Officially titled the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, both the club and Songer observed special anniversaries in this year’s race, which was completed for Songer’s vessel Evvai on Monday evening.

This was the Marquette semi-retired physician’s 25th time helming a vessel in this race, while the Illinois club is celebrating its 150th anniversary with the 116th running of this event.

After the 10-man crew helmed by Songer sailed from Marquette down to Chicago to prepare for the race’s start, the Evvai set sail at 12:40 p.m. Saturday, according to Songer.

Songer thinks his is the only vessel based on Lake Superior from the Upper Peninsula that regularly competes in the Chicago-to-Mackinac race, with the few others he knows of on the U.S. side of the big lake coming from Duluth, Minnesota.

This map shows the position at one point of the nearly 300 vessels competing in the various divisions of the Chicago-to-Mackinac sailboat race last weekend. (Screenshot courtesy Chicago Yacht Club)

Boats including the Evvai sailed on a long north-northeast diagonal from the lake’s southwest “corner” to reach Michigan’s coast around Ludington, then followed the shoreline north until again veering north-northeast in the vicinity of the Manitou Islands at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore west of Traverse City.

From there it was a sprint to the Straits of Mackinac and the historic and popular state park of Mackinac Island.

“Sprint” could only be used loosely, considering it took the Evvai just shy of 58 hours — nearly 2 1/2 days — to cover the 333-mile distance, also listed as 289 nautical miles on the Chicago Yacht Club’s website at cycracetomackinac.com.

“We’ve done it in about 40 hours before,” Songer said, explaining that the prevailing wind throughout this year’s race was rather light, and probably more importantly, blowing from the north and against the northward route of the racers.

“We had a contrary wind, or an upwind,” Songer said, explaining that boats had to cover a lot more than 333 miles by tacking — zigzagging back and forth — to make progress against the wind.

There’s no motors helping any of the boats out — “you use a motor and you’d be immediately disqualified,” said Songer — so he gave a conservative estimate that the Evvai covered 400 miles in all.

Using the 58-hour total as the estimate, that means Songer’s vessel averaged 5.75 miles per hour — we won’t get into converting into nautical knots — or just about 6.9 mph if covering 400 miles.

The captain said the vessel checked in at Mackinac Island at 10:23 p.m. EDT on Monday, and that the Evvai finished second in its class, Class 6 of the Mackinac Cup Division that included 14 entrants. Overall, there were 285 entries, according to the website.

Songer said he has sailed in this race with the Evvai about a dozen times, previously using sailboats named Carpe Diem and Perseverance.

He understands that this event is the oldest freshwater race in the world.

Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.