Photos by Christian Parroco

Clouds of smoke blotted out half the sky thanks to the fire burning on the peninsula. The August sun burned round and red, apocalyptic. The air hung hot and heavy and, most critically, still. This was a problem for a sailboat race.

I perched on the sloped deck, head ducked to avoid the swinging boom. A young woman in a leopard print swimsuit told me that because it was my first time here at Duck Dodge, the weekly summer sailing race, I had to kiss the captains of the other boats at the after-party known as the “raft up.” “With tongue,” she laughed. Charli xcx thumped from the speaker strung up with rope swaying above us from the mast.

Another woman, Maddy, splayed out on the deck next to me, propped her head up on her hand, her wrist choked with Taylor Swift friendship bracelets since tonight’s theme was “band night.” She flicked something back and forth across her gums. Did she have some sort of dental device in there? Oh, I realized. It was a Zyn. “So, really, what made you pick this boat?” she asked. Maddy bopped around from boat to boat each Duck Dodge, but she’s been a staple on this one this summer. 

Really, it was because Jeka, the captain of the Beagle, had invited me when I posted on the Duck Dodge Facebook page and in the group’s “Mist Connections” chat trying to find an in to join the weekly race and explore Seattle’s sailing subculture.

Other boats raced past us. A different sailboat triple the size of ours carried an actual band—singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer, amplification. They crooned as the boat sailed. “I always have to ask if we win,” leopard swimsuit said. Her name was Sabrina, a flight attendant who tries to plan her off days so she can come to Duck Dodge. 

She and her friend, Kayla, also a flight attendant, posed for pictures against the red sun. “Tell us if we need to suck in our stomachs,” they said to me.

The wind killed our race early. Everyone still in clothes peeled them off to their second summer skin: swimwear. We jumped into the lake. Sabrina sat in a pink flamingo floaty. Around us, the race continued.

Later, at the raft up, Sabrina and Kayla led me from boat to boat. I kissed a woman captain on the cheek, a dog captain named Turbo on the nose, several masts, and one pair of silicone balls hanging from a boom. Sabrina laughed—I did not have to kiss anyone, really, let alone with tongue. Part of me felt disappointed. Maddy trailed behind us.

After hours on the water, I didn’t actually know much more about Duck Dodge than when I started. We didn’t dock until almost 11 p.m. I thought of Maddy’s question. Why did I choose this boat out of all the boats here?

I hadn’t realized there was a spectrum in the kind of boats participating. Duck Dodge is a race for everyone, I came to learn. Sure, the yachties on their expensive crafts zoom around the lake, but mostly Duck Dodge is a race for the scrappier boaters, those keen on getting on the water in any way possible. It’s also a place for novices like the Beagle. Duck Dodge showcases the whole gamut of the sailing experience in Seattle.

I’d have to go out again.

Medieval Knight on Spirit Bear

The next week, to get what I hoped was a more accurate taste of Duck Dodge, I joined the boat in charge of operations: the Committee Boat. I learned a lot.

For 51 years, Seattle sailors have participated in this weekly beer can race—a term for a casual race in the sailing world—that runs from May until September. Sometimes over a hundred boats gather on Lake Union; Tropical Night is the most popular because of the free beer barge, followed closely by Pride Night and Pirate Night. The route around Lake Union changes each week with the wind. Technically, the race starts at 7 p.m. However, there are five heats, or “starts,” depending on how fast boats are. So, the race begins for first start racers at 7 p.m. Another group goes at 7:05 p.m., the next at 7:10 p.m., and so on.

The first three finishers in each start receive duck stickers as a prize. The most on-theme boat wins a black duck sticker. Afterward, sailboats lash themselves together in “the raft up” and party, hopping from boat to boat, until city noise ordinances mandate the festivities end. There’s no other sailing event like it, says Parker Harris, who is in charge of running Duck Dodge this year.

I met Harris on Duck Dodge’s Committee Boat. It’s usually a trawler, the only non-sailboat anchored in the middle of the action. It’s called The Kraken. Though, sometimes they call it The Quacken. This week, though, the Committee Boat was a historic two-masted 45-foot sailboat called Spirit Bear. He sent me a picture of it with the text: “Here’s the boat you’ll be looking for.”

I sweated through the cheap chain mail I wore to fit the evening’s theme of Medieval Knight as I searched the marinas around the Museum of History and Industry for the boat. Finally, I found Spirit Bear. I could tell I was in the right spot when I saw a man on board in a full knight costume. He had a giant flask attached to his arm like a shield. He filled it with three White Claws, he told me later.

Harris moved to Seattle from Connecticut 15 years ago where the sailing community is a bit stuffier. He bought a sail boat within two weeks of living here before he had a job or a place to live. He found Duck Dodge thanks to online dating.

“I met a girl on OKCupid and she was doing Duck Dodge and she suggested that I come out with her,” he says. That relationship didn’t work out, but “it was a match with Duck Dodge.”

Now, Harris manages the race from the middle of Lake Union with a crew of volunteers on the Committee Boat. He creates the race route each week. With little to no wind for the second week in a row, Harris planted buoys on a shorter route. A sign hung from the Committee Boat’s mast broadcasted the route’s landmarks: AGC (a building in South Lake Union that read “AGC”) and Freeway (the Ship Canal Bridge). Boats pull up to the Committee Boat to check in. They relayed their ship name and sail number to the committee, mostly by yelling (the Committee always has a volunteer assigned to the role of “Yeller.”).

Some of the boat names from the night: Self Evident, Lemony, First Light, Banana, Full Moon, RedJ24, Blue Heron, Brush Fire, Gilder, Touch of Gray, Orenda, Double Take, Hydra, Chinook, Misfit, Deja Vu, Madeline, Sea Cup, Spitting Kisses, Mz Replicant, Necessary Evil, This Is Fine.

The boat Moonshine arrived with the whole crew dressed as characters from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, complete with clopping coconuts. They threw the Committee Boat a shrubbery (a bouquet of fresh rosemary clippings). Potato-sack-wearing “mud farmers” crewed an expensive-looking sailboat called Mantis. On a different boat, a man leaning against the mast played a fife while a different man danced suggestively. He was dressed as a dragon.

“Duck Dodge is unique because it’s right in the middle of a city,” Harris says. That increases accessibility and visibility. Beyond that, the culture of Duck Dodge is unparalleled. Fancy yacht clubs usually make up the beer can races in other parts of the country. Not in this race. “Duck Dodge embraces the culture of general silliness and irreverence. And there’s nothing more coveted than a duck sticker around here.”

Setting the Landlubber Record Straight

Whenever I saw all those sails gathered on a given summer Tuesday, I assumed the sails belonged to boats that belonged to the extremely wealthy. Those are the people who have boats, right?

“A lot of land folks think, ‘Oh, it's a yachty thing. You have to have money to do this,’” Rachel, a volunteer on the Committee Boat, says. Actually, Rachel says, you don’t. “Like on my boat, I don't even have a fucking engine right now. We've been rowing it out.”

Rachel got her first taste of sailing growing up near Lake Superior. When she originally moved out to the Seattle area, she lived on the East Side. But, it wasn’t close enough to the water for her, so she moved to South Lake Union. That proved to be a mistake, too, she says. “I hated living in that,” she says. “It was concrete and sterile and had no character.” The neighborhood did connect her with the Center for Wooden Boats, however. She started volunteering regularly and eventually learned to sail there.

She befriended the staff, and they all went out on different Duck Dodge boats during the summer. That’s how she first discovered the race.

“It’s a good gateway to figure things out,” Rachel says of Duck Dodge. The race isn’t serious. All types of sailors from all experience levels join in. And from all economic classes.

Talking over the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on the Committee Boat and sipping wine from a goblet, Rachel points to a sailboat with a gleaming navy paint job. “They obviously have money,” she says. “They’re shiny. And then you’ve got this guy in his dingy—”

She points over to a two-person boat wobbling in the waves. The dinghy’s sailor heard, and swiveled his head.

“We love you!” Rachel calls. “But, yeah, no maintenance required on that. Just make sure it fucking floats and the sail has no holes.”

Adam, who drives the Washington State Ferry route from West Seattle to Vashon Island, recently got his own sailboat. A sailing youth group gave the 55-year-old sailboat away for free and Adam’s been fixing it up. He sailed it during the race tonight and did not win.

“If you want to know what the fucking most expensive boat in the world is, it’s a free boat,” Adam says.

These scrappier, do-it-yourself, get-on-the-water-by-any-means-necessary types aren’t yachters. They’re boaters.

Mark, a Wisconsin native, moved up here from California three years ago. He bought a sailboat to live on sight unseen.

People ask him whether he experiences the Seattle Freeze. “We're boaters,” he says, pointing out multiple marina neighbors sailing in the race that evening. Boaters are people who are always up for adventure, he says. “Boaters just instantly connect.”

The Call of the Water 

These Duck Dodgers participate in this silly race every week because they want to be on the water. Rachel describes it as catching the sailing fever. “Do you have ADD?” she asks. She does, she says, explaining her chaotic work-from-home days. “Sailing is like the one thing that fucking hones it in. I can spend three hours watching the wind.”

Her partner and Spirit Bear owner, Levi, who Mark described as “the Old Man and the Sea but he’s not that old,” finds sailing tranquil. It’s also something to continuously work at.

“You have to practice and practice and practice,” he says. “And, eventually, you can read the winds. You can read the water and how it's going to affect your course, your point of sail.”

Levi worked on boats, but he never sailed them until a friend brought him on a boat called Crystal during one Duck Dodge six years ago. It started out small. The friend told him to pull the strings, to do this, to do that. After the race, Levi was hooked.

That’s how the sailing community works in Seattle, according to Melanie, a crew member of Moonshine. Her captain tied the boat to Spirit Bear during the raft up. I sat on Moonshine’s deck with her and the crew of mostly women—a rarity in the sailing world.

Melanie moved here from South Carolina to be near the water. A man on a flight told her about sailing lessons for women. Melanie signed up. She started doing races to continue her learning. She also volunteered at the Center for Wooden Boats to learn even more.

“It’s not enough to sit around and look at [the water],” Melanie says. “I needed to be involved in it to make it worth it.”

She joined Duck Dodge through a Facebook post asking to crew on someone’s boat. A now-deceased sailing legend, Wendell Gregory, invited her onboard his boat. That’s where Melanie met most of the other women she was sailing with on Moonshine.

Gregory taught many women how to sail, a big thing for a sport that tends to be majority male. “Wendell gave us that opportunity to learn,” a Moonshine crewmate named Laura says. She says he’d read the wind based on how it blew the smoke from his cigarette. He was a “really ornery old salt.” He never smiled while sailing. He was too competitive, even during a non-competitive race like Duck Dodge.

When he died from cancer, his crew had to find new boats to sail on during the race. They took the knowledge he gave them and kept sailing.

He was emblematic of the “truly generous” sailing community here, Melanie says. “People help each other out on the water.” 

Because of the skills she’s gained, Melanie finds herself out on the lakes and the Sound often. She feels part of the city in a way she always dreamed.

“This city wouldn't be what it is without the water,” she says. “Being on the lake, it’s like looking at Seattle from the inside out.”

I thought back to the Beagle that first night. At the time, I worried I’d wasted the five hours I spent on that boat because they weren’t serious Duck Dodgers. But there is no such thing as a serious Duck Dodger, I learned.

A Duck Dodger is someone who loves to sail, or at least, someone willing to go along for the ride. Jeka, the captain, moved here from Toronto nine years ago. Without knowing how to sail, Jeka bought the Beagle, a 1980s-era yellow sailboat not to be confused with Charles Darwin’s ship. Only then did he take a sailing course. Even after the class, sailing didn’t totally click for Jeka. He really learned how to sail by inviting other people onboard who knew what they were doing and learning through “osmosis,” he says.

Now, he brings anyone aboard who wants to join the weekly race. He met Sabrina in the leopard swimsuit through her ex-boyfriend. Sabrina brought her fellow flight attendant, Kayla, and her friend and different ex-boyfriend, Casey. The Beagle often sees a rotating cast of crew.

This seemed odd to me at first. I realize now that Jeka is sharing a gift with whomever will accept it: a chance to get out on the water and get bitten by the sailing bug the way he was.