C-TOW Marine Assistance Sarnia

EYE ON THE PRIZE PART 2...ON THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM @sojournerracingteam Some of the teens and young adults on Sojourner’s crew of Sea Scouts will be tak...ing on the race for the very first time. Sojourner, another boat signed up in the Shore Course division, is a 30’ Seidelmann 299 owned and raced by the Boy Scouts of America Sea Scout Ship 1148. Its crew is comprised of a mix of five boys and girls Caleb and Caitlin Parton (Detroit), Billy Stimson (Riverview, Mich.), Rachael Washburn (Trenton), Sara Mazurek (Trenton) ranging in ages from 16 to 20 and three adult leaders, Becky Washburn (Trenton), Bill Tilley (Grosse Ile) and the Sea Scout unit’s Founder Timothy Branson (Dearborn). They are all from the Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Trenton areas of Michigan. This will be the boat’s first-ever Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinac Race, and for two of the kids (Caitlin and Billy), it will be their first time, too, said Branson, who sailed in the 2017 race for his first time as crew and will serve as skipper this year. They are both excited and a bit nervous, but the others have a better idea of what’s involved, since they’ve raced on other people’s boats. And all of the kids have helped ferry boats back from Mackinac in the past, but this time it’s strictly a crew of Sea Scouts. In preparation for this adventure, Sojourner has raced weekly in local regattas and in a Tuesday night series. The crew gained some heavy-air experience sailing back from the Mills Regatta on Lake Erie in 35 knots. According to Branson, Billy will handle the foredeck and flying spinnaker, Caitlin is a grinder, and Sarah, Caleb and Rachael have all been designated as helmsmen. There will be four-hour shifts where every hour one crew rotates off and another crew rotates on, and an adult will be in the cockpit at all times. Basically, we’ve been preparing for three years, said Branson. The boat, built in 1979, was donated to us three years ago, and we’ve pretty much gone through breaking everything on the boat and replacing it. The Edison Boat Club of Detroit pretty much adopted us, so we’ve had an awesome place to sail out of, and we were able to outfit the boat with help from them and Bob Cowles of the Detroit Yacht Club’s Sailing Development Fund. He heard we were fundraising like crazy and sent us a big chunk of what we needed to make the boat extremely safe and more modern to train the kids. The Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinac Race has a list of required and suggested safety gear; I figured if kids were going, we were going to bring it all on. As it stands now, there are 14 boats in Sojourner’s ORR Class O that are similarly rated. We’re hoping for a better-than-average finish, said Branson. We’re shooting for the top five but will be happy with middle of the pack. When Sojourner gets delivered from Bayview to Port Huron before the race, it plans to have aboard some crew members affected by an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is part of a program coordinated between the Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinac Race and Set Sail for Autism. (The race also supports the Alliance for the Great Lakes.) For the full release and captions go to http://www.bycmack.com/raceupdates.cfm?RaceNews=354

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