Hat trick for Hanse 630 in Mackinac Race

(July 20, 2014) – Infinite Diversion, a Hanse 630 owned and skippered by Joseph Haas, is the first to finish in the cruising division in the 106th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac.

At 333 miles (289.4 nautical miles), the Race to Mackinac is the oldest annual freshwater distance race in the world. ‘The Mac’ started at the Chicago Lighthouse just off Navy Pier and continues to Mackinac Island.

The 41 boats in the cruising division started on Friday at 3 pm CDT. The second boat to finish was Colombo Breeze at 12:27 EDT, with several cruisers expected to finish throughout the rest of Sunday. Current standings are updated here.

Haas, a past commodore at the Chicago Yacht Club, finished with his crew of nine at 9:54 a.m. CDT with a corrected time of 46:17:44. This is the third consecutive year that Infinite Diversion has crossed the finish line first in its division.

“Another great year with a great crew,” Haas said. “We had some ups and downs, several equipment failures but as a whole, all went better than expected. The Hanse favors an upwind race, so our focus was to finish first. As I said another good year.”

“We had a prediction early in the race that the breeze was going to be better the farther north and west you got in the lake,” said Winn Soldani. “We’re certainly seeing that with the bigger boats. The bigger boats – the turbo boats – go faster, and we’re seeing that as they get out farther north and into the better breeze, they’re really starting to get out far ahead.”

In the racing division, which started on Saturday, wind speeds remained fairly consistent across the course throughout the day.

“As we progress throughout Sunday, we are seeing fairly consistent boat speeds, east west, across the race fleets. The boats fighting hard for left and right are sailing more distance, and those staying true to the middle of the course are starting to poke out and move north faster,” said Dan Gabriel. “The boats positioning left or right of rhumb may have a payoff later as conditions change, but for the moment, the middle of the course is paying off.”

“The big choice continues to be whether it is it worth it to sail west where we predict more winds, or is it better take the shorter course with lighter winds,” Soldani continued. “It looks like the first racers will arrive Sunday night, with the majority of the fleet arriving throughout the day on Monday, should the forecast hold. But there is a lot of racing left, so we’ll see how it plays out.”

Tracker: http://us.yb.tl/chicagomack2014
Race website: http://www.cycracetomackinac.com

Report by event media.