An Epic Challenge- The Chicago Mackinac Race

J/Teams Win Four Divisions, J/109 Wins Mackinac Cup!
(Mackinac Island, MI) – This year’s 109th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac will go down in the history books as one of the toughest races ever, sharply reminiscent of the wild near gale bashing the fleet experienced decades ago when Ted Turner’s 12 Meter American Eagle won the race and he later on quipped, “that was the roughest and hardest race I’ve ever sailed in my life!”  How tough was it this year? Just 200 of the 297 starters completed the 289.4 nm course (e.g. about one third of the fleet dropped out).

A frontal passage hit the fleet at midnight on Saturday, just hours into the race, producing a rare “dry front” that looked menacing as it came over the water but had no rain over Lake Michigan, but was pummeling the shoreline with rain, hail, and thousands of lightning bolts racing across the sky, thunder echoing over the water to remind everyone that Nature was King! As the front passed over the fleet, a blast front of 35-50 knot winds flew across the water that no one could see, other than the fact that boats just hundreds of yards away from you would suddenly flip over into a wild broach with spinnakers flailing away and, in many cases, simply blowing up into a thousand pieces of nylon!  Look at the  NOAA Radar Archive.

Shortly thereafter, the front passed by, pulling behind it a far stronger northerly breeze than forecast, so the fleet settled into a 20+ hour beat to windward in 15-30 knot winds from the N/NE and punching into a classic 6-10 ft Lake Michigan “chop”- steep faces, no backs and constant slamming of the bow into the next wave.  To say it was unpleasant experience would be an understatement.  By the time the fleet reached the famous first turning point at Point Betsie about 163nm up the track, about a third of the fleet had dropped out for various reasons- equipment damage, boat damage, sail damage, or simply human damage (people got sick or hurt and physically could not take it any longer).

Ironically, after the first trial by fire to get around Pt Betsie, the winds rapidly shut down between the Manitou Island Straits and the open waters headed to Grey’s Reef- the next major turning point.  In fact, it was a glass-out for several hours for most boats.  Talk about extremes!  From there on end, many felt they could swim or crawl faster to the Mackinac finish line than drift at “triple naughts” on their speedo’s!

At the end of it all, the major highlight from J/sailor’s perspective was the amazing performance by the J/109 TOA owned and raced by Bruce Danly (Lake Bluff, IL) and Jim Mitchell (Chicago, IL), winning the Mackinac Cup, the overall win for the smaller boats in the fleet!  More importantly, there’s was a “family affair”, with young sailors, husband and wife on board!

The race has always been popular with J/Teams.  The enormous contingent of sixty-nine J’s (23% of the entries), sailed in both one-design classes (J/111, J/109, J/105) as well as ORR handicap classes ranging from J/88s up to a J/145.

J/111 One-Design Fleet
The nineteen teams in the J/111 class knew it was going to be another battle for the entire 289nm, from start to finish.  After running through the storm front, the top five boats quickly emerged, sailing consistently faster than the rest of the fleet and employing strong overall tactics and strategies up the race course.  Once the fleet hit the Michigan shoreline around Little Sable Point, it was a frenetic game of playing shoreline shifts versus offshore streaks, the leaderboard constantly shifting between Marty Roesch’s VELOCITY, Rich Witzel’s ROWDY, the Brummel/ Henderson duo on KASHMIR, Brad Faber’s UTAH and Dave Irish’s NO SURPRISE.  It was like watching a heavyweight boxing match for those boats that were behind them.  In the end, emerging bruised, battered and grinning from ear-to-ear was none other than Marty Roesch and his amazing Annapolis YC team on VELOCITY that consisted of James Allsop, Camden Bowdren, Andrew Eyring, Jarrett Hering, Paul Luisi, Derrick Reig, and Chris Teixeira. Taking second after the long battle was Rich Witzel’s ROWDY crew (Jim Calto, Chris Doubek, Colleen Duncan, Tom Elliott, Keith Love, and Zac Schramm). The final step on the podium went to a familiar Chicago crew, Karl Brummel and Steve Henderson sailing KASHMIR with crew of Ryan Clulo, David Guba, Mark Lyons, Andy Ray, and Tom Roop.

Of note, kudos to Dave McCreight’s J/111 DARK HORSE from Annapolis. It was a scary Saturday night on July 15th, when rough weather rolled in quickly, as it does on the Great Lakes, and a catamaran flipped. McCreight’s DARK HORSE was one of the boats to stand by to assist when the Coast Guard showed up to help the five sailors in the water. Although the crew’s assistance was not needed, we’d like to acknowledge the team for their sportsmanship, safety consideration for fellow sailors, and thoughtful conduct.

Here is the report from J/111 class winner, Marty Roesch’s VELOCITY: “This was an interesting race because the navigation and strategy seemed like they were more obvious than in the past two Mac races I've done.  We were looking at SE winds at the start that were forecast to slowly build and clock to the SW before a gusty front would come through with NW winds and possible storms, followed by strong northerly winds with big waves on Sunday, then light shifty winds under a passing high pressure system on Monday.  So the plan was to stay left of rhumb until the front came in and then get across the lake, then inside at the Manitous and then see what we had to do to get across the finish on Monday.

We had a great start, winning the boat end of the line and quickly transitioning into our Code 0.  We peeled to A1.5 and then A2 as the winds slowly clocked as per the forecast.  The sailing was absolutely fantastic on the first day as we picked our way though the larger fleet and kept an eye on the competition.  We spent a fair amount of time scratching our heads as No Surprise pulled in front of us a couple hundred yards up the course (where did those guys come from??) and kept an eye on Utah and Kashmir while we kept the boat speed up and waited for the front.

When the sun went down we could see a big display of lightning to the northwest that was slowly approaching and putting on a huge cloud-to-cloud light show that was beautiful to watch.  When the NW winds finally hit it, was a very quick transition and we worked to get our A2 down and our short hoist J4 up.  We saw wind speeds build quickly into the 30s despite not feeling it on the water and in short order we saw high 30s and low 40s and then it landed.  The top wind speed we saw was 46 knots and we hit 15 knots of boat speed blast reaching under the J4 in the crazy winds and rapidly building sea state.

The was a lull for a bit after the front came through and we put the Code 0 back up, but that proved to be the wrong sail after a few minutes so we switched to the A3 and I got back on the wheel.  Due to the clouds, it was pitch black on the water and very hard to see the waves so the first 10 minutes or so were very disorienting and hard to drive in.  Luckily, a bright star popped out under the cloud deck and I was able to use that as a steering reference and get things smoothed out.

We were bashing through big waves at 15-17 knots boatspeed for a couple of hours as we headed northeast and across the lake to get to the Michigan side.  Once the jib went up, I went down for the night.

When I woke a couple hours later, we were in pounding conditions close-hauled and heading up the coast of Michigan between Big and Little Sable Points.  We could see a few other J/111's around us and we spent pretty much all day on Monday dealing with mild seasickness among several crew members, trying to stay upright in 20-25 knot northerly winds and 6-10 foot waves, and chasing boats.  We spent a lot of time crossing and being crossed by Utah on Monday, which was alternately good and bad for morale.  These were some of the roughest conditions that I've sailed in for the amount of time we were in them and it was very challenging for the whole team.  We did a great job staying in contact with the leading contingent of 111's and staying in the game that day.

If I were to pick a point where we made a call that put us into a position to achieve our ultimate victory, I'd say it was very early in the morning on Monday.  We were south of Beaver Island and we knew the winds were forecast to clock NE to SE and we also knew that we were on the outside of the pinwheel of leader group and that that was not going to be a great place to be.  We made the call to gybe away to an angle that took our VMG to almost zero and spent a half hour sailing to the inside of the pack and much closer to the rhumb line.  Shortly after we gybed back to course the winds did exactly what was predicted and the move paid off big.  As the sun came up on Monday we saw Kashmir about 2 miles in front of us, Utah and No Surprise over near Beaver Island and not moving very quickly, and Rowdy to the north of us with a group of boats from other classes.

The conditions that morning were 0-4 knots of wind and very glassy. As the sun came up we could see patches of breeze on the water so we played the "connect the dots" game we play so frequently in Annapolis to get ahead of Kashmir and pull up even with Rowdy, slowly pulling past both them and No Surprise.  Once we got to Greys Reef, we were in a position to consolidate and defend against Rowdy and No Surprise and we spent 6 hours sailing the last 25 miles and staying out front through the whole afternoon.

Once we got to the bridge we felt like we had a very comfortable lead and the breeze was moving Velocity along very nicely at 6-7 knots with the lighthouse in sight.

That's when the bottom almost fell out.

A mile or so past the bridge the winds started to go light on us again and it looked like the other two boats had connected with some breeze on the south side of the Straights of Mackinac so we decided to cover. As we came out of our covering gybe, I looked over my shoulder and saw No Surprise maybe 6-8 boat lengths back!  After 282nm and just 7nm left to go, we were within seconds of each other and we still had a lot of battling to do. With me on the wheel and Chris Teixeira trimming the kite, Derrick Reig and James Allsop managing the tactical picture, we got back to work and managed to extend on both them and Rowdy, finally gybing away for the finish after about an hour of dueling in the last 3 miles.

As we approached the finish line there was one last challenge - the wind completely shut down!  With “triple naught” (0.00 knots of boatspeed) on the B&G displays we found that we had about 0.8 knots of current pushing us towards the finish line.  As I looked around in a bit of a panic, I saw that everyone else was being shut down as they approached the line as well.  It took us 30 minutes of getting tossed around by ferry wakes and doing everything we could to get the boat moving to cross the finish line!

The conditions on this race ran the full gamut from 0-45 knot winds, flat water to 10 foot breaking rollers, cold to hot temperatures.  The crew of Velocity did a great job of overcoming it all, staying in the game and capitalizing where we could to win the prize in what was one of the toughest races I've ever sailed!”

J/105 One-Design Fleet
Another large, very competitive J/Class were the twenty-one boats sailing J/105s.  Like their colleagues in the 111’s, many of their top contenders in past Mac Races, Chicago NOOD regattas and other offshore events were quite well-prepared to do battle for the entire 40-50 hours on the race course.  In the end, a familiar crew led everyone home to claim class honors- it was Mark Symonds and his crew on PTERODACTYL (Tim Kerr, Michael Morin, Thad Nguyen, John Quinlan, Trey Rose, and Duane Rose).  Taking second after a 15 minutes scoring penalty was Vanessa Gates crew on STRIKING that included Will and Steven Knoop, Richard Martin, Patrick Rice, and Leslie Washburn. Third on the podium was another top Chicago boat, Clark Pellett’s SEALARK crew that consisted of Shane Montgomery, Russ & Steve Radke, John Schussler, Nathaniel Sher, and Craig Warner.

Here is the J/105 class report from the winner, Mark Symonds on PTERODACTYL: “It was one of the most challenging Chicago Mac races I have sailed.  It started out like a typical Mac Race- a pleasant sleigh ride under spinnaker.  By late Saturday, though, we could clearly see the storm system coming down the lake.  Thankfully, the really bad stuff seemed to be tracking over the Wisconsin coastline off to the west of us.  We kept our spinnaker up a little too long and suffered a knockdown in a sudden increase in winds to 40+ knots. It seemed like we were at a 90-degree angle forever, but more likely about 30-40 seconds.  We were able to retrieve our spinnaker (in several pieces) and all the control lines.  From there, the wind turned north for over 24 hours.  North winds on Lake Michigan create big, powerful waves.  We slammed upwind all of Sunday.  We were very grateful and probably lucky that no one was hurt, being tossed around the cabin or deck.  We soldiered on trying to catch Buzz and SeaLark who were launched in front of us.

When we reached the Manitou passage, we had momentary cell coverage and found that we had caught them, but that Striking had also caught up.  Four of us were bobbing for hours or ghosting along at very low speeds for quite some time.  We tried everything to get going - jib and main, spinnaker and main, spinnaker only.  We constantly worked it to try to accelerate out of the doldrums.  Three of us were neck and neck getting to Grays Reef.  This is the reason I love one-design racing - after two plus days of racing, we were in a clump of competitors who all had the same capabilities.  When we finally got past the reef and turned toward the bridge it was a drag race with the wind out of the south.  We were able to barely hang on flying a spinnaker at a tight angle the whole way.

Kudos to the whole J105 fleet.  They are a great bunch of talented and well-prepared competitors.  While many had to drop out, we were very happy there were no serious injuries.  We are looking forward to a challenging fleet this Saturday for the Bayview Mackinac Race, our division is nearly all J/Boats, including J/105s, J/109s and the very fast J/111s!”

Another notable development in the J/105 class was the confidence of women owners to assemble top-notch teams and pursue top-level performance with great teams.  Perhaps inspired by the likes of J/88 owner like Iris Vogel’s champion team on DEVIATION, Vanessa Gates’ STRIKING team is forging new paths for women owner/skippers, as well as Nancy Glover’s TEMPEST crew, the Petzold gals on GREEN FLASH, and Barbara Dael’s Y-NOT!!  Add in four husband/wife teams and there is no question the easy-to-sail J/105 with a nice, easy to manage wheel, is less intimidating and easily managed by women sailors in all extremes of weather conditions!

J/109 One-Design Fleet
With ten teams, the J/109 class will always be tough and competitive and this year was no different! Taking class honors after a long battle through the Manitou Straits to Grey’s Reef was Robert Evans’ GOAT RODEO with his Chicago crew consisting of Lorna Bath, Brian Evans, Christian Goebel, Michael Kearschner, Daniel Rylance, Cameron Rylance, and Keith Stauber.  Taking the silver was a nearly all-family crew- Woody, Max, John & Will Hansmann’s BLOODLINE, adding in Jim & John Lynch as well as Will & Katie Wells from Newport, RI!  The third spot on the podium was taken by Scott Sims’ SLAPSHOT II crew of Melanie Derleth, Matt Gartner, Ashley Hunsader, Preston Scruggs, John Stevenson, Rich Vedder, and Kurt Wittenberg.  What was notable about the J/109 fleet?? All of the top three had women sailors on board as part of their winning teams!  

Level 35 Class Fleet
The Level 35 Class of eight teams included a trio of J/35s, such as Rick Stage’s ALPHA PUPPY, Larry Taunt’s BAD DOG J, and Mitch Weisman’s THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER. Needless to say, they all did well. In the end, bragging rights went to Rick Stage’s J/35 ALPHA PUPPY team of Gene Benedict, Justin Kalb, Kristian Kobernus, Steve Krasowski, Kevin Starr, Aimee Strittmatter, Jon Van Norman, and Andrew Winter.  While it was an “almost sweep” of the podium, the bronze went to Larry Taunt’s J/35 BAD DOG with crew of Bruce Bustin, Denny Dryer, Brad Fisher, Jeff Fuller, Timothy Graham, Dan Nikesch, Philip Wujkowski, Jim Wujkowski.

The class make-up for Section 2 was rather diverse, including a half-dozen Farr 40s plus the J/145 MAIN STREET sailed by Bill and Jean Schanen of SAILING magazine fame from Port Washington YC.  In the end, the Schanen family’s pretty red speedster took 5th in class with a crew that included most of the Schanen family (Bill 3, Bill 4, Bill 5, Erin, Greta, & Jean) plus a cast of characters from “da hood” of Milwaukee to Sheboygan (Dan Branson, Mike Burt, Scott Fruechtl, Nick Hayes (famous writer on all things sailing!), Dale Peters, and Richard Reichelsdorfer).

For the Section 3 division, it was a battle of the J/130s versus the J/133s.  In the end, taking J/crew honors was Tom & Beth-Ann Papoutsis’ RENEGADE in third place; their crew consisted of Paul Bader, Devin Bader, Steve Curtis, William Dooley, David Galen, Larry Kwiat, James Lowe, Joey Papoutsis, and Matthew Pinsky.  Settling into 4th place after a tough thrash was Doug Petter’s WILLIE J, with crew of Brendan Hagman, Todd Labaugh, Andrew Lauten, Doug/ Andrew/ Juli Petter, Dell & Amy Todd, Brian Turuta, and Bert Vanderweele.

Fighting for brand and class honors all by themselves in Section 4 was Randy Kuhn & James Richter’s J/44 CHEAP’N’DEEP, a proven winner based on their performances off the Chicago waterfront this summer.  For a tough Mackinac Race for a completely family crew, there’s was a notable performance to take 5th in class- their undoing was the classic “black hole” known as the Manitous to Greys Reef “depression”.  Otherwise, as contenders to win class going past Point Betsie, it was an awesome performance.  The crew included Alex Bott, Jay Butler, John Conway, Dylan Hahn, JJ Kuhn, Chuck Norris, George Richter, Pete Robinson, and Justin Theodore.

Crushing the Section 5 class was the J/122 GOTTA WANTA skippered by Bob Mampe, from Grand Traverse YC.  To say this was a veteran team of a few dozen Mac Races would be an understatement.  Perhaps Dick & Doug Devos would wish to have this “all-star” team of amateurs and friends on board instead of their payroll of pro’s aboard WINDQUEST.  Needless to say, this crew knew what to do, where to go, and played all the nuances of the Michigan coastline to just crush their class.  The crew included Tom Babel, Andrew Berge, Michael Burns, Mark Clark, Jim Elvart, Eric Geiser, Karen Nemecek, and Scot Zimmerman.

Then, crushing the huge Section 7 was a past winner of both the Bayview-Mackinac and the Chicago-Mackinac Races.  Winning the Mackinac Cup overall was the extraordinary crew on the J/109 TOA.  A slightly modified J/109 it was, with masthead massive spinnakers, giant squarehead main with dual running backstays.  They flew up the course in what were arguably perfect J/109 conditions; beating upwind into giant waves, big winds, knife-like bow chopping through the waves.  Not convinced?? Ask anyone in the UK or the Netherlands why the LOVE their J/109s.  Plain and simple, it can go uphill in nasty conditions when nothing else can— except, maybe a J/122 or J/111!! Therefore, to no one’s surprise, that is what Jimmie Mitchell and Bruce Danly did with their J/109 TOA.  Equipped with awesome sails from Rodney “Dangerfield” Keenan at Evolution Sails in New Zealand, they just sent it. They crushed their fleet by hours; beating the next boat by seven hours elapsed time and nearly five hours corrected time- e.g. a “spanking” of the fleet!  The TOA crew included Mike Beasley, Rodney Keenan, Dirk Kruger, and Richie & Lori Stearns. Six hours back on corrected time to take 2nd place was another classic J/Boat, the J/35 BOZO’s CIRUCS sailed by the Metcalf family (Bruce, Chris, Eric, Chris Jr) and Ally Haramia, Eric Larsen, Tim Lathrop, Glenn & Christina McCarthy, and Brendan Walsh.

Here is the first-hand account of why TOA managed to do what they did by two of the crew- Richie & Lori Stearns (the J/Boats dealer in Chicago):

“The 2017 race to Mackinac had just about every condition you could imagine. We were not sailing in the 109 section because “Toa” was sporting a new black square top main which was more than noticeable to everyone sailing around before the start. Co-owner Jim Mitchell started the race with the east-northeast wind a bit heavier than forecasted. We started with a code 0 with a genoa staysail under it. Once we got away from the line we began to slowly pull away from the fleet. Our sailmaker, Rodney Keenan from Evolution sails in Auckland New Zealand, was quick to want to change to our other code 0 for more speed. Yes, we had two code zeros, one sheets to the stern and one sheets about two thirds aft. They are both spinnakers and are tacked to the end of the pole. With the larger code 0 up, we then launched the genoa staysail, which is a very small sail but really fits in the slot nicely. Soon the wind shifted to more of a broad reach and Mike Beasley, Clay Danley and Dirk Kruger put up the A2 spinnaker. The genoa staysail was already up so we decided to add the spinnaker staysail. WOW! Talk about slots for directing wind! I have sailed all my life and had to go below to get my camera… four sails flying perfectly and the boat just kept pulling away from the fleet.

The storms forecasted for later were coming from the northwest so we just sailed north instead of rhumb line. The VMG was faster to track north than to point at Point Betsie over 100 miles away. Also, the wind was forecast to swing to a beat and we wanted to get north as far as we could.

The wind had shifted before the storm and when it hit we just had the A2 up. The wind kept building, but the J/109 was perfectly under control, and we continued to track north. There was some discussion of how to get the sail down and a letterbox takedown won. We were seeing high winds but the boat was still under control, we got ready for the take down and then the spinnaker was “gone”. The front tape and part of the sail jumped forward and wrapped around the head stay and the rest of it was torn/ blown-off somewhere on the other side of the main in 35 knots of breeze. However, we were still going 11.5 knots in a very good direction so even though it took quite a while to get the sail down, just sailing the right direction under main was perfect.

As forecasted, the wind shifted to the north and we set in for 20 hours of heavy beating. The waves built all night and increased to 10 to 12 feet. Before daylight, we were on the Michigan shore and although we were having to short tack up the beach there was much less wave action on the shore. We were with faster boats so it was hard to keep up when we were in waves, but in smoother water we hung in there much better. Rail meat was everything at this point, so anyone trying to get sleep had to change bunks every time we tacked (which was a lot). The upper bunk was hard to get into so it was really better to be on deck.

Keeping with the projected forecast, the wind continued to blow hard from the northeast until Sunday around 4:00 PM when it shifted and moderated. We rounded point Betsie at 5:30 pm Sunday night, and we felt lucky that the wind was still blowing as we got into the Manitou passage, giving us a direct shot though the passage. Early Monday morning the wind dropped under 5 knots. It was a very light, tight reach and really was hard to say where the wind was coming from. We put up the small code 0 and really got the boat going. I had never steered a sail like this on a beat. With no light on the tell tails and using the compass and speedo and feel as a guide, we started to really go fast. As the sun came up, I realized I was sailing better in the dark than when I had things to look at, generating your own wind is an odd edge to sail on. This sail caught us back up to the larger boats that had passed us the day before!  However, true to the forecast, the wind completely died.  Even cigarettes couldn’t find any wind and the boat at one point did a 360. With the help of the wind seeker, which is a fairly large light jib that has full battens, we were able to get going again. Once we got going, it was the A1 Spinnaker in light air, jibing to Greys Reef. Co-owner Bruce Danley did a great job steering through this stretch with Lori Stearns trimming the spinnaker. Looking at the tracker after the race, we noticed this was an area we really extended our lead. After Greys Reef, the A1 was still the sail and it took us under the Mackinac Bridge to about one mile from the finish, where the wind died. Thank goodness for the wind seeker, it kept us going and we crossed the line with no one behind us in sight. The door had shut and now we just had to wait to see if anyone corrected over us.”

Finally, the Section 8 class of 28-33 footers that often produces huge surprises in the Mac Race nearly delivered, yet again!  Nevertheless, on “digital” based YB Tracker, the J/88s were crushing it up to Saturday midnight’s squall.  Thereafter, it was a long 20+ hour slog upwind in massive, breaking, cliff-sided waves.  While 29 feet with a knife-like bow can go fast most times, it’s a tall order of fries for a J/88 to beat a J/122 or J/111 upwind based on handicap time!  Nevertheless, the tables turned rapidly in the glass-out in the Manitou Island straits going to Grey’s Reef.  The J/88s flew in their conditions and nearly pulled off the mother of all upsets overall…just wishing a few more miles left!!  In the end, winning class was Tim Wade’s J/88 WINDSONG with crew of Todd Anderson, Andy Camarda, Kristin Olson, Tripp Wade, and Andrew Waters.  Leading the J/88 sweep with their colleagues was Ben & Amanda Wilson’s J/88 RAMBLER crew that consisted of Mark Ewing, Peter Fray, Rj Mills, Ed Montano, and Jim Nachtman.  For more Chicago to Mackinac Race sailing information Add to Flipboard Magazine.