As four women who love adventure, we are approaching the Race to Alaska as a challenge and shared experience — right down to the matching sweaters we’re knitting.
Ruby has been passionate about sailing her whole life. Since moving to Washington, she’s also fallen in love with endurance-based sports and big adventures. It's been a dream of hers to accomplish this race as it combines her love for sailing with her love for type 2, hard experiences.
Madi has been designing systems that have been deployed in the Arctic and in the Ocean for the last 5 years, and with her love for exploring the outdoors and testing her limits physically, R2AK is the perfect race to combine it all.
Sophie is a dedicated electrical engineer who loves to build things. She has spent time on boats and has always wanted to properly learn to sail and what better way to do it than on a crazy venture (where we might be pedaling more than sailing).
After watching the R2AK documentary in 2023, Rachel knew that one day she would have to do the race…now she’s hankering for a big adventure and the ocean calls.
In 2021, Madi and Ruby were new roommates and quick friends. There was a showing of the Race to Alaska documentary at a local theater, Madi went. She came back that night and immediately told Ruby all about it. They pinky swore they would do the race together someday soon. 2025 rolls around—Ruby’s unemployed, running too much, sleeping on friend’s couches and needing a challenge. During this time, Sophie and Ruby fall into an easy friendship, somewhere between late nights at the local dive bar and early morning runs, Sophie agrees to do WA360. She has almost no sailing experience but is smart and adventurous. They complete the race and Sophie’s automatically added to the R2AK team. Having moved to Port Townsend with the dream to do the race, Rachel joins the team. When Sophie and her talk about knitting sweaters together it’s clear she’s not only got the experience but the vibe to fit the team just right.