Fast Tango: 'Dead f**king last' to victory after big mistake in 100th Mackinac race
Sailors used cigarette smoke to find wind between Port Huron, Mackinac Island
No one wants to sit next to the smoker on a boat.
This is a basic fact in most cases. But it is not true in all cases.
Crew members on Fast Tango revealed that cigarette smoke played a key role in winning their class on Monday morning. Smoke was one of many tools (including spit) used to gain advantage in the 100th Port Huron to Mackinac Island sailboat race.
But we’ll get to strategy in a minute.
The North American 40, owned by champion sailor Tim Prophit of St. Clair Shores, Michigan, made a huge mistake at the very beginning that could have destroyed the morale of lesser sailors.
“We started out this race in dead f**ing last. The appropriate sailing term is DFL,” Prophit told Shifting Gears on Monday during a smoke break outside the Pink Pony.
“I was over early and had to restart,” he said. “That was really almost a divine intervention because it forced us to go the way we didn’t plan on going. And we caught a little shaft of breeze that no one else got and we just rocked up the shore.”
Why the false start?
“It was miscommunication between me and the bow guy,” Prophit said.
Still, the crew didn’t blink.
“It's anathema to life. You deal with the cards you’re dealt,” said crew member Molly Radtke of Metro Detroit. “Your attitude and how you choose to deal with it makes or breaks the experience. We're in it to win it.”
What’s the wind direction?
While she and others can’t stand smoking, Radtke said crew members will ask Prophit to light up one of his homemade cigarettes when the wind dies.
“He’ll hold it up in the air and we can see where the smoke is going,” Radtke said. “The sails themselves can be so heavy and the air so light that they can’t move. What’s the wind direction? The smoke will tell you. Even though it may feel different, the smoke doesn’t lie. It is helpful.”
If there’s no ripple on the water, Race and the telltales on the sails are limp, a waft of cigarette smoke will reveal the wind direction.
“Secondly, you have a phenomena called wind shear. So, the arrow at the top of the mast, 60-plus feet about the water, will say the wind is coming from one direction and yet the smoke may tell you it’s coming from another direction,” Prophit explained.
‘Ugly and weird and wrong’
Sails are triangular shaped, and the fat part of the triangle is closer to the water, so different wind below may require adjusting — trimming — the sail to capture that light air.
“You may, in really light air, be able to trim the bigger part of the sail and ignore the fact that the top part of the sail looks ugly and weird and wrong,” Prophit said. “We’re using every tool in our disposal … We’re looking at the land. We’re looking at the sky, weather reports, Yellowbrick (satellite tracking) to identify other boats and their boat speed …”
Technology isn’t always the answer, he said. Especially when the glassy lake is filled with boats all bunched up and going nowhere. Windless.
“You’d come up and say, ‘Oh, shit. We’re going backwards. Then you’d spit in the water and say, ‘OK, we’re beating the spit bubble. So, we’re moving.’ That’s a tool. That’s a legit tool.”
Finding creative measures to find the breeze is an important strategy, Radtke said.
The Fast Tango crew has earned a reputation for being insanely competitive in all race conditions.
“We love light and flukey and shifty and crazy (air). We can adjust and adapt to any condition. And we do it quickly,” Radtke said.
The crazier, the better
Long slow races, in some ways, feel like psychological warfare.
This is where seasoned sailors destroy the less experienced.
“What people will do, as soon as something shifts or the weather dies, people tend to mentally check out,” Radtke said. “They get pissed off, get frustrated. We're like, ‘Bring it!’ We eat that up. We love it because people lose their minds and they lose their focus and they have no patience for that. We've worked really hard to make that one of our superpowers.”
Wind Gods, bring it, she said.
“The crazier, the better. Make the wind die. Shift it all up,” Radtke said. “We’ll work our way out of it.”
Going over a starting line early can be a game changer, a disaster.
“It can kill your psyche, kill your motivation,” Radtke said.
‘100% mental’
Cell phones on Fast Tango started ringing.
The race boat has so many fans that people monitoring its GPS tracker, which is required for all 334 boats registered to race, started to freak out.
“They were like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. What happened? What are you guys doing?’ Radtke said. “We thought, ‘Watch this. We’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat. Boom. We don’t quit. We don’t stop changing sails. We rotate out to keep everybody fresh. We make sure we eat. We make sure everybody is caffeinated, rested. The key to what we do is 100% mental.”
Skills for the Bavview Mackinac Race on Saturday, July 20, 2024 were totally different than the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac a week earlier.
“Chicago was a sleigh ride, meaning we had the spinnaker (sail) up the majority of the time and we were just hauling ass,” Radtke said.
Winning these races cannot be done without an insanely skilled crew, Prophit said. “They work their f**king asses off. We did eight or nine sail changes in the last hour because the wind was light and weird. We do whatever it takes to win.”
His two sailboats have won first-in-class, back to back, twice:
Fast Tango, a Santana 35, won the Port Huron to Mackinac and Chicago to Mackinac in 1992 and then Chicago to Mackinac and Port Huron to Mackinac in 1993.
Fast Tango, a North American 40, won the Chicago to Mackinac and Port Huron to Mackinac in 2023, and then both again this year.
“It’s a streak no other boat has ever done,” said Prophit, past commodore of the Bayview Yacht Club.
Continuing a legacy
Charlie Trost, race chairman for the 2024 Bayview Mackinac Race, said Fast Tango makes headlines because the boat wins. And the recipe is flawless.
“They do a lot of prep and they go into any event knowing they could win it,” Trost said. “Their boat is always in perfect shape. There’s no substitution for sweat equity. They’ve got a great team that’s been together a long time. They’re true contenders anytime they leave the dock.”
Note: Phoebe Wall Howard covered sailing for the Detroit Free Press, and she has been going to Mackinac Island since childhood. Her Papa won his last Port Huron to Mackinac race on Chippewa, a Tartan 34C, in 2014 at age 85. Phoebe’s husband is past commodore of the Port Huron Yacht Club.
I offer a healthier alternative for those not so inclined, bubbles. Go Baby carries those little soap bubble making trinkets given away at weddings, for use instead of rice. They work equally as well as smoke without the ill effects and will drift up the sails as well as with the wind. Plus they are more fun for everyone onboard... :-)