Three Islanders and their sailboats competed in the Pacific Northwest’s premier long-distance sailing race last month—the Swiftsure Lightship Classic—and took two of the top three places.
Alex Wigley, owner and skipper of Freedom X, finished the 138-mile course in a little less than 32 hours, snagging second place overall in the 20-boat race over Memorial Day weekend.
The owner of a horse farm and a portable saw mill on Vashon, Wigley said he’s honored to have done so well in the largest sailing race in the Puget Sound.
“The Swiftsure Lightship Classic is the race that started it all,” he said. “It’s the biggest challenge in Puget Sound because it allows you to sample some offshore sailing, and it allows you to see how well you perform against the top skippers in the area.”
The race begins in Victoria, British Columbia, and boats travel nearly 70 miles west between Washington and Vancouver Island before rounding an anchored battleship and making the trek back, finishing where they began.
“It was a typical race because it was fairly windy,” said Islander Jon Knudson, whose 42-foot boat placed 16th in the prestigious race. “It was all done in a pretty brisk wind, 20 knots, with fog.”
The sailboat that took second place is a Tartan 10, a 33-foot sailboat with a balsa wood and fiberglass hull that’s both quick and tough, said Wigley.
The sailboat that finished behind his boat — Islander Karl Haflinger’s Xiphius — is also a Tartan 10, a boat with no cabin and a proven record for speed. Xiphius took third place overall in the race.
“Tartans have been winning races all over the country for quite a long time,” Wigley said.
The two boats spent the last 30 miles of the race neck and neck, and finished only 14 seconds apart. But because the two boats were sailing the race with different sail configurations, they had different race “handicaps.” After times were adjusted, Freedom X beat Xiphius by seven minutes. Results were made official last week.
Several other Islanders raced in shorter versions of the Swiftsure, racing from Victoria to points along the Strait of Juan De Fuca and back.
The owners of both winning sailboats said they were proud to have fared so well against much larger, faster and more expensive boats.
“It felt great for us to beat some of those bigger boats,” said Haflinger, 57.
“The only boat that beat me is an Andrew 77, which is 77 feet long,” Wigley said. “That’s a million-dollar boat. … So we were very pleased with that result.”
The Freedom X was sailing its maiden voyage in the Swiftsure, he said, following a nasty accident in 1999 that crippled the boat.
“It’s got kind of a colored history,” said Wigley, 51. “In 1999, it had the misfortune of running under the Des Moines pier. That demasted it. It was awful.”
The boat had a broken mast and “some pretty good scratches in the hull” when Wigley fell in love with the disabled vessel, which was moored in Quartermaster Harbor. Wigley bought it from then-owner Knudson, who had won a few races in the Tartan 10 already.
“It’s always been a fast boat,” Knusdon said of Freedom X, which Wigley has rebuilt and refurbished from bow to stern since he bought it. “That boat won the Swiftsure Lightship Classic overall in 1999, and this year it took second. It was a most outstanding race.”
