Barbour regatta fuels junior sailing success

By Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki

September 10, 2014 at 9:54 am Lake Huron

Bernida being towed from Detroit to Port Huron for the 2012 race.

Here’s a great YouTube video about the start of the 1927 Mackinac Race. (Thank you Frank Kern for pointing this out.) It’s apparently old Detroit News movies, from the King Rose Archives.

In the early days of the Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinad Race, the boats’ engines were sealed so they could not be used. Consequently the boats had to be towed out to the starting line. Today, engines are left open for safety reasons.

The video shows the boats bouncing around like bobbins as they’re towed out, shipping waves as the soaked crew tries to raise the sails while they’re still under tow.

Finally, the boats are sailing free at the starting line. They’re like ugly ducklings turned into swans as they become the graceful vessels they’re meant to be under sail.

If you look closely, you will see one of the boats looks like Bernida, which won the 1927 race,as well as the first, 1925 race under Russell Poilliot.

Bernida eventually disappeared and then, when rediscovered as a rotting hulk near Frankfort, lovingly refinished by a young Mackinac Island boat builder, Roman Barnwell.

Al Declercq, owner of Doyle Sails in Harrison Township, bought Bernida and with two friends and the three men’s sons, won the 2012 Mackinac race, sailing the boat much as Poulliot sailed in in 1927. (Except for a full contingent of brand new Doyle sails, of course.)

Here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7xaehSgODg