July 21-23: Mackinac Race

This was my fourth consecutive year being invited to sail the Chicago-Mackinac Race on board QuickSilver, a Schock 41 from St. Joseph, Michigan. Gintaras Karaitis and his two sons Aras and Vytenis have assembled a crew of ten for the race again. This year, in addition to Vidas and Kris who have saied with us before, we are joined by four college sailing buddies of Aras and Vytenis, all of Western Michigan University. The race was unusual in that we put up our spinnaker at the start line and never took it down until the finish. Not much work for the foredeck boys except for plenty of jibes during the race. Partly because of the "all spinnaker" conditions it was the fastest Mac I have done and we finished at 10:41 AM on Monday morning, just 45 and a half hours for the race. With a younger crew than previously I spent more time driving including the final sprint through the Mackinac Straits from Gray's Reef in 25 knots of wind, loaded up and going fast, touching 11 knots of boatspeed. Big fun.

We finished 9th in our section of 22 boats, not bad at all for a boat that likes to go to weather with a jib up. All in all, another fun year on board QuickSilver. Thanks for inviting me again, Gint. While I raced, Sandy drove the RV back to Toledo and then up to St. Ignace, Michigan to the Straits State Park where she met me at the conclusion to the race.