Five California Sailors Win Class in July’s Chicago-Mackinac
This one got buried among the emails, but we meant to highlight what happened when a group of California sailors headed to the country’s freshwater coast to race in the salt-free, current-free, 300-mile Chicago-Mackinac Race way back in the middle of July.
It was Bay Area Express 27 sailor Nick Gibbens who was up to his usual shenanigans again. In July, he went back to sail in his fourth Chicago-Mackinac Race. He skippered the J/145 Sic Parvis Magna (“great things from small beginnings”) for title sponsor Wintrust Financial, taking his third victory out of four Mac races. Joining him from California were John Collins from Mill Valley on foredeck, Tommy Ducharme from Walnut Creek as watch captain, Greg (Radar) Felton from Lake Tahoe, also foredeck, and Doug Johnstone from Los Angeles as navigator.
Nick reported, “We were fortunate enough to again prevail in our class, recording a 50-minute victory for first place in Class 2 and 12th overall. Third–fifth places were separated by less than three minutes! This makes three wins out of four races for this team. Our first race was on a chartered Beneteau 40.7 and the last three on the J/145, which is a powerful and excellent all-around performer.”
Unlike some of the prior years with squalls, thunderstorms and lightning, this year was calmer, but Nick told us, “This year’s weather was predominantly upwind with over 80% of the miles made under jib. This made for some challenging tactics and many long hours on the rail, hiking. As one of the lowest-rated boats in our section, we were always playing catch-up and trying to avoid too much separation from our fleet. Strong navigation and weather forecasting were key, and we had that in spades. Thankfully no midnight thunderstorms this year, which made it a lot less stressful on the skipper!” Despite our belief that there is no current, Nick let us know there was actually a fair amount of current along the Michigan shore.
Nick will be back in the Bay competing on his Express 27 Shenanigans, where he’s shown equally impressive results over the years.
Great job team !!!
I agree with Nick- There are very pronounced currents along the W Michigan shoreline. The locals say that they are caused by the passage of low and high pressure systems in the atmosphere, but there is certainly no tide book for them ! You get to learn this when your layline looks really good, you get up to the mark, and there is tons of adverse current on it. Yeah- the hard way !