He’s paddled 60 km to work on B.C.’s North Coast. This week, he’ll try to kayak from Washington to Alaska

Yota Kano is on the water “pretty much every day.”

He’s been an avid paddler since he was 18, but since moving from Newfoundland to Prince Rupert on B.C.’s North Coast in 2019, Kano has taken up as many water activities as possible, including surfing, sea kayaking, canoeing and paddle boarding.

And when he has to work — and the weather permits — he sets out at 7 a.m. on a Sunday to paddle more than 60 kilometres south to his job as a fisheries biologist in Kitkatla, also known as Lax Klan, a small village on Dolphin Island home to about 450 Gitxaala people. 

The commute takes the 39-year-old roughly eight or nine hours, he said. A full day of work, just to get to work. 

“First time [I showed up] they call me kind of crazy guy but now it’s ‘OK he’s a good paddler’, ” Kano told CBC’s Carolina de Ryk.  

“Nowadays I paddle back and forth quite a lot and they recognize me and so everyone said ‘OK he comes’ and they know to expect [me].”

Now an experienced paddler, Kano is competing in the Race to Alaska, a more than 1,200-metre race from Port Townsend, Wash., to Ketchikan, Alaska. 

The big rule of the race is no one can have an engine; all vessels have to be human or wind-powered. Kano will be travelling in his sea kayak. 

“My friend kind of introduced the race when I got the new sea kayak and he told me ‘you should do that race if you got this sea kayak,’” he said. That was back in 2023.

“I dreamed about it and I trained for it and I did a bunch of sea kayak trips. And then, yeah, now the time has come.”

Kano won’t be the only competitor from B.C. making the journey; 12 other teams from other parts of the province will also be racing.

The event happens in two stages: competitors will complete a qualifier from Port Townsend to Victoria starting on Sunday, June 14. They have 36 hours to get across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to qualify for the longer race — the second stage. 

The second stage is a full-on race from Victoria up to Ketchikan, beginning on Wednesday at noon.  

Aside from two waypoints — Seymour Narrows and Bella Bella — there is no official course.

The winner of the race gets $10,000, and second place gets a set of steak knives. 

Kano said he’ll be happy just to finish the race.

Competing as Team Rainy, Kano is described on the race website as “a slow-moving coastal myth with a paddle.”

In preparation for the race, he’s been testing out gear and figuring out which food to take with him on his kayak. On Tuesday, he told CBC News the weather was looking good, and he was feeling confident he’d make it across the Juan de Fuca Strait.

Jesse Wiegel of Race to Alaska said it takes some serious endurance just to compete in the race.

“For a paddler like Yota, endurance bordering on obsession: loneliness, weather, sleep deprivation, conversations with seals, salt-caked blisters, and weeks of moving north under your own power — fighting the urge to do literally anything else,” Wiegel said.

To win, it would take Kano much, much more, Wiegel said.

“In a kayak, probably an act of God. And favourable currents. In that order.”