At one of the many Ski to Sea races Lynn Rosen covered as a reporter for TV station KVOS, she remembers being caked in mud as she watched competitors run across the Nooksack River Delta to their sailboats after the baton handoff.
The tide was out, forcing sailors to run a mile.
“We have shots of guys running, slogging through this mud, knee-high, chest-high, and then all of sudden they disappear down a hole,” Rosen said. “It was like a circus.”
It was the late 1980s — sailboats had made up the final leg of the legendary Memorial Day weekend race since the start of that decade, a controversial move because of volatile weather conditions.
“Some people questioned whether the sailing leg, so much at the mercy of wind and tide, and which was added just last year, should continue to be part of the race,” stated a 1981 Bellingham Herald article.
Twelve years later, sailboats were out of the race, replaced with sea kayaks.
The sailboat leg is the only leg in Ski to Sea’s 51-year history to be taken away from the course and replaced with another event. But the race has undergone plenty of course iterations and added legs, as well as leg cancellations.
In 2008, canoeing was canceled at the last minute because of unsafe river conditions. Lack of snow has also forced Ski to Sea organizers to rethink the skiing legs of the race such as in 2015.
When the race was first floated as an idea in 1966, according to a letter from the president of the Bellingham Chamber of Commerce, organizers pictured a 10-leg event including horseback riding, mountaineering and water skiing. None of those made it into the first race: instead it was downhill skiing, road cycling, and canoeing or kayaking the Nooksack River.
In 1973, about 200 people competed in the inaugural 35-mile race, according to The Bellingham Herald. It took the winning team, The Tavern, made up of Robert Bornstein, Don Calderwell and Gerald Bajema, 2 hours and 56 minutes to complete the downhill giant slalom race, the 22-mile road bike course and 12-mile canoe trip.
Running was added in 1975 and then cross-country skiing in 1979. At that time, both sets of skiers started at the same time, with cross-country racers meeting downhillers at Pan Dome for the baton handoff.
Then came the ill-fated sailboats, with Hobie Cats being introduced first, then sailboats being introduced a year later.
Steve Giordano, who covered Ski to Sea for The Bellingham Herald for years and even competed one year with a group of friends, believed in the idea of the sailboat leg.
“It was a beautiful Chamber of Commerce idea to show off Bellingham Bay, and I think that’s what they were after,” he said.
But, Giordano knew firsthand about the problems with the sailboat leg. His team, made up of Antioch College grads, had two sailors from Seattle join their squad.
While Giordano and Rosen, who are married, celebrated with friends at the finish line, they realized the sailors never came across the finish line.
“We never heard from them ever again,” Rosen said, noting that the two sailors never found the rest of the team after the race.
Sea kayaks became an option for the final leg of Ski to Sea in 1990 and two years later, two-thirds of the final leg was made up of kayakers.
When the announcement came that sailboats would be removed from competition, some people feared the race would become too competitive at the expense of recreational participants, according to the Bellingham Herald.
Giordano and Rosen said even during races with no wind, competitors knew the sailing portion would be difficult.
“Sometimes it had to be canceled or changed due to lack of wind, or due to too much wind,” Rosen said. “Then it became, ‘You are at the whim of nature,’ and I think they realized that it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the race.”
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
