Continuing preparation of "Every Day" Part 18

We have to tell you after several weeks of doing long distance races on the smallest boat in the fleet, we are bruised and tired but very pleased with our successes. First, we did the Queens cup on the Merit 25, Showdown and came in first in our class (one hour fifty minutes before the next boat in our class) and 52 out of 200 boats. Then after transporting Gadzooks, Capo 26 up to Racine into 25 knots of breeze and 5 - 7 footers, we raced the Hook race. We had some really great sailors with us, Steve Kall (the owner/skipper), Derek Prelle, Andrew Wilson, and us. We came in first in section and second overall. More about this race in a bit. Then after a very pleasant cruise back to Chicago with Gadzooks (other than a couple of thunder storms with lightning, 40 knots of breeze and fog in between, it was quite nice), we drove up to Marinette/Monominee for the 100 miler. This time we sailed on different boats and Mallory beat Rob. Mallory's boat came in 3rd in her section and 6th overall and Rob's boat came in 6th in our section and 17th overall.

After doing a total of 18 Chicago Mac and Port Huron Mac's, I have to tell you I like the Hook race better. They call it the small boat Mac but I have to tell you it has all the competition of a Mac race with much more friendly confines and much more comfortable transport back. I was really impressed with the inviting nature of the race and the clubs that host it. For those of you who love to cruise as well, I would highly recommend doing the Hook and then sail around Door county for the rest of the week then sail to Marinette/Monominee for the 100 miler (a race around the islands in the Bay of Green Bay) and then cruise home. Next year is the 70th year of the 100 miler and they will include classic boat sections for those of you who have great old boats.

Now that we have satisfied our sailing bug for a little while it's back to business. We have made a very hard change in plans. We might have mentioned earlier that Sturgeon Bay Yacht Harbor, where we are storing our boat and doing the refit was bought out last year. Well, the new management has made business decisions that has resulted in the loss of a lot of key staff and we, unfortunately, do not have confidence that the yard will be able to complete the work in the way we want it done in the time we want it completed. For this reason, we have chosen Manitowac Marine to complete the work. We will be moving the boat there in the next couple of weeks.

Manitowac Marine services hundreds of boats including many of the Santa Cruz 70's and has outfitted about 6 boats to do circumnavigations in the past 5 years and has an excellent facilities, staff and reputation. We will be able to tell you more as we get into the project and work with the staff. We have seen some of work that has been done on other boats that we have sailed against and the quality of the work is excellent.

That's all for this month. Happy sailing everyone.