OTW
The organizers of CYC’s "Race to Mackinac" have been on the ball for some years now, and they’ve stepped it up again this year with a fully subscribed 350 entries from the turbo’d ‘Frankenstein’ Melges 30 "Peerless" through the 70′ turbo’d ‘Frankenstein’ Bill Lee designed "Merlin". The race also includes a doublehanded division for the first time, and in coordination with BYC’s Pure Michigan Bayview Mackinac Race we’ll see the first Super Mac in years during the 2009 event.
Some 31 boats will blow right through the finish line of the Chicago race (and be scored), and continue another 200+ NM to Port Huron, MI to complete the Super Mac – the world’s longest crewed freshwater race. The entries to the Super Mac, unsurprisingly, include a huge pile of Anarchists and numerous Mack race winners, from our team on Nice Pair to Fetzer and the boys on Peerless, Bora and Phil and dad on the N/M 46 Natalie J (remember our bet from the Nice Pair/Natalie J battle in the ’07 Mac?), Hollywood on the Melges 32 Saturn; Burnsy’s Heatwave, and many more.
The technology is finally catching up with what we’ve been trying to do for so long, and with the help of an excellent long range GPRS antenna, we will be posting pics, videos, and text updates from our 490 NM trip up and down the Great Lakes on the quick racing catamaran Nice Pair in the Super Mac. We’ll start our coverage tomorrow evening with interviews and pics from the pre-race chaos at the CYC, and should be in range to upload multimedia updates for most of the race, excluding possibly the first day or so if we are stuck in the middle of Lake Michigan. This will be the first time live video is posted from this race, and we’ll do our best to keep it fun and exciting. You can track the entire fleet here for the Chi-Mac, and the Super Mac continuation tracker is here. Read on and jump in.
