Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac
A slow-motion thriller is shaping up in the 333-mile Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac presented by Wintrust, with multiple section leaders within shouting distance of each other on Lake Michigan, swapping tacks and trading leads as they claw their way through the Manitou Passage and up into the Mackinac Straits.
As of 9 p.m. ET, only Whitehawk and Cynthia Lyn, two of the Cruising Division competitors, have completed the race out of 285 total entries. The next boat is 65 miles away.
Light winds from the north will continue to plague the boats overnight and there’s no immediate relief in sight for more favorable conditions in the short term, according to Race Chair Winn Soldani. “Wow, it’s really something out there,” said Soldani. “On the tracker I am watching boats going backwards. It’s crazy, but it happens during the Race to Mackinac.”
Soldani’s evening race analysis update predicts the faster boats like the Great Lakes 52s possibly finishing Monday morning, with the remainder of the fleet trickling in throughout Monday and likely into early Tuesday.
Currently, the Great Lakes 52 showdown is between Bob Hughes’ Heartbreaker (winner of last weekend’s Bayview Mackinac Race) and Doug DeVos’s Windquest, but don’t count out previous 52-class winner Philip O’Neil’s Natalie J, trailing the two leaders by just 4 miles.
Across multiple one-design sections, the same story is unfolding with a mile or less separating the top boats. The J/111’s lead battle is currently between Momentus and Striking Back; the Beneteau 40.7’s Clear Air and La Tempete; and Beneteau 36.7’s Joie De Vie and Painkiller 5.
