Mackinac Island hotel rooms already selling out for one special week in July 2024
Hotels on historic Mackinac Island are already filling up for an especially big week next July.
Why? The countdown has begun for the 2024 Port Huron to Mackinac 100th anniversary sailboat race.
At 202 pre-registrations, more race boats have signed up for next year than raced a month ago, according to Bayview Yacht Club. Organizers are expecting up to 250 entries.
They're coming from North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin and Arkansas. Plenty of sailors from Ontario, Canada, are registered, too.
This is one of two back-to-back races to Mackinac Island; Chicago to Mackinac on July 13 and Port Huron to Mackinac on July 20. The races can last days. And the experiences are the stuff of movie scripts.
When sailors get to the island, it's a long-lasting party. Non-sailors are actually warned prior to visiting the island during race weeks that the celebration is, well, significant. Eating, drinking, dancing and grooving night after night at Horn's and the Pink Pony.
Hotel rooms are often booked Sunday through Tuesday during Mackinac, as family members wait on the island to cheer arrivals, which happen anytime from Sunday through Tuesday. With racers crossing the finish line at all hours, day and night, cocktail hour never seems to end.
Sailors from around the country see old friends and familiar faces. People from all over Michigan run into high school classmates. The event ends with an awards party on the lawn at Mission Point with the Endless Summer band. The ferries fill up as the island empties of sailors by Wednesday after the race. Many boaters sail their vessels home while others carpool.
Apart from sailing, Mackinac is beloved for its horse-and-buggy taxis, and bicycling around an island filled with historic hotels and restaurants. No motor vehicles are allowed on the island.
Some crews celebrate victory, other racers celebrate the goal of just crossing the finish line.
"There is already so much buzz out there for next year's big anniversary," Tim Hygh, executive director of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau, told the Detroit Free Press. "Any event that can last 100 years shows just how significant and important it is. We look forward to welcoming all sailors back next year for the big celebration."
He surveyed hotels to learn who is booked, who has room and who might make room on Mackinac Island during Bayview Mackinac race week:
Taking reservations now
Sunset Condos
Lake View
Mackinac House
Mission Point Resort
Harbour View Inn (past guests only until September, then by phone only)
Taking reservations after summer season ends
Inn at Stonecliffe, starting in October
Windermere Hotel, starting in December
Sold out, waiting list
Chippewa Hotel
Bogan Lane Inn
More: Merritt, Scott Sellers come from 'dead last,' win 46.5-hour race from Chicago to Mackinac
Organizers behind the scenes
Mike Helm, 2024 Bayview Yacht Club commodore, will oversee the centennial event that attracts professional sailors and amateurs. Many racers try their whole lives to make the podium.
The 2024 Honorary Race Committee consists of these Michigan natives with longtime ties to Bayview, according to the club on the Detroit River:
Stuart Argo Jr., has been part of seven America's Cup campaigns including winning the America’s Cup XXVIII in 1992, aboard America3. He won the 1988 Canada’s Cup aboard Challenge 88 and competed in several other Canada’s Cup campaigns. Argo has 65 combined Bayview and Chicago Mackinac races.
David and Peter Askew won the World Sailing Team of the Year after winning the Caribbean 600 in 2019; and by being the first American boat in more than 30 years to win the Rolex Fastnet Race on their Volvo 70 Wizard, winning the race overall. (It starts near the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England, crosses the Celtic Sea, rounds Fastnet Rock off the coast of Ireland and finishes at Cherbourg, France.) That same year, they also won the 3,000-mile Transatlantic Race and Pineapple Cup from Miami to Montego Bay, and in 2018 won the Sydney to Hobart Race. Other offshore wins for the Askew brothers include the Transpac and Newport Bermuda Race.
Bruce Burton served as commodore of Bayview Yacht Club in 2010 and went on to serve as U.S. Sailing president and the U.S. Olympic sailing chair. He is a back-to-back world champion in the Etchells class.
Bora Gulari, the 2009 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, has won championships in various classes, including the International Moth (two-time world champion); Melges 24, and he represented the U.S. in the 2016 Summer Olympics. He often sails on the PAC 52 Natalie J owned by Phil and Sharon O'Niel.
Bill Martin has served as president of U.S. Sailing, the U.S. Olympic Committee and as athletic director at the University of Michigan. He was inducted into the US Sailing Hall of Fame in 2017.
Dawn Riley sailed as part of the first all-female crew in both the Whitbread Round the World Race and America's Cup. Now she is executive director of New York-based Oakcliff Sailing, a national training organization. She is the youngest and first female to become a ‘dual famer’ at the National Sailing and America’s Cup Halls of Fame.
More: Sailors on Fast Tango overcome emergency at 2 a.m. in rough waters to win Bayview Mackinac race
More: Horses return to Mackinac Island for upcoming season
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.
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mackinac Island hotel rooms sold out for one special week in July
