Recently one of our local fleet members from Marquette, cold water sailor, posed a question on the forum asking for suggestions on how to approach the last fleet race of the season. Many of the local SA members were pleasantly surprised at how many replies he got and the amount of interest that was shown about our little racing community way up here in da' UP of Michigan. That interest combined with some of the prose written by other SA'ers (Mr. Clean and the like) prompted this little write-up of one of our recent Big Boat adventures that took place this past Sunday on Lake Superior.

So every year about this time someone manages to organize a race from Marquette's Lower Harbor around Granite Island and back, a little over 28 miles round trip as the crow flies. With the seasons changing mother nature usually manages to dish out some whoop ass weather and this year she didn't disappoint. The forecast for Sunday September 24th was wind out of the north at 20 plus knots with waves between 8 to 12 feet, temperature right around 50 degrees F.

The crew of the J-120 Perseverance consisted of the owner, 5 Ensign skippers and seven other guys who were regular crew on Ensigns or the J-120 or both. (Just try being in charge of that group) It was definitely a case of the more the merrier. The race started promptly at 11:00 am. We put up the No. 3 jib and started beating up wind. As we got out of the lee of Presque Isle the wind and waves started to build and we started to get into the good stuff. We were cracking waves over the bow and dousing the guys on the rail on a regular basis. My buddy Zeb managed to plant the nose right into a monster wave and tried, unsuccessfully, to wash the rail meat right off of the deck. Everyone had dressed appropriately for the dance and each wave brought smiles and giggles and "holy shit !" comments from the rail. (yes we had our heads under the upper lifeline). One little problem we encountered was water coming in through the bow sprit hole. (Does anyone have a fix for that?) After neglecting the problem for a while the bilge pump caught up with the water coming in, problem solved. For some unknown reason I remembered to grab the old 35 mm camera (pics, so I guess it did happen) and shortly after the start I started to click off a few shots. The "after guard" thought my flash going off was lightning at first. No it's just me recording your sorry ass on celluloid for posterity.

The wind was forecast to go left as the day went on so we threw in a couple of hitches to the west as the wind oscillated back and forth. It is amazing how much distance you can put on other boats when you go the right way. After crashing into the waves for a couple of hours we finally rounded the island and managed to get a kite up for the ride home. The selected torture for the ride downhill was to practice outside jibes. One of the new bow guys volunteered (imagine that) to re-rig the lazy sheet by running it under the bow sprit and then used a boat hook to loop it up over the forward end of the prod. Once we were set up I had the dubious distinction of hauling in the new sheet as we jibed. Damn it there is a ton of line there, and the more you haul the tougher it gets to pull. We managed to not kill anyone and only had one fuckup when the shackle blew off the clew because a bowman (who will go unnamed) didn't tape it closed as is the usual standard practice. It took a while to clear the mess up, but soon enough we got another kite up and continued our run back to Marquette. We finished at about 3:30 PM and went back to the dock to put our toys away.

The aftermath of the day worked out like this, there were only three boats that ventured out to start the "race". Shortly after the start the powder blue Cal 40 with only three guys onboard cashed in their chips and headed back to the dock. Rumor has it that, for whatever reason, they turned away crew before the race. The one other boat, a Tartan 4600, that is set up more for cruising than racing managed to douse their rail meat to the point that one of them started to get hypothermic and they dropped out to get him back to shore. Good on them for doing the right thing but too bad they couldn't finish the race. So, being the only boat to finish we managed to be the first and last to finish. The best part of the whole day was that all thirteen guys had a great story to tell about our version of Frostbiting on Lake Superior.

Ayes