Girl, 14, will navigate 36-foot boat alone for hours during the Mackinac race

Merritt Sellers and her father plan to sail together from Port Huron to Mackinac Island, through crashing waves and at least one night, after the starting gun Saturday.

That means Merritt, at age 14, will navigate their 36-foot boat alone when Scott Sellers goes down below to briefly nap. It's essential to rest when racing around the clock on a 204-nautical-mile journey (235 land miles). She'll use a flashlight at night to watch little telltales on the sail to track wind shifts and harness the gusts.

Sailing Port Huron to Mackinac Island usually takes 30 to 60 hours. The historic race began in 1925 and Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit takes pride in noting it's the longest consecutively running freshwater sailboat race.

"I've been working a very, very long time working up to this," Merritt Sellers told the Free Press. "When I was real little, my dad was always, like, 'Someday we could do the Mackinac race together.' Now it's really happening. I'm a little nervous."

She grew up sailing with her father and grandfather, starting at age 7. Merritt and her family live in Larkspur, California, with a summer home in Harbor Springs. Their boat "nosurprise" won its class and overall race in the Chicago to Mackinac race last year with a crew of eight. It was Merritt's first Mackinac.

Sailing with just two people, called double-handed, requires special skill and courage.

"When you watch the sunrise, it's so beautiful," said Merritt, an acrylic painter who begins San Domenico High School in San Anselmo, California, in the fall.

"I am someone who does function better on a little bit more sleep. That’s definitely going to be more of a challenge," Merritt said. "I’ve been working out and doing CrossFit a couple days a week preparing for this. We bench press, dead lift, row. Everything."

The Bayview Mackinac Race, which begins in Port Huron on Lake Huron, will offer a Shore Course and a Cove Island Course, which is even longer at 280 nautical miles (322 land miles).

Merritt and Scott Sellers will sail the Shore Course. 

"Merritt will be on deck alone for a few hours of the race when I'm down below resting," Scott Sellers said. "I will let Merritt sleep in three-hour increments when conditions allow. If we are doing a sail change maneuver, I will wake her."

Canadians return

Race competition was crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years, reducing entries to just 81 boats in 2020 and 172 in 2021. Entries reached 180 boats this year but, as is typical, a few boats have withdrawn. Now it's at 173 boats, Bayview told the Free Press. The race has restored the course to include Canadian waters, which were temporarily off limits because of pandemic-related restrictions, as well as Canadian sailors.

"We're thrilled to have Canadian sailors back with us," said Chris Clark, chairman of the 2022 Bayview Mackinac Race organized by the Bayview Yacht Club. "And for us to be able to use all of Lake Huron. Remember, we only own half of it."

The Shore Course hugs the Michigan shoreline, while the approximately 280-nautical-mile Cove Island Course takes boats up near Tobermory in Ontario and the entrance to the Georgian Bay.

The Shore Course is all about finding wind at night, Clark said. The longer course typically adds a lot of into-the-wind racing

Boats are registered from throughout North America.

Fast Tango

Kellen McGee, 33, of Lisle, Ill., is a graduate student in accelerator physics at Michigan State University who will crew on the legendary "Fast Tango" skippered by Tim Prophit, 63, a cannabis marketing consultant from St. Clair Shores.

McGee works the foredeck, meaning she's in charge of the very front of the North American 40 sailboat, setting up, launching and taking down sails. She has raced from Port Huron to the island 10 times.

"The thing about Mackinac racing, and sailboat racing in general, is that you find perfect moments of tranquility interspersed with sheer panic. By time you get bored with one, the other starts occurring," McGee said.

Extreme creativity is often required, she said, noting how friends on the Jenneau 49 "Hyperborea" once tore a sail in a 50 mile-per-hour gust and they ended up Gorilla-taping along the tear, drilling holes in the taped sail and zip-tying the holes to stitch it up again in a MacGyver move that saved the day.

"They were not going to drop out of the Mackinac race," McGee said laughing, and crediting skipper Marc Uhrich of North Jackson, Ohio.

She's racing the Cove Island Course.

Notorious

Kevin Brown, a construction project manager from Toronto, has raced Port Huron to Mackinac but this year he's taking his own boat, the Farr 30 "Notorious," for the first time.

"I have the added responsibilities of an owner where previously I have been in the role of tactician, helmsman and watch captain," Brown said.

"We're sailing with six people," he said. "Boat weight is sensitive. Every pound counts. The weight and complication of normal cooking is a compromise to our performance so we go with premade meals and freeze-dried main courses."

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His crew, all Canadian, includes an accountant, an aerospace engineer, a lawyer and a police officer.

"The Mackinac race is considered the crown jewel of the Great Lakes," Brown said. "If you want to win a distance race and really prove something, it will be the Mackinac."

The challenge of this Cove Island Course? Changeable weather conditions in open water that stays colder and tends to generate squalls and larger wave action than most races, he said.

Damn Yankee

Theodore Johnson, 63, of Buffalo, New York, has sailed the Mackinac race many times but this is the first on his new boat "Damn Yankee," a Farr 60. He'll tackle the Cove Island Course with 15 crew members.

"I haven't bought any sails so this is very old inventory," Johnson said. "We're going to go out and have a lot of fun. It's all about the journey, right?"

Still, preparation has been especially important to Johnson.

"People can die out there," he said. "My biggest fear is losing someone overboard."

In 2011, during the Chicago to Mackinac race, two experienced sailors died when sudden winds flipped their boat in Lake Michigan, according to the Chicago Tribune. In 2018, also racing from Chicago, a sailor died after going overboard in high winds and 6-foot waves, prompting safety regulation changes by the Chicago Yacht Club, according to CBS Chicago.

A few wives of crew members won't let sailors compete in the Mackinac race, fearing for their lives, Johnson said. "When you get to the other end, it’s a rite of passage."

With plans to race both Bayview Mackinac and then Chicago to Mackinac the following week, Johnson has spent days safety training.

"We go through every man overboard scenario. We get somebody to jump in the water and go get them. We talked about spotting, throwing smoke flares, how to call mayday, how to find somebody who’s gone overboard in the dark, how to inflate your vest manually," he said.

nosurprise

Scott Sellers and his daughter have trained extensively on their J/111, too.

He grew up in Birmingham and began racing Mackinac at age 14 with his father — Bob Sellers, who owned the Pontiac Buick General Motors dealership in Farmington Hills before selling it, moving to Florida and retiring from racing.

"You have an adrenaline experience when you're competing nonstop for two days," said Scott Sellers, 50, a private equity manager.

"But safety comes first. It's dangerous if you don't follow proper safety processes," he said. "You can hurt yourself on the boat if you don't wrap the sheet around the winch the right way. The Great Lakes are known for having storms, and you need enough discipline to handle adversity."

When he's below deck, his daughter will be tethered to the boat. Sailing double-handed, which means only two people on the boat, requires a harness and life jacket and strapping into the boat the whole time — so if a sailor falls overboard they don't get separated from the boat in the middle of nowhere.

"We practice man-overboard drills," Scott Sellers said. "If I fall overboard and Merritt has the spinnaker (sail) up, she has to take it down herself and has to come back and find me."

Merritt Sellers just finished racing in a junior national championship sailing regatta and finished seventh in her division in Long Beach, California. She admires Dawn Riley, a trailblazing athlete from Michigan featured in the documentary film, "Maiden."

Merritt Sellers hopes to become a professional sailor. Life on the water defines her.

"It's an amazing sport, an ancient sport," she said. "You can never stop learning. It’s something I can do my entire life. When I’m on the water, sailing, going fast, it’s the best feeling in the world."

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Editor's Note: Family members of reporter Phoebe Wall Howard compete in the Bayview Mackinac Race as members of the Port Huron Yacht Club. She is not affiliated with the Bayview Yacht Club or the Bayview Mackinac Race in any official capacity.

Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Sign up for our autos newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Port Huron to Mackinac race 2022: Teen will navigate boat alone