UW grads set pub crawl record

Ten young men in red jerseys with "USA" emblazoned on the front walked into the Cyclops Café & Lounge last Saturday evening amid cheers and clapping from the entourage in tow.

Was it some new sports team, taking a break from training for the Olympics?

Nope, just a group of friends who say they set a new unofficial Guinness World Record for most pubs visited in a 24-hour period. Led by Pat Finley and Dan Wachtler, both of Gig Harbor, the 10 men — many recent University of Washington grads — visited 101 Seattle bars in a little more than 15 hours a week ago.

"The idea came from us kind of sitting around one August morning,... " said Finley, who will start work next month for a startup company that grows algae for biofuel. "We busted out my friend's [Guinness] World Record book and saw this one in there, and said, 'We could beat that.' "

The previous record was held by a group of 19 Australians, who visited 82 bars in 24 hours in 2005.

According to official Guinness rules, one member of the team had to consume a drink at each pub, and they had to walk or use public transportation.

"It was more difficult than we first expected, but we ended up getting a pretty good crew of people who all enjoy drinking," explained Wachtler, who leaves for Zambia on Sunday to be project manager on a school being built by the nonprofit Construction for Change.

To ensure their record would be officially recognized, the team had to apply and wait six weeks to hear back from the folks at Guinness, which sent them very specific guidelines.

They mapped out an initial route, starting at 8 a.m. Saturday at Fonté Café & Wine Bar downtown, walking to Pioneer Square, back through downtown, then to Belltown and finally busing to Ballard for the finish. Finley downed the group's 101st beer at 11:15 p.m. in King's Hardware on Ballard Avenue.

Spread over 15 hours, with each person averaging 10 drinks during the course of their day, the point of the excursion was not to overindulge. Rather, it was a chance to have fun and do some male bonding, they said.

Each member of the team spent between $100 and $200, with some drinks costing as much as $17, Wachtler said.

The group had a crew of friends who showed up for various hours of the day, bringing them sandwiches and showing their support. Finley's mother, Betsy, was one of them.

"Because of the organization and the camaraderie, I thought, 'OK, this sounds like a fun thing to do,' " Betsy Finley recalls. "This wasn't going to be a drunk fest, and it's something you can only do when you're young."

In visiting 101 pubs, the team saw many bars and restaurants they didn't know existed.

"Everyone has their little niche of bars that they like, but this kind of expanded our horizons of Seattle bars," Finley said.

Now that the pub-crawl is over, there's still a lot to do to ensure Guinness verifies the record. The team kept track of its drinks and bars in a logbook, which each bartender signed. They took video and still camera footage of each pub. The next step is sending it all to Guinness and waiting to hear back, which could take a couple of months.

"I hope [the Australians] come at us and try to beat it," Wachtler said. "I would love to do this event again."

Molly Rosbach: 206-464-2311 or mrosbach@seattletimes.com