Suburban sailors test their mettle in Mackinac race

It's a sailboat racing tradition: the oldest annual freshwater distance race in the world.

A 333-mile journey that tests even the best sailors and sometimes claims their boats as trophies. On the rough and tough waters of Lake Michigan, stirred by unexpected and unknown weather conditions, more than 350 sailors are ready to go this weekend. The event's name may not roll off the tongue, but it hints at its history and cachet: The 103rd Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, presented by Veuve Clicquot. Unstated is that it's a more than 50-hour grueling battle of wits, strategy and sheer speed.

Several suburban residents have thrown their captain's hats into the ring and are ready to take the challenge.

CHAOS on the seas

Jack Amedio of Libertyville will brave Lake Michigan's waters between Chicago and Mackinac Island, Mich., on a boat called CHAOS.

He knows he's asking for it.

“Every year you always have something crazy happen,” Amedio said. “It's always been an adventure.”

Amedio, 61, remembers hectic, stormy and intense moments from the 36 years he's participated in the race, including watching a nearby boat capsize during 70 mph winds.

Still, with his crew of nine sailors, including his 18-year-old daughter Kaitlin, he's ready to give it another go beginning this afternoon — this time with cameras attached to his 39.5-foot boat to record footage for family and friends.

“It will be to give them some highlights,” Amedio said. “If we hit a storm, they'll see all the chaos that goes on during a storm.”

Yup, chaos aboard CHAOS.

Sometimes even cooking food for a crew can become chaotic in a sailboat's small, below-deck galley, Amedio said. Eggs have cracked onto the floor instead of the skillet, and choppy waters have tossed and turned recipes into big messes. So Amedio and his group usually stick to such simple foods as sandwiches, hot dogs and lasagna.

Bananas, however, are one food never found aboard “CHAOS.” It's a sailing superstition.

“For some reason, some sailors, they just cannot sail on a boat if it has bananas on it,” he said. “One of our crew would throw them overboard and we'd say, ‘Wait, let us eat them first!'”

Merchant Marine

John Zienda makes no bones about it: Competitive sailing is dangerous. Every year at the Race to Mackinac, he expects the elements to make the trek a challenge.

But he overcomes that by studying and respecting Mother Nature, which can sometimes whip up a pretty strong battle. Four decades of sailing experience doesn't hurt, either.

“One of the greatest challenges is that you never know what type of weather you will experience,” said Zienda, 46, of Wheaton. “You can pretty much expect anything you can imagine. Many boaters have lost their boats, some have capsized.”

Zienda is one of five crew members who set sail from Navy Pier on Friday afternoon on the Forte Sea, a 46-foot-long cruiser.

Hardly any conditions surprise Zienda.

As a boy in Poland, he sailed competitively at age 6. Through grammar school and high school, Zienda never lost the fire for the sport and for the water.

He joined the Merchant mariners and even worked for a time on an ocean freighter.

Then, after a 12-year hiatus to establish roots after emigrating to the U.S., he became involved with the Chicago Yacht Club in 1999.

Zienda said sailing is his passion, one he has passed on to his son, who worked as a sail maker on the East Coast after sailing in college.

It's also a way for him to forget his worries, at least temporarily.

“It's a challenge and something that can be a big thing when you go out on the water and face the elements and rely on your wits and skills,” he said. “You disconnect yourself from everything happening in your life. It doesn't have to be sailing, but life is much more fulfilling if you have a passion.”

‘A chess game'

It wasn't the thrill of racing or a love of water that got Craig Warner involved in competitive sailing, specifically the Race to Mackinac.

It was his skills as a navigator, along with a comparison between an airplane wing and a sailboat sail that sparked his interest.

An airline pilot and former military man, Warner, 59, of Vernon Hills, said he'd always enjoyed boating but had no special expertise when his uncle's purchase of a cruising sailboat led him to learn about how watercraft work.

“I picked up a book on what makes a sailboat go. I opened to a page of a picture of a sail, and they compared it to an airplane wing,” Warner said. “A big light bulb went off. Then I got more and more interested in it.”

That beginning interest turned into a passion that keeps Warner constantly moving, whether in the air or on the water. He's participated in the Race to Mackinac 27 times; non-racers would be surprised how competitive it is.

One moment, sailors may be enjoying a cool northern breeze, serene views of nighttime stars and the northern lights, and the next, other boats can appear and intense sailing may begin again. Racers sleep in shifts with someone always awake to keep steering in the 2½-day trek toward the Michigan island.

“There's never any letdown; you're just pushing the boat as hard as you can,” he said. “It's a big chess game out there, and it's a physical chess game.”

Warner is aboard Sealark, a 35-foot-long boat with six other crew members, most with at least 25 years of Race to Mackinac experience.

“It's a fun thing to do. The people that are in the boat racing, it's almost a subculture,” Warner said. “It's not as easy as it looks, but it's more fun than it seems.”

Boredom/sheer terror

Naperville resident David Finlay is not afraid to say he gets frightened at times during the Race to Mackinac.

“It's hours and hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror,” he said. “It's a journey now. ... You see things people on land don't ever see and you have these experiences.”

Finlay will race in “The Mac” for the 19th time and sets sail this afternoon in a Tartan 10 class 33-foot craft. The Jing Bang will be among about 40 boats in the one-design, three-sail fleet.

Finlay started sailing competitively in 1984 and said it was a big change from his time with power boats.

“I knew boating, but sailing is a unique art,” he said. “It's the last frontier where you can be a cowboy on the wild, open range.”

He said he was hooked during his first “Mac” when his boat rocked along 12- to 15-foot waves and hit speeds of up to 70 knots, or about 80 mph.

And while the prevailing image is of a crew sailing along clear blue skies, without a worry, Finlay says that is not the case at all.

“One-design boats are all the same, but they all handle differently,” he said. “You have to know your boat.”

An architect by day, Finlay says the races are essentially a science, as crews have to study the conditions as much as they study themselves. But he says every weekend is like taking a vacation.

“You step aboard a boat and you race hard for two days,” he said. “You've been on a vacation; you don't think about work at all.”