At 15, Merritt Sellers returns to Mackinac races and inspires young first-time sailors

Merritt Sellers made headlines when she raced at age 14 through the night, with only her father to win their class during the Port Huron to Mackinac Island race one year ago. She navigated their 35-foot sailboat called "nosurprise" alone under the moon and stunned many in the sailing world on her maiden voyage in the historic long distance race.

Most sailors compete their whole lives and never win a Bayview Mackinac race flag.

Merritt Sellers didn’t win her race this year. She didn’t even make the podium.

But she is doing something much bigger: Changing the face of the sport.

The young sailor from Larkspur, California, has inspired other girls, and their fathers, to race the big race together according to Bayview Yacht Club Commodore Paul Hulsey.

Some sailors have begun calling it the “Merritt Factor" or the "Merritt Effect," he said.

“One little story from last year just exploded and we’ve seen so many new faces" in the Bayview Mackinac race, said Hulsey, 52, of Grosse Pointe, whose club has run the race for 99 years. He just finished racing on DeTour on the Shore course, and has known Merritt Sellers' dad Scott Sellers for years.

“I met his daughter. She’s outstanding. This year, they were leading the pack again. The last eight hours was pitch dark and blowing hard and they were in front of us,” Hulsey said. "We’ve got a team of seven guys and it’s tough for us to get around the race course. It’s Scott and his teenage daughter and they’re doing everything that a crew of seven guys are getting done — making sail changes in heavy weather, navigating around rocks. My daughter is 7 now and I just kept thinking, 'I can’t wait until I can share the experience.' ”

The race consists of the shorter Shore course and the longer Cove Island course. Sailors race to win their individual class, which is based on boat design, and the overall course; which includes all classes. Nearly 200 boats with crew from around the world raced this year, according to the results website.

Hulsey will race in the Chicago to Mackinac competition that begins July 22.

Scott and Merritt Sellers will be in Chicago, too, with a bigger crew.

'Takes all of me'

The fight to the finish with her dad meant more than winning last weekend, Merritt said.

“It was a really hard race. I knew I was coming with experience and I knew I could do it,” she told the Detroit Free Press immediately after arriving with her sailboat in Chicago on Thursday. “All the time, the wind would shift and we would do sail change. I mean, it gave me a lot of endurance. I had to push myself even harder this year. I think I’ve become a better sailor. I learned that even though I did the race once, it’s still hard and takes all of me.”

The father and daughter did about 30 sail changes, Scott Sellers told the Free Press. “The conditions favored the slower boats on both courses as the lead boats like us ran into a wind hole while the slower boats caught up so our results weren’t good. But I thought we sailed much better this year. I am proud of Merritt. Last year, she was in it to finish and for the experience. This year, she was really in it to win it. She was pretty much up for the last 20 hours of the race pushing the boat.”

They finished the Shore Course in 40:37:33 hours.

“As we were turning in our race tracker at the Chippewa Hotel,” Sellers said “A woman working the front desk … approached Merritt and asked if she was the girl from the article last year. She ... was all excited to see Merritt and took a selfie with her to send to her daughter and couldn’t wait to tell her daughter she met the girl from last year who was so inspiring. That made Merritt feel good.”

After Chicago, they’ll return the boat to Harbor Springs and spend time at their summer house before heading west. They belong to the Little Traverse Yacht Club and the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.

“I thought just a couple people would hear our story and think it’s cool but nobody would actually be inspired by it," Merritt said.

The Free Press talked to young sailors who raced Mackinac for the first time, many of them citing Merritt Sellers and her story. These are a few snapshots from first-time racers in the historic event:

Katie Touma, of Fort Gratiot: Blue Eyes

Katie Touma, 19, sailed her first Mackinac on Blue Eyes. The crew placed second in Class O and second overall on the Shore Course on an Ericson 35.

“It was equal parts terrifying and amazing,” she told the Free Press. “Sunday morning, when we hit wind speeds of 25 knots, it was terrifying. Our crew helped me get through it. We were heeled over pretty bad. We had such high wind speeds at 3 or 4 a.m. When it’s pitch black out and you’re in the middle of the lake, it was just terrifying.”

“Coming out on the other end, I was so thankful to have gone through it. I learned something about myself. I was able to keep my emotions in check, regulate myself and make sure I didn’t freak out. We worked together to get ourselves through it. It’s about teamwork and perseverance. I stayed competent and ready. I knew I couldn’t fall apart, for the team. I had to stay strong," said Touma, a member of the University of Michigan sailing team.

Knowing the story of Merritt Sellers and sailing with her dad mattered, Touma said, “Her being so young, it was motivation. ‘If she can do it,’ I thought, ‘I’m almost 20. I should be able to do it.’ ”

If Blue Eyes will have her back for the 100th Bayview Mackinac, Touma said she’s going.

Meghan Hoy, of Port Sanilac: Blue Eyes

Meghan Hoy, 16, decided after racing with her father from Port Huron to Lexington last year that she wanted to tackle the Mackinac race. But she didn’t expect the rough weather Sunday.

“It was kind of scary. It felt like we were going almost too fast, but I knew we weren’t. But I never had to be on the boat when we had to reef the main (sail) and furl the head sail,” she said, referring to reducing the amount of sail used to capture wind when it’s overwhelming the boat.

Hoy read the story of Merritt Sellers in 2022, she said. “I was, like, ‘that’s really cool.’ I thought maybe I could do that – not in the near future. Maybe once in life. And it came the next year. I started being disciplined about making myself go sailing on rough days, get the experience I needed. And I thought, if she (Merritt) could do it, I could do it. She did it double-handed, and I can’t even imagine. That has to be insane.”

Double-handed means a crew of only two sailors.

Her father, Pat Hoy, is a sailor who has finished more than 25 Bayview Mackinac races. He said he was intrigued and changed up plans, leaving another boat he raced as crew, to head up his own team. So Meghan sailed with a crew that included her mother, father and grandfather.

“Toward the finish, as we went into the Straits (of Mackinac), I was getting sprayed with all this water sitting on the rail, and I thought, ‘I really don’t want to be up here right now.’ But I sucked it up and finished on the rail. We were all up there, just sitting there, having to move side to side, and doing a lot of tacking. I was exhausted, cold and wet.”

“But I learned things,” Meghan said. “I learned to make sure I’m taking my time before doing something so I can do it right the first time. Make sure if I have a question to ask it. This has taught me a lot about life.”

Addie Kimmel, of Grosse Pointe Farms: Diablo

“I don’t know what I expected going into this race but it was completely not what I expected,” Addie Kimmel, 16, said. “The first day was really nice, perfect wind, sunny, not too cold. Everybody was laying on the foredeck sleeping. Then it started to get really windy and wavy. It was cold. Sunday night around maybe 2 a.m. I was on the front of the bow, waves crashing over me. I was freezing. I got maybe two hours of sleep the whole race. The boat was hiking up as the waves crashed over me. It was awful but it was worth it.”

Diablo placed second in Class C on the Cove Island course. It finished in 45:17:11 hours.

Merritt Sellers was on Kimmel’s mind, too.

“I was like, if her and her dad can do it, just the two of them, I think I can push through,” Kimmel said. “I learned patience. I didn’t expect how long it actually was. In the moment, it felt like 1,000 years. … There were so many emotions going on; not being able to sleep, the cold, the boredom, the excitement.”

Evelyn Young, of Grosse Pointe: Diablo

Evelyn Young, 16, has wanted to race for a few years but her family members needed to get comfortable with their new J/111 before taking new sailors on the long race.

Her father, Steve Young, took pride in noting he had three first-time young sailors on Diablo, including his daughter Evelyn and son Alex, 14. They trimmed sails, which means adjusting the lines to maximize wind capture. They changed sails. They monitored for weather patterns. While the race averaged 10 to 12 knots of breeze, it grew to a steady 20 to 25 knots with gusts to 30 on Monday morning, Young said.

The boat had seven seasoned sailors who worried about how the younger sailors would react to harsh weather, said Young, 49. They focused on talking through everything all through the race, especially when they saw lightning in the distance and the sky darkening as clouds approached.

“I don’t think I expected how awake I’d feel the whole time. I was sleep-deprived but I didn’t feel tired because of the adrenaline,” Evelyn Young said. “When it was windy, you had to sit on the rail (of the sailboat) instead of sleeping down below to help keep the boat flat.”

Sailors all line up on the side of the boat, feet hanging overboard, to use body weight to balance.

“We were clipped into the boat so we didn’t fall off,” Evelyn Young said. “If it was windy during your four hours off (duty), you had to sit on the rail and sleep for as long as you could. Going into the race, I was really nervous that we weren’t going to do well. But as the race went on, I started to care about that less and less and just really have fun. All I cared about was getting there.”

Young said she knew the story of a 14-year-old (Merritt Sellers) winning the race with her father.

"It just gave me a lot more confidence, knowing that someone else had done the same thing and it was even more difficult for her, since we had much more crew on our boat," Evelyn Young said Friday. "I'm definitely looking forward to continuing the tradition of racing to Mackinac with my family, and just getting more kids and females out on the boat. I feel like when we have guest instructors at junior sailing, or guest coaches, a lot of them are men. It means a lot for girls who want to sail to see that other younger girls are doing it, too."

More: Naval academy sailors drive up from Annapolis to race to Mackinac

More: Sailors overcome emergency at 2 a.m. in rough waters to win Bayview Mackinac race

Editor's note: Phoebe Wall Howard, an autos reporter, also writes about sailing and Mackinac Island. She is a member of the Port Huron Yacht Club and part of a longtime sailing family that has visited Mackinac since her childhood. Her husband raced in the competition. She knows personally many of the families that compete in the races to Mackinac, including the Hoy family that is in this story.

Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: At 15, Merritt Sellers returns to Mackinac races and inspires