Korina Knudson jumped from her boat onto the Victoria Inner Harbour’s dock and waved an emotional goodbye to her teenage son and octogenarian husband as they sailed toward the start line of the Swiftsure Lightship Classic on Saturday.
The annual two-day Swiftsure includes 119 boats this year, competing in five races, from two-day long-haul runs to one-day inshore sprints. All boats got off to a successful spinnaker start Saturday with southeast winds.
Knudson, 54, reminisced that it seemed like yesterday that she was racing while six-months pregnant with her son. Fast forward to this weekend and he is off with dad as part of a 10-person crew hoping to recapture last year’s Swiftsure glory when Korina Korina won the long-course Lightship Classic 138-nautical mile race.
Sailing and racing for this family is a “magnificent obsession” — it is spiritual, it is in their veins, and “it dominates our life,” she said.
“This is what we do every month and this is the big sail of the year,” said Korina Knudson.“There are no vacations, there is no downtime, we don’t sail for pleasure, I’ve never been on that boat to putt-putt around the harbour, we race that boat full time.”
Jon Knudson Sr., 81, has competed in 32 Swiftsure long-course races. The family also competes in about 12 races a year in Puget Sound in Washington. Though 16-year-old Jon Knudson Jr.’s perseverance was never in doubt, he proved something to himself last year after he spent 22 hours violently ill from sea sickness. The entire crew was ill during that race.
It’s not the win, per se, that keeps the Knudsons heading out to sea.
Ultimately, it’s the “complete freedom” they feel and the sights they see, especially during their annual Swiftsure race.
“The conditions are unpredictable,” she said. “One year we were out there and saw an orca super pod of whales take out a pilot whale. It was a National Geographic moment but it was too sacred for us to take any pictures of it.”
Another time on the water near Oregon she was “visited by a pod of migrating humpback whales and their calves and that was just the most amazing intimate beautiful moment — one of the big ones of my life — to experience that and see that in its full context. I am just in love with it all.”
Knudson was a hairdresser on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, where the family lives, when she first met her husband, already a sailor. They dated 10 years and bought and named Korina Korina in 2006. They’ve been sailing ever since.
“My husband’s given me a glorious gift in sailing,” said Knudson. “It’s hard to put words to the joy I feel out there in the water.”
When her son was born, she “took a break” to raise and home-school her son.
“He was raised racing on that boat,” said Korina Knudson. “There was no other way we could do it.”
She said she rises at 4 a.m. each morning and swims four kilometres and then “cold plunges” for 30 minutes as part of a regime she says she does “just to keep up with my husband” who also scuba dives monthly in part to maintain the boat’s hull.
At the same time she faces head on the reality that her husband may well take his last breath on the Korina Korina. She broaches that as if she were talking about lowering a sail before a storm.
“I know he’s not going to stop so if anything happens out there, he’ll die doing what he loves and I can’t stop him from that If something should happen to my husband it will be my son and myself who will be back here racing.”
Part way through the race Saturday evening, with winds up to 45 knots, Korina Korina was in third place behind Zvi out of Seattle Yacht Club and Hana Mari, out of Victoria Yacht Club.
“It looks like they are having a lot of fun,” said Knudson. “He has a new storm sail, he’ll be good out there.”
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