Mid-July is when both races to Mackinac Island, Michigan—one from Port Huron, MI and one from Chicago, IL—take place. Held on alternating weekends, these two races comprise some of the longest freshwater sailing races in the world and are significant tests of the sailors and boats that participate.
This year, 196 entries made the start of the Bayview Mackinac Race just north of the Blue Water Bridge, which spans the St. Clair River between Port Huron, on the American side, and Sarnia on the Canadian shore. From a starting line just north of the mouth of the river, fleets would set out on two courses: the Shore Course (204 nm) and the Cove Island Course (290 nm), with the ultimate destination being the finish at Mackinac Island.
Blustery southeasterly winds greeted the start—welcome news since the week of forecasts leading up to the race was full of changing weather patterns and expected light and shifty winds.
This is a critical element of distance racing that cannot be understated—knowledge of weather and its basic patterns can mean the difference between an exhilarating race and needless suffering! Yet even the most sophisticated prognostic tools and data cannot fully guarantee the weather that nature provides, so being aware of your surroundings, cloud patterns, waves, and wind is sometimes all you can rely on. For this race, it is important to get to the breeze and stay in it as long as possible and know when or how the breeze may shift directions (because it will!) as the course changes—and there is a long way to go.
The Cove Island course, which we were sailing, goes NNE for about 135 nm to two virtual marks, coordinates that define a gate through which all boats must pass, before turning to the WNW towards the finish. It took us 19 hours to reach the gate, with those southeasterlies beginning a slow fade before eventually shifting to the west. This is where things became challenging. The morning light breeze was ensconced in a thick fog, leftover lumpy waves from the opposite direction, and the frustration that comes with having to search for the slightest ripple on the water after having been on a continuous rip!
With our optimism for getting across the finish line before last call on the decline, we settled in for what would be an interesting evening, and a great teachable moment. Beating into the Straits of Mackinac is no picnic, but with the flat seas and light breeze, the going was slow, but manageable.
Knowing that the winds that funnel into the Straits can behave strangely, we tried to use whatever data we had to get the last seventy or so miles behind us as quickly as we could. Here is where the weather apps on mobile phones created a little bit of a groupthink situation that laid siege to our heretofore well-sailed race! A few weeks ago, Don wrote about the virtues of weather apps in our newsletter. Certainly, the information to which we have access is unbelievably useful, but what happens when different models disagree? In our case, a few crew members huddled up to compare weather data on a variety of apps in the middle of the night. There are probably a few things wrong with this picture already, but you may already be able to see the silhouette of a bad idea forming here. When a group of talented, goal-driven humans share their ideas about how best to achieve a goal, the compelling nature of data-driven decision making can begin to creep in and create uncertainty.
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Ultimately, as the sun rose on Monday morning, we were beating in 20+ knots and 4–6-foot waves up the Straits and to the finish line with a double-reefed main and J1. It was an exciting, but exhausting finish to an epic race. With the finish line in sight, you can’t wait to get to the dock and get some sleep, but interestingly, as soon as you hit the dock, you can’t wait for the chance to do it all over again!
