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I was lucky enough to be invited to sail the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, sponsored by Mount Gay Rum. Sailing on Tom's J-33, Planet Red, we had an 8-man crew for the race. Start time was 12:30pm Saturday afternoon and we finished around 2:30am Tuesday morning. That's 62 hours of sailing.
The first 40 hours of the race were rough as we had zero wind. Actually, the first six hours or so from the start, we had great wind and were cruising right along. After that, though, the wind disappeared and we limped along with the sun beating down and flies biting.
Around 3:30am Monday morning, the wind finally picked up - and boy, did it pick up. The final 24 hours of the race were exciting to say the least. We were absolutely flying. It was nice to end the race that way instead of just limping into port. Hell, if the wind never picked up, we probably wouldn't have reached port until Thursday. EEEK!
Panoramas:
Here are two panorama shots of the Mackinac harbor. I was trying to get a sense of just how packed it was with boats. |
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Saturday, July 12, 2003:
All of these shots were taken at sundown on the first day of the race. Check out how smooth the water is and you can see just how little wind we had at the time. The horizon shots not showing the sun going down are to the east, and in one you can just see the moon rising. It was a beautiful sight as Saturday was the night before the full moon. Simply amazing.
You can also see just how close we got to a freighter. The freighter was actually heading right for us at one point, but was nice enough to duck behind us so that we didn't have to change course. That night we put up the radar deflector to make sure we showed up on freighter radar during the night. By the way, the sailboat you see in the beautiful shots of the sun going down was not in the race. |
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Sunday, July 13, 2003:
The wind picked up slightly during the second day of the race, but still not much. The golden globe hanging from the backstay is the radar deflector. That's the Michigan coast off in the distance. |
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Monday, July 14, 2003:
The wind finally picked up around 3:00am Monday morning, and you can really tell in these shots. You can see in a few shots aft of the boat the waves we were surfing. It got a bit crazy and fast, so much so that those on deck had to wear life vests and harnesses for safety.
In the two shots of the LCD displays, the top numbers show boat speed in knots. We ended up hitting around 12 knots at one point, but there was no picture taking as I was pretty much holding on for dear life. Seriously.
In some shots, you can see guys attached to the mast for safety. We had one guy up front trimming the chute and another up there ready to blow the boom vang just in case we rounded up (i.e., rolled over).
There are two shots showing a tiny spec of a boat off in the distance. The was the first boat we'd seen since the start of the race.
You'll also see the one and only shot of me from the entire race, where I'm trying to catch a few winks after a long night of tense sailing. |
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003:
We finished the race around 2:30am Tuesday morning. Below are some shots of the harbor and the area immediately around. It's really a beautiful place. |
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