The Alaskan Wet Dog Race

 

Why would someone want to come to Alaska and ride a watercraft around the ocean taking such a huge risk? What would the benefit be in that? Is prestige enough? To be able to say that you won the Alaskan Wet Dog Race enough? It probably is not for most people.

I have asked myself that question many times over the last 5 years while planning this event and I have to say that most people will not take such a risk with such an expense without substantial reward.

What can we do to entice people from all over the world to come to Alaska and participate in this one of a kind event? Our goal is to offer a prize fund that is unmatched anywhere in the world.

We are sincerely trying to produce an event with a prize payout ONE MILLION DOLLARS to each team member.

We sincerely feel that we have compiled a plan that will help us achieve that goal.

In order for us to meet that goal we must be able to get a minimum of 500 teams to compete.

What is it going to take to be able to do that? To put it in perspective it means that we only need to get 10 teams from each state to archive our number of entrants.

I have been asked why we need to have 500 teams. Why not have fewer racers?

My answer to that is this, there are certain expenses that are set no matter how many racers enter, and with fewer racers the cost to each racer goes up. While the estimated entry fee so far is around 25K, with 1000 racers, with half the number of racers the estimated entry fee would be around 32K.

The most important reason for having 500 teams is so that we can have a prize payout that will be unrivaled. Our goal is to have the world's first million dollar watercraft race purse. And we mean one million dollars for each team member for first place. Not one million to split. In whole there will be at least four to five million dollars on the table for prize payouts with 2 million dollars going to the first place team.

We could end up lowering the prize to get the cost lower but for now and until it is obvious that we cannot get enough interest we are going to stay on track with our present goal of having 500 teams with the million dollar payout.

We are still working out how many places we can pay down to and we hope to be able to pay down to at least 50 places. We will keep you informed as we get closer and we work out the complete purse payout.

We feel strongly that it has to be a million dollars for each team member. We firmly believe based on the research that we have been doing for the last 5 years that no one could afford to or even would want to take the risk of doing something like this race for anything less than what we are offering.

We have heard suggestions to start with a shorter race and work up.

The problem with that is, there are a lot of short endurance races all over the US and the world. These races take laps around a lake. Why would someone want to have to come all the way to Alaska and ship their watercrafts up here for a short race when they can have short races closer to where they live? They wouldn't! It would cost too much and the return would not be worth it.

This race has to be several things. It has to be extreme, exciting, world class, and it has to be worth the risk and the cost of traveling and transporting watercrafts to Alaska. The only way that we will ever get enough interest in this race is to lay the million dollars on the table.

The million dollar purse is not the only reason for the need to have 500 teams.

The cost of certain items for this race like fuel transportation to all of the remote areas is astronomical. It does not matter if you are delivering 100 gallons of fuel or 50,000 gallons of fuel the transportation is going to be the same.

Some expenses are proportional to each racer and other expenses are not and the cost for those expense go up the fewer people you have paying for them. It will take a big group to be able to cover the cost for all of the expenses and the more we have, the less it is for everyone.

There are other things to consider here but I think I have made my point that we need to have 500 teams and anything less we will not run the race. So talk it up with your other watercrafting buddies and let's get the show on the road.

Take our Survey by clicking here.