Great Lakes Single Handed Society Challenges (sailing)

I thought I would bring y'all in on what a best-bud of mine has been up to since Sunday, yesterday.  

Covid has canceled a lot of crewed sailboat racing for this year but this group, The Single-handers, is sailboat racing with just one person aboard.  That doesn't sound too bad for a small boat for an afternoon...but this is not that.  

These mad-men do races that look like this:  

This week(s) is the races to Mackinaw.  Specifically, my friend Russ will be by himself racing his boat from Port Huron, MI up Lake Huron to the top and Mackinaw Island.  That is 230 nautical miles.  But it doesn't have to end there.  If you are crazy enough you then continue on, non stop another 287 miles to Chicago.  But...you dont have to stop there and if your are doing the full version like Russ is then you never touch shore in Chicago and continue on, non-stop to Port Huron.  This is then called The Super Mac and Back. All total it is 1034 nautical miles...non-stop and all by yourself.  Russ tells me that he expects this to take 10 days from start to finish.  

https://www.solosailors.org/

Here is a link to a scratch sheet of the competitors and their boats.

Link to live tracking that looks like this:

Russ and I raced this boat for years.  We have done many crewed races and he has been on all these waters before...with crew.  In 2018 Russ did his first single race, a 300 mile race in Lake Erie.  In that first ever race he not only finished first but he finished more than 7 hours  before the next boat!  What we call a "horizon job", winning by so much that you can not even see the other competitors on the horizon.  

The following year, 2019 in the Lake Erie Race he had another huge lead but in the last 50 miles and in heavy air the 30 yr old aluminum mast on his boat snapped in two taking him out of the race.  

This is only the 3rd week of sailing the boat has done after an extensive rebuild.  His insurance totaled the boat and Russ spent every dollar and then some to have a custom aluminum extrusion done to "re-mast" the boat.  

This is a typical picture of Schock 35's racing.  Notice that we usually race these boats with a crew of 8 people per boat.  

i don't trust mother nature enough to get on a sailboat. to me, a solo sailboat race just says "i want to die alone."

They are allowed to have an autohelm which is a device that self steers the boat.  

This picture is of the cockpit of Russ' boat.  In the left side of the picture you can see a silver colored hydrolic ram attached to the red tiller.

Another pic including his 20-somthing old daughters and no one really steering the boat. 

Really cool. 

Interesting looking at the boats on the list - my uncle just sold his Tartan 31(?), and his kids just bought a Beneteau 36(?).  They just finished a 20 hour trip in the new one. 

So on the "team" races, how many of them are tending the bar?  

Pretty impressive to set it up to crew it alone- and I'm sure that changes the tactics a lot.

The Everglades Challenge is more of my cup of tea (as a fan, not as a participant). Sailing around the great lakes in a big boat is not without its dangers, adventure or excitement, but I like the concept of the little boats doing big things that the Everglade Challenge provides.

Completed either would be a nice achievement and one not be taken lightly.

I am hoping to do the EC this coming year.  I think I might do it in the oldest boat as my GP14 will be 57 years old

"Get Eaten by Burmese Python" is just below "Join Edmund Fitzgerald At The Bottom Of Lake Superior" on my list of "things to not do.  ever."

I love reading about stuff like the EC and singlehanding 1000 miles in the great lakes sounds amazing.  I suspect if Iwere not married I might very well get involved in that kind of stuff. My sense of fun tends to outweigh my sense of survival sometimes.

T.J. said:

The Everglades Challenge is more of my cup of tea (as a fan, not as a participant). Sailing around the great lakes in a big boat is not without its dangers, adventure or excitement, but I like the concept of the little boats doing big things that the Everglade Challenge provides.

Completed either would be a nice achievement and one not be taken lightly.

The tracking map right  now is tracking a race from Voyageur's National Park down to Grand Portage, Mn.  My wife's people are from Grand Marais.  Such a small town that its weird to come across it so randomly. 

Mr_Asa said:

The tracking map right  now is tracking a race from Voyageur's National Park down to Grand Portage, Mn.  My wife's people are from Grand Marais.  Such a small town that its weird to come across it so randomly. 

Arguably the most famous canoe area in the world right there - The Boundary Waters Wilderness area, and on the Canadian side, Quetico Provincial Park. 

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, I've met tons of people that know of the Boundary Waters, but then I start asking them about Grand Marais or the Gunflint Trail or whatnot and they just look at me funny.

I guess it's a bit like people knowing Disney World, or Lego Land, but not Lake Shipp or Mt Dora