While Larry Ellison’s yacht Sayonara earned First-to-Finish honors for the PHRF division in the 94th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac presented by LEXUS, with corrected time adjusted for handicap and penalties, the boat will not place in its class or division.

As of 4:15 PM (EDT) 100 of the 297 boats had crossed the finish line. According to the Chicago Yacht Club Race Committee, light but variable winds are predicted to continue, making the race very unpredictable for racers still on the water.

Currently, the division winners are:

Jerome Sullivan’s Bacchant, a 64-foot mahogany sailboat built in Norway in the 1930s, with a corrected time of 40:40:51. The sailboat out of Milwaukee Yacht Club leads the Performance Handicapped Racing Federation (PHRF) division, which rates different types of boats with a handicap so that they can fairly race against each other.

Bill Alcott’s Great Lakes 70 Equation leads the One Design Division with an adjusted time of 36:24:25. The One Design Division is comprised of five different classes, each made up of similar boats, with time adjustments made according to the predicted boat speed for the class.

Gamera, a 27-foot trimaran owned by Matthew Scharl of the Midwest Open Racing Fleet is the preliminary winner of the open division (multi-hulled boats) with an adjusted time of 42:52:29.

Within each division, preliminary winners in classes that have finished, include:

PHRF 1 (boats with the largest handicaps) leader is Philip O’Niel’s Natalie J, a Nelson 47 out of Bayview Yacht Club,

PHRF 2 current winner is Tim Woodhouse’s Rumours out of New York Yacht Club, a 35-foot sailboat.

PHRF 3 leader is Bacchant.

Great Lakes 70 class winner is Equation, which also earned one-design class First-to-Finish honors by edging out record holder Dick Jenning’s Pied Piper by 22 seconds.

Farr 40 class winner is Steven Mash’s Hot Lips of Chicago Yacht Club, with the top five finishers in the class finishing within 12 minutes of each other.

“The Mac” is a handicapped race with three divisions: open, one-design and PHRF (Performance Handicapped Racing Federation). Each division is scored separately and boats compete only with others in their division. As a result, there are three overall winners based on handicapped, corrected time and three First-To-Finish honors awarded based on the fastest elapsed time.
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The record for the fastest time was set in 1987 by Pied Piper, skippered by Dick Jennings of Evanston, Ill., which finished the race in 25:50:44. The multi-hulled record was set in 1998, by Steve Fossett’s Stars and Stripes, which finished in 18:50:32. The race normally takes between 40 to 60 hours to complete.