Repeat performance: Ski to Sea winner built an early lead and held on to the finish

Birch Equipment won the 50th annual Ski to Sea race Sunday, as the team’s sea kayaker hauled onto the beach at Marine Park and sprinted to ring the bell in under six hours for the second year in a row.

Jeff Hilburn told The Bellingham Herald that he was grateful to have had a 10-minute head start on the second-place Boomer’s Drive-In team as he left Squalicum Harbor on the last leg of the 93-mile relay.

“It was such a large lead! It was not quite as painful as if someone was chasing me,” Hilburn said.

Hilburn said the most difficult part of the race was fighting a 10 mph headwind out of the south, with gusts to 16 mph, according to National Weather Service readings.

Kayakers also had to contend with an ebb tide that was flowing away from the shoreline and exposed more beach, making the run to the finish line several feet longer.

Winning time for the 2023 Ski to Sea was 5:54:43.3, according to the official race website.

Ski to Sea is a grueling mult-sport marathon event that starts with cross-country skiing at the Mt. Baker Ski Area and ends with the sea kayakers at Marine Park in Fairhaven. In between, there are legs for downhill skiing or snowboarding, running, bicycling, canoeing and cyclocross.

Colleen Lukacovic, of Bellingham, watched the kayakers paddle to the finish line from her perch on a boulder near the water’s edge.

“We come out almost every year. It’s a fun community event,” Lukacovic said.

Lukacovic and her husband, John, who was at her side, even competed together in the canoe leg three decades ago.

“It all ends in Fairhaven,” he said, echoing the original name of the post-race festival and street fair.

“It’s nice that people from all over the area come down here,” he said.

Several thousand spectators filled Marine Park, sitting in the sun on the pebbly beach and lining the route to the finish line.

Bellingham Fire Department’s drum and bagpipe corps played the classic “Scotland the Brave” as their team finished fifth overall.

It took Boomer’s kayaker Greg Redman several minutes to catch his breath after making an extra push to the finish, giving his team a time of 6:01:59.0.

“You can’t let up. You never know what’s going to happen,” he said.

Redman’s son Finn Redman started the race for Birch Equipment, competing in the cross-county skiing leg.

“He gets to have the bragging rights all the way home,” Redman said.

Some 478 teams were registered in several divisions to tackle the course that goes from 4,300 feet in the North Cascades to sea level in Bellingham, race director Anna Rankin said.

Competitors were from 40 U.S. states and several foreign countries, including Italy and Pakistan, she said.

Ski to Sea takes its inspiration from the Mount Baker Marathon that ran for several years starting in 1911, but the modern race dates to 1973.

The annual event attracts thousands of participants and spectators alike and serves to unofficially usher in summer.