(Saturday, June 26, 2010)  How much better does it get? A 68 mile race across Lake Michigan on a summer night. Course almost due east. Wind mostly south to south-southwest at 14 to 18 knots. Put up the assymetric spinnakers and fly!

 

With the reaching conditions that prevailed for the Queen’s Cup, Jay Muller’s Das Boot pulled significantly ahead of the rest of the section and crossed the finish line five minutes ahead of the 2^nd place boat, Bob Vickery’s Collaboration 2, who in turn was only 50 seconds ahead of the 3^rd place boat, Ron Buzil’s Vayu.

 

 

 

 

The Beneteau 40.7’s finished in the top six positions in the PHRF 3 section. The 40.7’s comprised over half of the 17 boats in Section 3 who were all sailing under the PHRF handicap. Section winner Das Boot finished overall 39^th of the 168 boats participating in the Queen’s Cup. The conditions of the race definitely favored longer water-line heavier boats. The overall winner, Jeff Anderson’s Mezzaluna, a Baba 40, has a PHRF rating of 201 (compared to 54 for the Beneteau 40.7). On a race of this length using the assigned PHRF handicaps, a 40.7 would owe the Baba 40 2 hours 47 minutes 35 seconds. That’s a lot of time!

 

This is the 72^nd sailing of the Queen’s Cup Race, hosted by the South Shore Yacht Club of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The race this year was from Milwaukee to Grand Haven, Michigan, a distance of 68.4 nautical miles. The starting time for Section 3, of which the Beneteau 40.7’s comprised nine of the seventeen participants, was Friday evening at 18:30 hours. Das Boot crossed the finish line on Saturday morning at 03:04:10 for an elapsed time of 8 hours 34 minutes 10 seconds. 

 

This race counts in the season long series of the Lake Michigan Sailing Federation’s Best Beneteau 40.7 on Lake Michigan for 2010. It is one of only two long distance races in the series, the other being the 26 mile Chicago to Waukegan race held on June 19^th. 

 

Eight boats of the Lake Michigan Beneteau 40.7 Fleet from Chicago made the trip to Milwaukee on Sunday the 20th after the Waukegan race. There they were joined by Milwaukee fleet member, Bob Arzbaecher’s Sociable, who also came up from Waukegan, having done that race with most of the rest of the fleet. 

 

On Friday, before the race, in the yacht basin of the yacht club, there was much socializing  

between the crews of the boats. Sailing World had a photographer and reporter covering the event and of course the 40.7 fleet garnered some attention, if for no other reason than the number of boats that had travelled from Chicago for the event. 

 

For the first time ever, during the afternoon before the race, a photo was taken of the fleet crew members, or as many of them as could be quickly assembled.  At least six of the fleet's boats were represented in the photo:  Cancan, Excalibur, Rhumb Runner, Turning Point, Collaboration, and Vayu.

 

Saturday morning after the race, a fleet breakfast was held at The Kirby House in Grand Haven. Shortly after the breakfast most of the fleet departed the Michigan shore bound for Milwaukee or Chicago. 

 

During the race, Turning Point, with co-skippers Bill Bartz and Dave Hardy, had her steering cable jump the quadrant. The resulting delay repairing the steering caused significant loss of time for Turning Point. An interview with Dave Hardy about Turning Point’s steering problem is at the end of this article.

 

Muller's Das Boot was the winner of the 2009 Boat of the Year for Long-Distance racing.

After the race we interviewed winning skipper Jay Muller (JM):

 

40.7: Let's start by asking if you had any initial strategy for the race?

JM:   We looked at three weather scenarios, all of which said pretty much the same thing. We decided on the most optimal routing and decided that that is what we are going to sail and we stuck with it.

 

40.7: Did you modify that strategy as the race progressed?

JM:   We were slightly south of rhumb earlier than we anticipated and came back to the rhumb later in the race than what the program said, but no, we sailed our pre race strategy.

 

40.7: Which sails did you use and when?

JM:   We started with our Light Medium #1 and eventually went to our A chute (shattering our reaching strut in the process) about midway through.

     At this point longtime Das Boot mainsail trimmer Bernd Ruschmeyer added: "At on point before changing to the A-Sail  we thought about switching to either the heavy 1 or even the #3 but we waited and the wind went back on us and we switched to the A-Sail instead. "
 
40.7: Did you do shifts or watches or how did you spread the work?

JM:  I have long been of the opinion that anything under 24 hours requires a crews’ full attention to the race. When you can see your fleet around you is not the time to start taking watches.  A lot of people (and Das Boot Crew!) don’t share this view, but we decided to full on participate for the entire race and I think it worked.  We ate on the rail, switched drivers, trimmers, and grinders every hour, continually check our plot to make sure we were following our plan, and watched our boats around us for as long as we could.  The last point especially helped us all stay in the race I think.  It was truly a team effort

 

40.7: Did you serve a meal? If so what and how and when?

JM:   Again, we ate on the rail probably around 8:00 PM or so, half sandwiches and such. We were planning on a midpoint beer but the wind got a little too puffy!

 

40.7: What was the finish like for Das Boot?

JM:  Oh it was lots of fun. I tend to start seeing things after 8 or so hours, so I was convinced we were sailing into some sort of inlet and were going to run aground. We were about 2 miles out when the wind picked up (again) into the 22-25 knot range and went a little too far forward for the A-chute. At that point there was no time to change any sails so we careened in at about 9.5 knots and a 35 degree heel, convinced we were going to slice the committee boats mast in two while we rounded up and cart wheeled across the finish line. At about 100 yards we big eased the chute and missed the committee boat by a couple of yards (really!)

 

40.7: Who were your crew and in which positions?

JM: Myself and Bernd Ruschmeyer on helm, Bernd again on strategy and navigation and main sail, Mike Kurze on spinnaker trim and strategy, Cindy Muller on jib trim, Linas Rastonis on spinnaker trim, anything from the mast forward, and making sure we stay with our strategy, Graziella Loupil in the pit, grinding, and boat watch, and our newbie, Anne McDermott in the sewer, grinding, and boat watch (and doing a very good job driving on the way home, way to go Anne!)

 

40.7: Anything else about the race that you'd like to add?

JM: Firstly, we should thank Bob Arzbaecher and the crew of Sociable for organizing the Grand Haven Breakfast, Jameson and coffee is a great idea, especially after a damp night! Secondly, I think the entire 40.7 fleet should be damn proud of the fleets showing our first time in this race. It is a testament to just how competitive a fleet we are and how we help each other stay on top of our game. I am sure that the Queens Cup is still talking about us all and I don’t think the 40.7 will go away any time soon. Certainly, this race presents some logistical challenges that seem to have been successfully handled by us all. I would hope that we can find a way to keep our fleets’ participation in future Queens Cups as it is a great venue and provides some good pre-Mac night racing tune up. Finally a shout out to Performance Yacht who took care of Mojo and Das Boot during the week and I think South Shore Yacht Club entertained the rest of the fleet admirably.  A special shout out to Cate Muller, Anne, Graz, and Mike for getting Das Boot up to Milwaukee and again to Cate for getting us ready to go on Friday.

 

Dave Hardy, skipper of Turning Point, had this to say about their steering problem:

 

 

 

Current standings for the 2010 season series are at: