Chicago Mac - You can breath now, we finally finished!

This was race that at the start was very miserable conditions. It rained steadily for two hours before the start. We had already rigged an external display for the computer since I had cracked the laptop screen so that was a bit of distraction. When we got to the starting line we saw that the wind was coming out of the south at no more than 2 knots. Fred Roselle filled in as tactician so I could steer the start. We ran the engine up to 5 minutes before the gun from the west side of the line a little bit to the north. This would allow us to reach to the line.

Unfortunately, there were a few boats from the previous start who had the same idea. In fact the boat in front of us had to push themselves around the committee boat. Fred advised me to nearly skim the committee boat but he soon changed his mind when he saw that activity. Although we were a minute late crossing the start, we were one of the first in our section to cross. The real beauty of it was J/120 Flyin' Irish was approaching on port tack to our starboard tack. This forced them to gybe away where we immediately gybed back on port, throwing up the .5 oz drifter and then sped away ahead of everybody. I could see farther east up the line everyone was caught in a giant hole and not moving. In fact I understand that J/120 Night Moves was called over early and it took them at least a half hour to restart.

Farther up the course the wind went west with more force at about 5 knots. We put up our 3/4 ap spinnaker and managed to stay just ahead of Flyin' Irish. As the wind went more northerly we were forced to

go to the ap #1 headsail. At this point we seemed to get passed by Perseverance. We just kept running into other boats in front of us that would
gas us where Perseverance would not have the same problem. We did mange to stay ahead of Irristable and Flyin' Irish.  As midnight approached we seemed to come into our own. The wind died and crew was on their game for pushing through it. As daylight came up were again in the lead among the J/120s.

During the day the wind went back to the south at about 10 knots so we used the .6 oz runner. The fog was so thick that most of the day we could not see more than another boat at a time. In fact it got really spooky when we could hear a ferry boat horn going off and not knowing where they were. As we got close to the Manitou Islands we knew were a little ahead of Perseverance but 6 miles east. If they were going to go between the islands and the Michigan shore we knew it would cost them extra distance. As we passed through the Manitou Passage we could see them about a mile behind us.

Past the Manitous Perseverance drove a quarter mile up to our stern. When we thought the wind was going back we prepared the code 0. Unfortunately we did not come up with the lift and she nearly passed us to the north. As we approached the Graves Reef light the wind lifted and we managed to round it with Perseverance 12 feet behind us. We went in defense mode and entered the straights of Mackinac about 100 yards ahead. At this point I decided I wanted to stay closer to rumb and put up the .6 runner in 4 knots with the air abeam.

About 7 miles west of the bridge we saw wind filling in from the south and steered towards it. When we reached it we tacked in front of Perseverance and got a quarter mile lead again. At this point we simply did a loose cover to finish 2 minutes ahead.