Having raced in two Mackinac races, I know the drill, and I know what the sailors want: they want wind. It doesn’t matter if it’s sunny or rainy (well, it matters, but not much) as long as there’s wind to race in. And I think we’ll have some wind for most of the race this year, with most boats reaching Mackinac Island on Monday.
What most people don’t realize is that this is a continuous race…there’s no pulling into port at night and resting, then resuming the next day. You race your boat for as long as it takes to get to Mackinac. Most crews split up into an A-shift and a B-shift, and each shift races for four hours, then rests while the other shift races the boat. If the wind is strong or there’s a storm, it’s all hands on deck, and everybody pitches in to keep the boat racing as efficiently as possible.
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My first race, aboard Ray Adam’s Epic, was a very light air race, and my boat didn’t get in until 7 AM Tuesday morning…that was brutal. At one point, the air was so calm and the water so smooth in the middle of Lake Huron that our skipper put down the transom and let us jump into the water for a little relief from the stifling heat.
My second race, aboard Ken Meade’s Renegade, started off with light air, but the wind picked up and we were flying once we hit the northern part of Lake Huron. That was a lot of fun (hard work, but a lot of fun).
Here’s what I expect for this year’s race…
We’ll start with a light wind roughly from the north. With some luck, perhaps we can get it up to a 10 knot wind. However, wind will be light during the day Saturday as a high pressure cell passes over the lake…those daytime lake breezes near the shore could be important sources of wind. The wind will gradually shift around Saturday night and blow from the southeast, and then the south and, the best news of all, is that the wind speed will increase…probably up to 15 knots Sunday morning, and maybe even up to 20 knots Sunday afternoon. Wind will swing around and blow roughly from the west on Monday (the models disagree upon whether it’ll be from due west, or perhaps 30-40 degrees off of west. This is actually important, because the boats will be sailing west toward Mackinac. If it’s a due west wind, the boats will be tacking (zig zagging) all the way in toward the island. If it’s blowing from the northwest or southwest, the boats will be able to sail straight to the island (called reaching) without all of that zig zag work. We’ll see!
One footnote: the year of my second Mackinac Race, an unusual east wind (and a strong one, too) developed on Sunday, so the boats were sailing downwind (called running) to the island, with those big, colorful spinnaker sails billowing out in front of the boats. It was an amazing photo-op for those on the island watching the boats come in!
