Sunny skies and light winds: those were the conditions at the start of this year’s Swiftsure yacht races – trials that, for 80 years, have pitted sailors against each other in long-distance, often gruelling tests of skill, endurance and grit.
Toting telephoto cameras, binoculars and foldable chairs, hundreds gathered along Dallas Road in Victoria on Saturday, May 24 to watch the participating yachts set sail. Each of the 98 boats, which range in size and style, from catamarans to monohulls, are taking part in one of three races: the Lightship Classic (138 nautical miles), the Cape Flattery Race (100 nautical miles) and the Juan de Fuca Race (75 nautical miles).
While the latter two competitions take between 10 and 15 hours to complete, the Lightship Classic can span anywhere from 24 to 36 hours.
Named after the Swiftsure Bank at the entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait, the races began in 1930 to test the skills of sailors in Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria. Today, they have grown into international attractions, drawing racers from around the world.
Many of this year's the participants gathered in the Inner Harbour the night before the race, where they took the chance to rest, undertake last-minute preparations and chat with fellow contestants.
Monica Nehls was one of them, who, sat atop the Mata Hari, a monohull registered in the Lightship Classic, detailed her excitement about the hours of sailing ahead.
“This will be my first overnight race, first offshore race, first race with a crew that I'm not very familiar with,” she said. “I'm really excited to see what it's like and test my mettle.”
Nehls also made predictions about Saturday’s weather, explaining the Salish Sea might not offer sailors much wind.
“It'll be a bummer if there isn’t actually enough wind to see us through quickly – it can get a little bit boring,” she said. “But sometimes that's better than it being too spicy.”
Victoria sailor Brent Jacobi, who sailed on last year’s winning monohull in the Lightship Classic, strolled around the Inner Harbour, admiring the dozens of boats on display. He explained the lack of wind in the forecast might advantage some sailors.
“Light winds help the smaller crowd because when there's lots of pressure, the big boats just rip around the course and they're done,” he said. “It'll even the playing field a bit.”
For those racing in the longer event, much of the competition happens when spectators can’t see them.
“Some nights you have surprisingly good visibility if there’s not too much cloud cover and there's a moon out,” Kirk Palmer, the event’s chair, told Black Press earlier this month. “If it's cloudy and it's kind of dark and the visibility is poor, you're blasting along and you basically can't see anything.”
Jacobi expressed a similar sentiment.
“Navigating and steering a boat by the wind at night – your eyes get blurry,” he said. “You can only do that so long, so your shifts have to be short. You can really lose track of where the boat's at and what's happening because if you can't see land or anything, it's tricky.”
The shorter races end in the Inner Harbour as early as 7 p.m. on Saturday, while the Lightship Classic yachts are slated to sail in on Sunday morning. Race officials in Esquimalt will keep track of boats crossing the invisible finish line between McLoughlin Point and the Ogden Point Breakwater.
As for which boats will get there first, the competition is wide open, according to Jacobi.
“It's a mixed bag of boats this year,” he said. “There are no real hotshots.”
But one thing’s for sure: the winning sailors will have a lot of celebrating to do.
“We were exhausted,” said Jacobi, recounting his 2024 win. “It was a 30-plus hour race and pretty light winds at the end, so it was a struggle to get back after getting shit handed to us pretty hard at the beginning.”
“We had a bowl of chili down here on the dock and a lot of rum. I think I came home a little bit lit,” he added. “A lot of people on the dock are our friends, so that was even better.”
