Amateur II Sailing

Last night we celebrated one of the most enjoyable sailing seasons I can remember. What a wonderful team!

That’s a whole lot of battery. Enough juice to make it to the island (I hope).

All legal with our state registration numbers. Last spring, as we were bringing the boat from winter storage and waiting to go through the Chicago lock, the Illinois Conservation Police did an inspection of our boat. The only thing they warned us about was not having our registration numbers on the hull. Problem fixed now.

The starboard pin end was not the place to start in last night's 100 Boats on a B**r Can.

Photo by Kat Orlov

Amateur II is headed to Mackinac Island for the 32nd time!

It’s time for the annual grilling of the Mac Race bacon. Trying Turkey bacon 🥓 this year.

On Saturday, July 22nd Amateur II Sailing will embark on the 114th Chicago Yacht Club Race To Mackinac. This will be the 32nd Mac race for the boat. Co-owner Mike Platzke will be doing his 15th Mac and Felicia Platzke her 7th. Milo Lundblad will be doing his 38th! Will Munson, Will Loux, Johanri Ge**er and Jamie Sunderland will make up the rest of the experienced crew. You can't ask for a better group to sail this race with and we're going to give it everything we have.

You can track our progress via Yellowbrick at https://yb.tl/chicagomac2023. We carry a satellite tracker that updates our position every 5 minutes or so.

Forecast is looking a bit better than yesterday, but it still looks to be a slow race. We might not get to the island until late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Time enough for a drink at the Pink Pony though!

Amateur II team hard at work reviewing all the required safety equipment for this year’s MAC race.

Was cleaning 4 of our 6 Lewmar winches yesterday and noticed that the covers were stamped with the manufacturer date of 1978. The internals are still going strong although the drums are getting a bit worn. Wish we could replace just the drums, but that's not likely on 25 year old winches and we'll probably have to replace them in the next few years.

The rebuilt main halyard didn't last long before the cover broke, so Chicago Yacht Rigging whipped us up a new main halyard the week before the Sailing World Regatta Series Chicago races. Thank you Kristian!

Can you spot the T-10 main halyard and new backstay?