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Tammy Thompson set off a few days early to drive up to Milwaukee with Teo and our new Border Collie, Penny. The common wisdom was that the combination of those three in a van for two days would create some truly odd results, but everything worked out and they arrived in Milwaukee to get the boat ready. Peter and Lori arrived on Thursday and the boat set off for the delivery sail down to Chicago. It was one of those glorious nights that had everything for a perfect sail except wind, so they fired up the diesel genoa and pointed the boat south. McNulty and I flew in Friday to find everything ready to go.
Bill Miller had put together an extremely well organized affair with a detailed punch list of things to get done before the race. A quick check found that most items were complete, but somehow the bread item had been left undone. Since our midday meals were planned to be sandwiches, this was determined to be a critical item. Apparently buying 2 dozen sandwich rolls at a bakery is not as easy as one might assume, but Peter and Tammy finally convinced the kid behind the counter that the bread did need to be sliced and it was OK to sell all of the bread to a single customer. Unfortunately, we did not discover until after the start of the race that the fire starter had been purchased, but left in the van. As the evening cooled off and the thought of eating a cold dinner faced everyone, the creative juices got flowing and fire was discovered in time to save the meal, but I am getting ahead of myself.
One of the standards of the Mac race is a mandatory Skipper's meeting held in an auditorium on Friday night. There are a list of speakers including the crew of the Coast Guard helicopter on how to handle a medical evacuation at sea. Did you know to let the tag line from the helicopter touch the boat before you grabbed it? It seems that a helicopter builds up a whopping amount of static electricity thrashing about in the air. Well the highlight of the evening is always the weather man with the forecast covering the lake for the next three days, and he did get everyone's attention. Let's see... frontal passage on Saturday with squalls and winds South to Southwest at 30 to 40 knots followed by a second front on Sunday with more squalls and winds Southwest to West at 40 to 50 knots. The sick look on Bill Miller's face led me to ask what sails were on board. Yes, the storm sails were there, but the 3DL main does not have reef points and the other main got left in Milwaukee. I quickly volunteered to do an overnighter back to Milwaukee for the spare main.
Well the race got off to a good start early Saturday afternoon under clear skies and about 12 knots of wind from the southeast with classes being sent off every 15 minutes. We got a good start with clear air and headed north. As soon as the smoke cleared we decided to set the reaching A-sail. We were having trouble getting the chute to fill because the jib was not coming down. Before long we discovered that Peter was lowering the main instead and got the problem solved. If we only knew this was an omen of the "Peter Factor".
Most of our class opted to sail the rhumb line with genoas while a couple of us went low with kites looking for the big wind to the west. We spent most of Saturday afternoon sailing about 10 degrees low of the rhumb line doing 7's and 8's on the fun meter. The wind shifted a little to the south and allowed us to head up to the course. We were looking golden, physically ahead of the bigger boats on our class, reaching in conditions that favored us, and several miles further west in case the wind came in as forecast.
As we went into Saturday night the weather radio started hedging their bets about the frontal arrival, and the clouds gave no indication of any reason to doubt them. We kept busy doing countless sail changes, but they were all of the spinnaker variety (reach, run, jibe, reach, run, jibe, etc.) There were no double digits recorded on the fun meter, but we were pointing directly where we wanted to go.
They say the Mac is divided into three parts, Chicago to Point Betsie, Point Betsie through the Manitou Passage to Grays Reef, and Grays Reef to Mackinac Island. Well, we never slowed down during the first leg to Point Betsie and made it through the Manitou Passage during the daylight hours on Sunday afternoon. This is usually a treat reserved for the Santa Cruz 70's, so we were feeling pretty good about our race so far. Peter was the only one on board that had made it this far this fast before, but then the year he had done it he was sailing down wind in winds up to 65 knots and blew out three chutes in the process. Our only complaint was that we felt we would wear out the forward hatch hauling sails in and out.
We all had dreams of a pre-dawn finish, but we had not figured on the "Peter Factor". We had begun to notice an unmistakable trend. When the Miller/Cash/Cafengiu watch came on deck the winds would freshen and the boat speed would climb for the duration of the watch. Then as soon as the Lagergren/McNulty/Grab watch came on deck, the winds would start petering out and the speed would decline. The Peter Factor started increasing in intensity as Sunday evening came on. At one point, all Peter did was stand up and stick his head out of the hatch in time to watch 2 knots fall off of the boat speed within one minute.
As dark fell Sunday night the weather still looked good and we had some competition in sight to our west. We were able to sail a lower angle and heading straight at Grays Reef. The original "Go West" plan was abandoned since it was obviously based on a faulty weather forecast. Now the plan was to simply sail maximum VMC toward Grays Reef. The Miller watch took the first shift and spent a good deal of it battling with 40 footers for clear air. We finally got a shift and were able to jibe out to clear air. When we handed to reigns over to the Lagergren watch, we had managed to leave the running lights of the 40's several miles to the west and were feeling pretty smug.
I guess they felt we deserved a good rest after our hard fought battle, so they promptly took the boat speed to zero, and did away with that awful water noise against the hull. Then Peter discovered if you sail the boat in a complete circle within a short period of time the instruments go into a calibration mode. Well, judging by the constant stomping of feet across the deck and spinning of winches they were giving it a mighty effort, but still no water noises against the hull. Just as I dozed off, there came the cry for all hands.
In less than two minutes what they first thought was a flash camera on another boat turned into a full blown light show headed right at us. There we sat with the 0.6 poly drifter chute and the main with no reefs. While everyone else took down the chute and rigged the number 3, Teo and I dug out the spare main and started putting in battens as fast as we could. We got the 3DL main off just in time for the rain to start, and were finishing up getting the spare main hoisted when THE BIG ONE hit. It was one of those lightening bolts that you hear before you see. Well, in this case we could not see it, since all anyone's eyes could register was pure white. We just stood there waiting for our eye sight to return. Since I was standing at the mast at the time, I was pretty sure we had not been hit, but it took a couple of seconds before anyone was really sure. When all was said and done, the squall had managed to bring us about 5 minutes of rain and about 5 knots of wind which promptly died again.
A little later I was trying to get some sleep when I heard McNulty ask Peter what course he was steering. The answer of 180 degrees made me decide there were better things to do than sleep, so I put on my gear and headed topsides. The Peter Factor was in full flower by now. No sooner could you finish one sail change than the wind would shift requiring a totally different setup. It's all a little fuzzy, but we made something like 6 or 8 sail changes in the next hour and never had the right setup for more than about 2 minutes.
We finally sent Peter below for some rest and things started to settle down a little. We weren't moving very fast, but at least we could catch our breath between sail changes now. Another hour and we were on course at about 2 or 3 knots. We realized we had given it our all and called up the rest of the Miller watch just before dawn. Within 10 minutes Bill was driving and the boat speed was back over 6 knots. There was talk of locking Peter in the head.
Dawn brought light but no visibility. We were sailing in some of the heaviest fog I have ever seen. We found the entrance to the passage through Grays Reef with the GPS, but could not see the buoys on either side of the channel. We had the last buoy entered as a way point and were steering right for it. When the GPS said we were there, there was nothing in sight. Since the buoy was a mark of the course, we were starting to think of making the turn with GPS and depth finder when Teo finally saw it about 5 boat lengths dead ahead.
We made the turn and changed from a running chute to the A sail, and took off at over seven knots again. We screwed up and let Peter near the helm for one last time. Presto we were becalmed in a major shipping lane. We could hear the fog horns of the freighters as they passed, but fortunately the fog was so heavy we could not see them, so we could tell ourselves it was not really close. No one objected to the added windage of the radar reflector and we drifted on toward Mackinac. When I say drifted, I mean it. We were 20 miles out at 8 o'clock Monday morning and the GPS was giving an estimated time of arrival of Tuesday Afternoon.
To make a long morning a little shorter, the wind came back and we finally finished to find most of our class already drinking the town dry. The boats that were in sight of us to the west Sunday evening never ran out of wind and beat us by several hours. If we had just stuck to our original plan of staying on the west side of the fleet....
Peter knew he had to make it up some how, so he volunteered to make the boat delivery back to Charlevoix. After a good nights sleep at the Miller Inn for Wayward Sailors and one of Jeanne Miller's wonderful meals, Peter and Lori headed back to get the boat. It was forecast to be a beautiful downwind ride, and they were looking forward to enjoying some time together. What they got was 25 knots of wind and steep 5 to 7 foot seas on the nose. We met them at the dock with Rum and Cokes and called it all even.
Teo spent two nights in Mackinac. We will probably never get all of the stories, but after seeing him showing a couple of cuties "his boat" in Chicago, I am sure he came out OK. Teo volunteered to help sail a Mumm 30 back down to Harbor Springs as a cheap form of transportation. It looked like a good idea at the time. On the day of the delivery only the skipper and Teo showed up, and the skipper was an hour late. Teo then discovered that the rest of the crew were the smart ones, since the only provisions on the boat was some rather stale water. It seems the skipper was late because he was eating breakfast and did not plan to eat on the boat. After surviving the delivery, Teo managed to land a ride for the Port Huron Race, but it won't be finished until this issue goes to press. Knowing Teo, it will be worth your while to track him down at the club and see what further adventures he got into.
The race may have turned out poorly, but you can't complain when you get to spend a couple of days with friends on a boat. Rumor has it that Bill has his eye on a bigger boat for next year, so we all put in our reservations for crewing spots. There is just something about the Mac.