One mile from Ketichikan, Team Angry Beaver of Port Ludlow didn’t know they were winning the race.

Ducking driftwood, occasional gales and powerful currents, Skipper Matt Pistay and crew had been playing cat-and-mouse all the way up the Haida Gawaii with Team Pear Shaped Racing.

The wireless tracker on Pear Shaped Racing’s sleek trimaran wasn’t transmitting, meaning Angry Beaver, and the tracker junkies at home constantly refreshing the feed, could not see where Pear Shaped Racing was.

“They had the upper hand on us because they could just look at their phones and see where we were,” Pistay said.

It wasn’t until media boats came out to meet Angry Beaver, in their Schock 40 a mile out of Ketchikan, that they realized they were going to win.

“Jake Beattie came out and we asked ‘Who’s winning?’ and he just was silent and let it sit for a second before saying ‘You guys are winning!’” Pistay said.

Pistay and his crew, Gavin Bracket, Brent Campbell, Alan Johnson, Mats Elf and Simon Miles, finished the race in four days, three hours and 56 minutes.

It was a maneuver up the Hecate Strait the afternoon of Sunday June 9 and the team’s camaraderie and determination that won them the race, Pistay said. That and the fact that Pear Shaped Racing hit drift logs and had to stop for several hours.

Meanwhile, Pistay’s boat slogged up the strait through three hours of 30-to-35-knot winds and 18-to-22-foot square waves from the west and south breaking over the boat, Pistay said.

“It was pretty surreal,” Pistay said. “Pear Shaped was a faster boat in pretty much every condition.”

On Monday June 10, about ten hours before finishing the race, Pistay said everyone was feeling the exhaustion. Through the hunger and tiredness tensions ran a little high on the “40-foot island” they were stuck on together.

After docking in Ketchikan, Pistay said, the team celebrated by cracking open the last six beers they had brought with them, and then went for some fish and chips. After collecting their trophy, one hundred $100 bills spiked to a weathered slab of firewood, they spent the next 36 hours in Ketchikan looking for the karaoke bar their predecessors claim to have conquered and congratulating the other teams as they came in.

From there the team packed up and had what Pistay called a relaxing sail with almost no wind back to port at Point Hudson.

As for if they’ll be back again for another shot at glory in Ketchikan, Pistay said it’s probably not going to happen.

“Right now it’s a hard no,” Pistay said, cleaning up the boat on June 18. “But it’s a year away, so that answer could change.” He is preparing to head for San Pedro, California for the start of the tri-annual Transpacific Yacht Race, a 2,225 race from California to Diamond Head in Hawaii. Pistay will serve as crew on Hamachi, a J125 based in Seattle.

More than a week after the winners rang the bell at the dock in Ketchikan, nine teams are still battling the tides and weather of the Inside Passage.

Team Ziska, racing in a restored 52-foot Lancashire Nobby, is lumbering north, followed by team Backwards AF, in the only truly human-powered boat to make it in the race this year, a 21-foot a Puuvenepiste Savo row boat.

Team Holopuni, racing in a Hawaiian outrigger sailing canoe, had to be rescued by the Canadian Coast Guard just 45 miles from finishing the race. “As we sailed through the night the weather worsened, and near Celestial Reef, unexpected high seas (seven feet as reported by the coast guard) crashed over our boat and caused spray skirts to implode,” wrote Chris Fagan on an Instagram post. “The waves came faster than we could pump the water and soon the water won the battle and the entire canoe was swamped.”

About 15 miles from land, Holopuni pushed the SOS on their satellite emergency signaller and called the Coast Guard on their VHF radio. Two hours later, they were safe in a Coast Guard boat.

“While we were short of about 40-45 miles of finishing the 750 mile Race to Alaska, we had an amazing adventure in an astoundingly beautiful part of the world,” Fagan wrote. “Thanks to the Canadian Coast Guard for being there in our time of need.”

June 19, “under the cloak of darkness,” said Anika Colvin, Northwest Maritime Center communications director, “The Grim Sweeper” will take off from Port Townsend, traveling to Ketchikan 75 miles a day. If the boat passes any remaining racers they will be disqualified. The three teams bringing up the rear, Funky Dory, Try Baby Tri and R2Ache were as of deadline Tuesday reaching the Northeastern tip of Vancouver Island.