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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.
We won't be there for the last part of the summer distance classics; the Pure Michigan Bayview Mackinac Race, but Anarchist 'cariguy' and his team have done a stellar job of stemming the atrocious Michigan economy to somehow have increased the number of entries from last year; a real victory for Frank and BYC. They've achieved this goal by being smart, and doing what we've been screaming about for years now: Focusing on inclusivity, working their asses off to get a great title sponsor, and embracing SA, Twitter, Facebook, and Constant Contact and the rest of the online tools to help build a community. Check out more about the BYC Mac right here.
Finally, we've got two great sponsors to help us get you your updates, as well as to help us win this race. First is our old friend THC from Point Loma Outfitting, who's helped us get the equipment we need to do our job as well as our favorite technical team gear of all for summer distance races, especially since Mer is a Patagonia snob. The attached pic is our Patagonia Capilene 1 Crew neck (long sleeve). Patagonia's Capilene is made from recycled polyester and features "Gladiodor" natural odor control. These are also recyclable through Patagonia's Common Threads Recycling Program. Cap 1 is a 3.7 oz. fabric with 15 UPF sun protection and is ideal for high-exertion, hot weather pursuits.
Our second sponsor is Mark Michaelson's stellar WxRouting service, who will be giving us our pre-race routing suggestions and weather reports. Mark is damned good at this stuff, his forecasts helped us beat Scott Nixon and Chris Larson to win the Saturday of last weekend's Sail Newport regatta in Melges 24s. We are growing to rely on WxRouting's great work, and if you want to use it, we suggest you book it well in advance - Mark works his ass off and already has most of the summer blocked off.
We know there will be a LOT of people watching this thread; in fact, these forums set a record for number of people logged in back in 2007 when we were sending in live reports from the Chicago Mack, so all of you - please use your resources to add anything of interest to this report; weather, your own updates from iPhones and Blackberries up the course, stuff your friends call in to you, and anything you find on other sites. This should be a great one-stop shop for the 2009 Chicago Mac and Super Mac race.
Thanks for tuning in!
