By the Numbers
Published: Thursday, October 23, 2025 10:00 am
By: Mark Reid
By the numbers, the Chicago Yacht Club (CYC) is celebrating its 150th Anniversary this year. Their Race to Mackinac, presented by Wintrust with 285 yachts hitting the starting lines just completed their 116th Race.
The Bayview Yacht Club (BYC) wrapped up their 101st Race (with National Fleet Services returning as title sponsor) the week before to Mackinac (not Mackinaw) as 191 yachts raced up from Port Huron to the infamous Victorian-themed, turtle-shaped island from “somewhere in time,” known for horses and fudge.
Last year was the fastest Race to Mackinac in history as Maverick shattered the race record in 22h 24m 23s. This year, not so much! From the start, storm systems and heavy rain moved throughout the Chicago lakefront. When turbocharged yachts hit the line they floated across as the wind disappeared as quickly as the rain.
As tempting as it was to say hey to Heartbreaker’s Owner/Skipper Bob Hughes, he was laser-focused grabbing an early lead that the team never relinquished, breaking the hearts of every other competitor in the race.
Under the cover of darkness, arriving just before sunrise, Hughes’ GL52 Heartbreaker was the first “turbo class” across the finish line. They beat Doug DeVos’s Windquest by just 53 minutes, finishing at 3:53 in the morning with an elapsed time of 1d, 13h, 3m, 4s.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Hughes. “This is my favorite race in the world, and this year is the first time I’ve won not only the Great Lakes 52 section, but the entire racing division.”
“The team did such a phenomenal job and it always starts and ends with the crew,” said Hughes. “After the race was over we realized nobody ever crossed our bow. In distance racing you always got to get a couple of breaks that go your way and anything else that happens after that is just icing on the cake.”
“Coming off the starting line, we knew exactly where we wanted to be, which was at the Committee Boat end, going fast,” said Kyle Jones, Heartbreaker’s navigator. “We had a fantastic start and blasted up to the Legacy Mark off Montrose. I enjoyed going up the shoreline. It was really cool!”
“Usually, the fleet converges in the first 5 minutes after the start, which can either make or break your race, but with the new leg everybody was really forced to go up the lake the same way, and it was back and forth the whole way up.”
“The biggest problem we had was on the first night at about 2:00 am. We broke our Cunningham jib ram, so the tack of the jib was loose and there was a crack in the luff. We lost about 4 miles while we scrambled to make repairs,” said Jones. “If we hadn’t fixed it, we would have had to retire from the Race. Which on a GL52 can be a race ender.”
“We all do this Race a lot and to finish first is special. To get first in your section is even more special. Bob (Hughes) has done this Race 37 times, this is my 25th and I have never finished first overall!” smiled Jones.
Madcap, with Marian Haskins at the helm, made history again this year, finishing third in Class 2 in 2d, 3h, 52m, 9s, the sixth all-women crew in Mackinac Race history.
The first was Lady Eileen in 1905. Then, the 45-foot Venturon in 1950, C-Spray in 1976, Hey Jude in 1998, and Moxie last year.
“I see it as a continuation, not a start, because I am trying to take the helm from the girls that did it last year on Moxie,” said Hoskins, who has sailed in 17 Mackinac Races. “My hope is that next year, some girls will organize and take the helm so that it becomes a common thing, not a newsworthy thing.
“I saw Moxie do it last year and it’s sad to say but I really never thought about doing it. I’m a girl. I own a boat! Let’s do it,” said Hoskins. “We had talented sailors, very innovative, collaborative, and great attitudes. We had so much fun even when we thought we were losing. The girls sailed the crap out of the boat!”
Hoskins left Mackinac with Madcap in tow to join the 27 boats gathered to race the 89th 100 Miler in the Marinette and Menominee Yacht Club’s annual event, with a finish in Green Bay. It is beautiful tour crosses Wisconsin’s Door County, Fish Creek, and the Strawberry Islands.
“This year’s Mac had a little bit of everything,” said Kellen McGee, who champions the bow on Tim Prophit’s Fast Tango. “It was a tactical 280nm match race against Detour, Handsome Pete and as Detroit boats, that was a treat!”
“Storm management was a lot. We went through about 20 sail changes in 3 hours as we sailed through squalls with a 180-degree wind shift coming down the lake. It was in the Manitous where we really “lost money” as we sailed into this section of light air,” said McGee. “At some point, you’re either on the right side of the course or you’re not, and every sailor knows that.”
Fast Tango finished 3rd in Class 9 in 2d 13h 12m 22s then headed up to race in the Trans Superior Race finishing 1st in Class and captured the prestigious Commodore Barthel Trophy for the best corrected time of all 3 races and over 905nm of racing!
For Moxie: “It wasn’t the greatest race of all time, but we had a blast. The race kicked our butts!” said Laura McCranner, who is the skipper and owner of Moxie, with her husband. “This year it was a longer, rougher race and we made good decisions, bad decisions, and broke a lot of things, but we made do. Plus, my life jacket deployed in the rain and our head broke and was repaired at least 3 times until we decided that we were going to use buckets and bags!”
tags: Bayview Yacht Club, Chicago Yacht Club, Great Lakes Sailing, Lake Michigan, Offshore Racing, Race to Mackinac, Sailing Competitions, Sailing Events, Women in Sailing, Yacht Racing
