I anchored in Beaver Island Thursday evening and Friday, waiting for more favorable winds to head south to Manitowoc. I tried for Manitowoc Thursday, but with the headwind and waves, it was clear I would run out of fuel, even with three full jerry jugs. Beaver Island is where my trip to the Bahamas began, and where I first ran into Roger and Tari on Paradise Hunter. Roger dinghyed over and introduced himself. A couple days later they waited up for me, and we remained buddy boats the rest of the way.

This race was one for the ages. I did extremely well, better than I ever thought possible. On this type of race, doing well involves some good luck and many conscious decisions that work out - paying attention to what is going on. Did you catch that wind shift? Did you stay far enough away from that shore that might be blocking the wind?

The first day started with no wind, then a light wind. Then it blew nicely. Some boats thought it was too windy for a spinnaker beam reach. My boat loves a spinnaker reach, so I was flying. I was handily beating one boat, but could not touch the other boat still racing in my section. The fourth boat in my section fell so far behind, that he gave up.

The last evening started with changing winds. Now it's here - now it's gone. The boat I had beaten earlier with the spinnaker practically caught up to me. "Oh no, he's going to beat me!", I thought. The wind kept coming from all different directions. Then it changed when you tacked. Then it finally came in strong from the general direction I wanted to go, with some shiftiness thrown in. Then the rain joined the party - it was an all nighter. Plus the freighter. Plus the fog joined right as the freighter reached us. So on went his horn. You can hear the horn from several miles away. But he was a lot closer, so it was loud. No one could see a thing - the night was pitch black with fog. When you looked forward, all you could see were your own running lights bouncing off the fog, blinding you. I used AIS and the race tracker to see who was around me. I was sailing by instruments alone. We were going between islands and beating our way north. Rain and spray from the waves were my unwanted buddies. I huddled under the dodger. The boat was heeled over with a reef in the mainsail and genoa, spray from the waves coming over the deck, hitting the dodger. One of the boats I beat had two reefs in his main. That helped me more than it helped him. It was during this mess that I beat the other boat in my section, the one I had never gotten close to before. He was very tired during this night, so that was a contributing factor.

So it was a windy, wet, rainy ride the last 24 hours. Many quit. Not fun at the end. Very grueling. 

Results:
First in section
Fourth in fleet

But no awards ceremony this year. No pictures with a first place flag. No beer keg with racers gathering around and telling stories - congratulating you on your best race ever. Few boats made it to the island, and some of those have already left.

Solo Mac started this morning at 9am. Chicago Harbors are closed, so we started in Winthrop Harbor with no committee boat and no wind. I started out ooorly, but have caught back up. Spinnaker is up. Not everyone put up their chute. Beam wind.

Yesterday I was able to get to the boat for the first time in six weeks. Even during a Chicago winter, I never go that long without a visit. The boatyard is very restricted - by appointment only and it is now like a gated community with a sentry at the closed gate. The bilge was full of water from the heavy rains, but otherwise, the boat was fine. After getting the bilge pumps going again, I washed the topsides and Pat waxed the port side. I touched up spots on the bottom paint, but for the first time, I am skipping a year with Micron CSC. We will see how that goes. Painting every other year would be wonderful.

At the end of the day, Paulette and Dean stopped by. This is their first spring with a boat that needs a slip in the harbor and a winter place to be stored that is not a driveway. After a full day of cleaning and painting, Paulette was tired and stayed back in the truck while Dean came out to drool over my MaxProp feathering prop. He kept trying to coax her out of the truck to look at it, but she would have none of it. She had been to the boat show and knew how much one of those suckers cost. She was thinking, "What did we spend all our money on before we had a boat?" ... followed by "If I keep the skipper happy, will I still have enough money left to buy food for tomorrow?"

This winter's project was to replace the electric panel on the boat. I often thought about doing this, but I needed a strong reason to undertake this. When looking at designing a custom panel from Blue Seas Systems [https://panelwizard.bluesea.com/panel/printable/220437], I realized I could remove the two fuse boxes in my lazarette. Now that made it worthwhile. Plus, I could fix the substandard negative wire connection from the battery. The negative cable was stiff (multiple solid wires stranded together) and ran across the front of the engine, unsupported. The actual connection from the wire to the DC circuits was beyond being a joke, and is hard to describe. That has all been fixed. If you look at the Photo Gallery for 2019, you can see the old hardware. The two boxes in the lazaretto, and most of the wires were removed and recycled. All of that 'stuff' was replaced by the right hand column shown above.

This year's LMSS (Lake Michigan Singlehanded Society) long distance solo race was the Q race - held every other year. The Q (qualifier) is shorter and is a way for folks to try out short handed sailing (solo or double). It is 66 nautical miles. It starts from Racine, rounds a buoy in the middle of the lake, and ends back at Racine. This year's race was windy, but from the south on a mostly east-west course. So very close reach out and beam reach back. You were close hauled and heeled over going out in 14-18 knots of wind, and the waves kept building. Not comfortable, but you were moving. The wind was a touch inconsistent, so you had to watch the sails and decide if it was building enough to warrant reefing.

The reefs came out after rounding the mark. This is when you were really flying. I am one of the slower boats, so eventually most of the fleet passed me on the way to the buoy. One double handed boat was catching me on the way to the mark. So for the last four hours all the way home, after rounding the mark, I was trying to hold him off. He finally got by me during the last 30 minutes. He was a faster boat, it turns out, so I easily saved my time over him. As I was racing that boat, I caught up to another boat that had passed me much earlier. He (solo sailer) wasn't looking behind and watching the two of us catching up to him, so he was quite surprised when I suddenly appeared and passed him. I think his auto pilot couldn't handle the wind and waves, so he was luffing his main - a lot. When he sheeted it in, he rounded up once, 90 degrees off course. The next time he rounded up, he ended up with the wind on the wrong side of the genoa. Instead of releasing the genoa (I don't know how his sail didn't rip), he ended up doing a 360 in 17 knots of wind. After that, I think he hand steered and tried to catch me. So I had two boats chasing me for hours. I held off the solo sailor, but only by 21 seconds at the end. He again was a faster boat, so he needed to beat me by quite a bit.

I didn't think I was doing well in the race, since my benchmark boat was well ahead of me, sailing double handed. But these were perfect conditions for him, and he took first in fleet honors - a first for him. It turned out I did great! I was first in my solo section and second among all solo sailors. Overall, I was 7th out of 16 boats. This was my best finish ever. And my auto pilot was rock solid, unlike the guy rounding up, or another solo sailor who had to steer the entire 10 hour race.