A boat cruise to Alaska is a dream many aspire to take, fantasizing about calm seas and glacial relaxation. The members of Team Sistership had a different Alaskan tour in mind, “Four Women Over 50, Racing to Alaska. 750 Miles. No Motor. No Support. No Kidding.” They weren’t just out to enjoy nature; they aimed at becoming a force of nature themselves.
The idea of team Sistership began with Michelle Boroski (the captain) and her partner Johanna Gabbard (organization and admin) in the quiet town of Port Townsend, Washington. The idea of a challenge was far from foreign for either woman. Johanna, a former collegiate basketball player, triathlete-turned-cyclist and retired Army Colonel, had discipline in spades, alongside Michelle, who holds a 100-Ton Master Captain License and delivers boats throughout the Pacific, Caribbean, and Great Lakes, including trips to and from Hawaii and the Panama Canal.
The Race to Alaska was barely a year old when Michelle, a sailor since the age of 12, decided there was an opportunity to make a statement; “Our mission has been to empower women of our age as well as young girls.” They chose Sistership as a team name because it embodies their supportive code to uplift all women. In the end, they were not the only team with age-defying themes on their mind. Other smile-worthy monikers included: “A Pirate Looks at 30”; “Later Dudes”; “Why Not”; and “Golden Oldies.”
So began a simple Facebook post, searching for women over 50 with sailing experience, eager to kick some ass. A message that immediately caught the attention of Victoria native, doctor and former world champion rower Janice Mason.
“I was very interested in the race to Alaska, I even followed along last year,” says Janice. She immediately messaged them, with one hell of a resume: completed first Ironman triathlon at 54, Olympic rower, won Gold for Canada at the World Rowing Championships in 1987 and Bronze in 1982. However, even with all her on-the-water experience, Janice was told by Michelle she was interested, but they “didn’t want a fourth person without much sailing experience.”
Instead of this initial contact inspiring bitterness or a splurge on a ticket to a more relaxing Alaskan adventure, Janice describes how instead “I went to UVic for some sailing lessons and, in February, I went to Port Townsend and met them. They were sailing Sistership for the first time in the Shipride Regatta.”
Persistence, as it so often does, paid off. The team went through several evolutions, losing and gaining members. It wasn’t until Janice left for a vacation to Mexico that she received her invitation to Alaska. Life has a sense of irony when it comes to timing. During the turbulent shuffle of the team roster, Sherry Smith joined the team. A 10-year sailboat racing vet with over 10,000 miles of ocean on her resume, Sherry also has innumerable miles around the world from participating in triathlons, including Ironmans in Germany and Canada. In a trick of fate, Johanna also came aboard after health concerns of a previous member caused her to leave. Janice admits the humour behind such a twist, “She had been doing all the organizing and admin stuff and she didn’t have much sailing experience, either, so at the end of the day, Michelle ended up with two inexperienced sailors, anyway.”
Dispel any expectations of training montages or a drill sergeant coach yelling as they lifted weights in a torrential downpour. When it came to team Sistership, their lifestyles provided a constant training ground, preparing them more thoroughly than any short intensive push before the big race. In addition to the numerous triathlons under the team’s collective belt, it was the smaller everyday activities that honed their tenacity. Janice describes constantly keeping active with swimming, sailing and cycling, while Sherry is a certified coach to young triathletes at Stanford University. Their shared passion for keeping healthy activity a constant force in their lives was their biggest asset. Janice, however, makes it clear it was not simply the triathlons that kept her fit, but a fearlessness to constantly try new things; “A big part of it is a sense of adventure.” Having taught herself to unicycle at age 41, she reveals the process of starting by going from post to post at a local tennis court. Using interval supports allowed her to go farther and farther without them – a lesson worth remembering when trying anything new.
The potential of their Alaskan dream transforming into a nightmare was very real. Temperatures at the starting dock average around 10 degrees Celsius in June, and that would be the warmest, by far, they would see all race. With a cabin that would make a trailer feel lavish and a rowing apparatus attached, the sailboat was less of a cruise and more of a work hut with paddles and a bit of roof in the middle.
But the daunting task didn’t overwhelm Janice. “I just knew I could do it. I’d gone through training as a physician. I know what it was like being up long hours working. Being a mother, you go through the same thing. I think being a mother is much harder than training to be a physician. I’ve done some long kayaking events. The Yukon Riverquest is an event that goes from Whitehorse to Dawson City and I’ve done that twice by Kayak, once in a double and once in a single. It was 750 km of paddling and not much sleep.”
The theme of life as its own training ground for adventure starts to emerge as Janice describes the race, “None of it turned out like it could have.”
The biggest fear was expectations. “You hear things about the west coast, places that are notorious, like Seymour Narrows (between Vancouver Island and Quadra Island); I know there can be tremendous whirlpools and tidals and it can get crazy windy. Because I didn’t have much sailing experience, not knowing much about the wind and how much the boat can handle, it’s mostly a fear of the unknown.” In an unexpected turn of events, they travelled through Seymour Narrows “just as it was going from a flood to an ebb. It was kinda slack. There was no wind. We had to row.”
Janice’s experience in sailing may have been questioned, but her rowing skills in a race with no wind were certainly recognized. Knowing she could do it didn’t stop her from admitting the hardship in getting there. “The hardest part was the first couple of days when we had to row so much when we weren’t expecting that. And it’s not an easy boat to row; it weighs around 2,000 pounds. We could maybe do about three knots.”
When the team left Bella Bella, they spent three nights at sea, where they didn’t anchor at all. “It’s strange, you think you’re really close to shore and you’re actually miles away. You think you are going in the right direction, but you check your GPS and you’ve changed by 30 degrees. It’s super tough mentally because you are constantly on.”
It’s unclear whether an intense modesty is at work when Janice describes the race conditions, admitting they were lucky in terms of environmental factors. A sense of quiet fearlessness is as real an undercurrent as those that guided the boat during the race. Considering 75 per cent of the crew are in the medical profession (Janice, a doctor, Michelle, a physician assistant and Johanna, a physical therapist), an uncanny sense of calm is unsurprising yet leaves the impression that if it had actually rained cats and dogs, the team would have given the same response.
Michelle was not shy in revealing their true secret weapon in an interview with OffCenterHarbor.com; “Go hard, sleep little. We sort of have an unfair advantage over most of the teams, ’cause we’re all in menopause and don’t get cold; we have hot flashes. We wake up every two hours, so we don’t sleep a whole lot. I mean we could give them a couple points, a couple miles, but we won’t.”
It’s in team Sistership’s sense of humour that you find the most brilliant part of their approach. Their humour doesn’t come from a sense of optimism; it’s a sharp handle on the truth. They aren’t pushing an angle or putting a new spin on aging, they are not here to market a new lifestyle; they unveil capabilities. They claim to inspire and there is no doubt that they do, but the undeniable reality of their pursuit is they are here to dig up a truth that has been buried in preconceptions. They came to kick ass, and they did.
As Team Sistership triumphantly glided into Basin Boat Harbor, they became the first all-female team to finish the Race to Alaska and placed 15 out of 44 teams. You can follow a more sport-intensive breakdown of their journey through their social media as well as r2ak.com, which posted daily updates on the race and its competitors.
To call Sistership’s journey a revelation is to unfairly present their message as purely a spiritual one. They earned blisters, back pain and a new appreciation for whoever invented the electric blanket. The raw physicality of their pursuit is not just out to change minds, but unlock potential in what our bodies can do.
Understanding their story may not unlock the door to an arctic sailboat or even the door to a gym, but it will inevitably be with you at the next door you encounter and maybe push you across its threshold.
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