"Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk." - Sir Francis Chichester when asked why he carried so much alcohol on his solo sail around the world.
Awesome job Allen Brothers Blocks for
putting together this phenomenal poster, explaining the majority of the
Rules without the confusion of a bunch of poorly written words. My
suggestion: Print out two of them at least 24″ long and have one printed
on waterproof paper: One for your office and one for the race boat’s
cabin.
(Click on the Allen Brothers Blocks link and then go to "DOWNLOADS" to get your own copy.)
Here's a good article from Sail magazine (www.sailmagazine.com) on one of the races that I compete in. In 2015 I won the President's Cup, for fastest rookie on Lake Michigan, and this year I finished in 4th place, not where I wanted to finish.
Back
in the 1970s Ted Turner famously retracted his description of Lake
Michigan as a “mill pond” after finding himself caught up in one of the
roughest Chicago-Mackinac races in decades—and in many ways solo
distance racing on the lakes is tougher still.
Granted, the rhumb
line distances from Chicago to Mackinac Island (334 miles) or from Port
Huron, Michigan, to the same place (230 miles) are substantially less
than, say, the Bermuda One-Two or the Singlehanded TransPac.
Nonetheless, the tactical challenges posed by the solo races run along
these routes by the Great Lakes Singlehanded Society can make them just
as tough as any solo event out there.
“I find ocean winds to be
more predictable and reliable than inland waters… Some of the best
sailors in the world come from the Great Lakes, because they must
constantly shift gears quickly,” says Alan Veenstra, a veteran of the
Newport-Bermuda and many crewed Chicago-Mackinac races—as well as eight
solo Macs—and line-honors winner in the 2017 solo Chicago-to-Mackinac
race aboard the Frers 53 Bumblebee.
Along these same
lines, Veenstra’s younger brother, Mark, who won this year’s race on
corrected time aboard the Tartan Ten Monitor, says he still considers
the Newport-Bermuda a greater challenge due to the uncertainty of the
Gulf Stream, but he adds: “Lake Michigan is very unpredictable. Finding
favorable wind is always challenging.”
As
for those who really want to log some miles, in addition to the Port
Huron and Chicago solo races (which are run independently of either the
Chicago or Bayview YCs), there are also the solo “Super Mac” from
Chicago all the way to Port Huron and the “Super Mac and Back,” a race
that makes a complete circuit from Chicago to Port Huron and then back
again. Only one sailor, Kris Kimmons, completed the latter in 2017.
“The
Solo Society is a special group,” says Mark Veenstra, who has now
completed six solo Chicago-Mac races. “Finishing the race is the
ultimate goal. There’s more camaraderie with the solo group. There’s
always chatter on the radio. People are always encouraging and taking
care of each other.”
Graham Sauser, who took sixth overall in this year’s Chicago race aboard the Beneteau Oceanis 352 Bangarang,
agrees. “It’s a slightly different mindset. It’s not so much of a race
as a challenge,” he says. “If you can complete the race, that’s regarded
as being just as cool as the guy who won.”
For more on this year’s race and solo racing on the Great Lakes in general, visit the Great Lakes Singlehanded Society at solosailors.org.
November 2017
"The Lake Michigan Singlehanded Society
promotes competition in the tradition of solo sailing - to challenge
solitary and shorthanded sailors and to help develop sound yachts,
equipment, and techniques for shorthanded passage making on the Great
Lakes.
Our races emphasize the individual's
seamanship, navigation, and self-reliance more, and pure boat speed
less. Shorthanded sailing is a development of typical sailboat
cruising – family and friend oriented and aimed at making passages
between ports – rather than “grand-prix” oriented, where races
are around a closed course near a single port. Also in contrast to
Grand-Prix racing which features a collection of specialists,
shorthanded sailing demands high levels of all the skills of sailing
within each person. The shorthanded sailor must be helmsperson,
navigator, sail trimmer, sail handler, cook, medic, winch grinder,
and repair expert all in one. Shorthanded sailing also puts a premium
on physical and mental endurance. “Caught Shorthanded” is one of
the common complaints of the full-crewed race boat, when seasickness
or fatigue overcome members of the crew. But the shorthanded sailor,
by definition, has no back-up to call upon when the going gets rough.
Each participant's courage, endurance, and self-reliance are
challenged as they rarely can be in the modern world.
Because the satisfactory completion of
these races is a singularly significant individual accomplishment,
The Lake Michigan Singlehanded Society regards all who finish as
winners."
