The Max Z86 was followed by Equation, a STP Farr 65 owned by Bill Alcott of St. Clair Shores. By 8:45 a.m. today, the boats were the only two to have rounded, but the Great Lakes 70s were not far behind.

On the shore course, Fine Line, a Farr 45 owned by Jay Gillespie of Port Huron, and Courtesan, a Farr 49 owned by Dane Christie of Bloomfield Hills and Dave Lockhart of Grosse Pointe Park, were leading. Both were approaching Thunder Bay as Windquest and Equation were rounding.

The winds finally filled in for the shore course boats at approximately 18 to 19 knots. Winds were out of the north-northwest, which means the boats must be beating into the wind.

The winds hadn’t reached the Cove Island boats but they were doing better than Saturday, with winds at 13 to 14 knots, coming out of the southwest, allowing those boats to fly a spinnaker at least to the rounding mark.

Earlier in the evening, the boats struggled with little wind.

“We caught the tail of a thunderstorm just past Port Sanilac, saw brief 20s. Making progress north finally now, put the spinnaker back up,” e-mailed Joel Kar of Grosse Pointe Park, last night, on Slainte, a Catalina 34. “Boat speed is down, need to grind it out tonight.”

The predicted thunderstorms did materialize over Lake Huron Saturday night and only went as far south as the as the top of the Thumb, according to the National Weather Service at White Lake. This would have been too far north for most of the shore course boats. There were only isolated storms further south.

The faster Cove Island boats were more likely to have seen the storms.

The storms were bringing the wind, and boats that didn’t see them were probably disappointed.

There were 216 boats at the start of the race out of the 221 that registered. Five boats didn’t start due to mechanical or other equipment problems.

Stay with freep.com for more on this story.

Contact Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki at 586-826-7278 or mmwalsh@freepress.com.

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