 kts average will get you across the finish line. In fact, there’s enough daylight in this race that you could fritter away around four full daylight hours EACH DAY doing non-mileage things and still finish by paddling just 2 kts per daylight hour. Non-mileage things like, say, loading or unloading your kayak, or setting up or breaking down your tent, or eating, or resting.

What does that mean for our attempt this year? It certainly doesn’t mean that we think it will be easy. Even if we truly were paddling that minimum speed, that’s a lot of hours a day, a lot of days in a row. And there are certainly conditions that would make even 1.3 kts nearly impossible for us. Conditions like significant headwinds. Or strong tides pushing us backwards. And you know, one thing about the tidal estuary that WA360 calls home? These tides are gonna be working against us about as often as they’re working with us.

But it does give us some additional framework to judge our progress. It gives us a yardstick to measure each day’s mileage against. And, hopefully, it will inform our decision-making as we choose our campsites. It will help us figure out whether a two mile detour to resupply is worthwhile or not. It will help us as we consider how long to rest or whether a pizza delivery to a campground is worth the wait.

Progress Tracker

This is our best guess at our route for WA360 this year. We plan on using the fact that we’re paddling beachable craft with a tiny, tiny draw to our advantage, as much as possible. As you can see on our map, we’ve got two different sloughs in our plan. We’ve got spreadsheets and charts and daily planning sheets in our tool kit. How will you know if we’re measuring up to our plan? We’ll have trackers on us, so you can see where we are along the course. And we’ll be publishing maps by 11:30pm each day, marked with our approximate goal for the day. Depending on cell signal, battery life, and human energy, we may include some highlights from the day’s paddle. Follow along and see how well we meet our goals each day!

Additional Thoughts

That 2kt daylight average also doesn’t account for things like a zero day (which we took on day 4 last time). Or time for field repairs. Or significant time for breaks and refueling. Sure, four hours a day sounds like a lot… until you’re spending twelve or thirteen hours a day actively paddling. Then a few hours seems like it’s not nearly enough recovery time.

And aside from daylight rest, what about sleep? Well… the math says that if you’ve got a combined 17-ish hours of daylight and civil twilight each day, that leaves about seven hours unaccounted for. In our normal lives, seven hours isn’t a bad night’s sleep. Does it seem long enough to rest after paddling twenty or thirty miles during the day? Not nearly.

But we didn’t get in this for the rest. We got in it for the challenge. We got in it to see what we can do.

Where we Fit

Race High Command shared their version of WA360 by the numbers:

What does it say that our two teams make up 11% of the muscle group? Or 7.5% of the solo teams? And (if my count is right), 20% of the folks going solo in the muscle group? It might mean that everyone else knows something we don’t know. Or it might mean that we know the same things that they do, and we’re just in it for a different style of Type II Fun.