Chicago-Mackinac Yachters Celebrate 100th Race Up Lake Michigan
A Look at History
BY FRANK STRAUS

As the Chicago Yacht Club welcomes an unprecedented count of more than 400 sailing vessels to the 100th running of the Chicago to Mackinac Race, the world's longest wind-powered race on fresh water, the minds of many racers and their friends may be running over some of the changes that have come to sailboat racing over the life of this event.

Early Chicago-to-Mackinac racers climbed aboard wooden boats that were driven by canvas sails. The sails were controlled with ropes twisted together from fibers of hemp or "Manila fiber." Plastic-fiber ropes and composite boatbuilding materials did not exist in the early 1900s, nor could they have been thought of.

The first racing boats had no radios or pocket phones to listen to the weather or ask for help. A primitive wireless had just been invented as the first Chicago- Mackinac races got underway, but wireless "sets" were too heavy and bulky for racing sailboats. Boats in distress signaled their plight by flying the American flag upside down. Some boats carried light rockets that could be launched at night to create a shower of sparks. There was a possibility that other passing boats would see the flag or rocket and render assistance.

Sabre passes by Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel on its way to the finish line during a Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. The photograph is not dated. Racing yachts in earlier days faced greater challenges than today's boats on the 333-nautical-mile race. (Chicago Yacht Club photograph)

Modern navigational equipment did not exist in the early days of the Chicago-to-Mackinac race. In open water, sailboaters sometimes "took sights" to compare the angle of elevation of the sun over the horizon with the time as measured by a precisely wound chronometer; this would give them their latitude and longitude. This method was more useful in the open sea than on the Great Lakes, however. Most Lake Michigan racers were familiar with the shapes of various landforms along the shoreline, and could determine their location by looking at the land. A string of unique lighthouses, each with a singular outline by day and pattern of lights by night, improved the ability of early Chicago-to-Mackinac racers to gauge their location. Many now-inactive lighthouses, such as Waugoshance, were available to shine their lights over the waters to guide mariners to their destination.

The friends of today's yachters can follow the race and check out corrected final race times on the Internet. In the early 1900s, reporters would cluster in locations while news events were taking place, and send stories by telegraph to their editors. A Western Union telegraph office on Mackinac Island stood ready to send and receive "wires."

Today's yachters often bring prepared foods with them that can be eaten with little or no preparation required. Racing yachts of the early 1900s, even small ones, were likely to have a "galley" for cooking. Until recently, a surprising number of racing boats brought food with them in heavy steel cans; the food was heated on a cookstove before being served and eaten in pieces of crockery. Much of the food on today's boats is carried aboard in sealed plastic bags that weigh much less, and the racers often eat it directly out of the packaging.

Racing sailboats in photographs from the early and middle 1900s present a beautiful V-profile to the camera. A mainmast, mainsail, and jib sail point upward toward the sky. The profile of a modern racing yacht under full sail is also beautiful, but very different. The light spinnaker began to billow out from the mainmast some decades ago. Today's pleasure racers often unfurl spinnakers dyed with brightly colored designs, but the lightest and strongest sails are often woven from undyed graywhite graphite fiber. The densely textured white canvas of the past is rarely seen.

During the early years of the Chicago-to-Mackinac race, seamen unfurled their canvas sails and laid them out in Marquette Park to dry. They could not tie up at the Island's adjacent Yacht Dock, however, because this useful pier first stubbed out from the adjacent parkfront in 1929. Before then, yachts hired the right to tie up at the Arnold Dock or the Coal Dock, or anchored in the harbor, as many of their successors do today.

Until only a few decades ago, multihulled racing vessels were not thought of. Each racing boat had a single hull, often made of pieces of wood carefully fitted together by a crew of craftsmen who were implementing a vision of speed imagined by a master shipwright or boatbuilder. The yachters of the early 1900s might have seen an engraving or woodcut of a Polynesian outrigger canoe in Collier's, Mc- Clure's, the Saturday Evening Post, or any of the other popular magazines of the day; but few of them would have seen the invention in the South Pacific of a concept that would be re-engineered into a principle that would pitchpole the sailing world. Today's racing yachts, whether multi-hulled or monohulled, are often designed electronically with curves that can be "tested" by mathematical algorithms before an actual boat surface touches the water.

One feature of the Chicagoto Mackinac race that did not exist during the first quarter of its century is that of the ancient and honorable fraternity and sorority of Old Goats. No early yachter could have attained this honor until 25 races had taken place, and the Island Goats Sailing Society was not in fact founded until 1950. All of the early Chicago racers and all of the first Old Goats were men; female participation in the race was scarcely to be seen before the 1960s, and remained quite light for decades thereafter. Today more and more women participate in this historic race.

One feature of the Chicagoto Mackinac race that has not changed much is the technology used to signal the successful crossing of the finish line. A small cannon, which is toy-sized but is mildly dangerous and not a toy, is placed on the shore of Biddle's Point, facing the Round Island Light. As a boat passes this historic 1898 lighthouse, a small carbide charge in the cannon produces an audible "bang." Another of the estimated 440 entrants expected to participate in the 2008 Chicago-to- Mackinac race will have completed the course.

Early Chicago-to-Mackinac racers were prepared to celebrate the end of their race here on Mackinac Island. Racing sailors are still known to Islanders for the depth of their capacity to celebrate their safe arrival.