Winning sailor: 'My daughter made me better' in the 101st Bayview Mackinac Race
A father delivers first-place medals to all three kids before they're 21
Mark DenUyl is known as a fearless competitor who likes to win on the water.
Storms in the forecast? Fantastic. Prayers answered.
For his J/105 sailboat, the best conditions are the most brutal — powerful winds and huge waves that risk breaking other boats while Good Lookin’ just surfs.
For everyone, the 101st Port Huron to Mackinac race course really seemed unlike previous years. A lot of mayday calls, a snapped mast, two man-overboard incidents, unpredictable gusts, a lot of broken equipment for winners and losers.
Dave Simon of Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., who sails on Fast Tango, told Shifting Gears, “This was really a different feeling race.”
But separate and apart from Mother Nature, Good Lookin’ kept a laser focus despite heavy storm conditions that forced boats to retire from the 101st Bayview Mackinac Race.
The skipper credits his daughter Riley DenUyl, 20, a junior at the University of Michigan.
“She’s a thrill seeker,” said DenUyl, 54, a construction company owner from Marysville, Mich. “She’s also got a calming effect on me. I’m her dad and I have to behave in front of her.”
Riley is often quiet and always economical with her words.
On the race course, she is disciplined.
Preparing the boat before races, she is disciplined.
Her older brothers Brock and Bryson earned a first place medal on Good Lookin’ in 2017. Riley thought this, her third Mackinac race, might be the winner.
It was.
Good Lookin,’ a 34.5-foot J/105, finished the Cove Island course at 7:04 a.m. on Monday after 42 hours, 34 minutes and 30 seconds.
“It was pretty windy,” Riley said. “My favorite part is when we were going up to Cove Island, going with the wind and riding the waves. It was about 17 knots.”
She trimmed the sail and grinded the winch, which holds line that controls the sail.
When storm winds surged, as they did on July 12, 2025, Mark DenUyl yelled to his four older crew members and their three children on board, “Big people in back and little people do all the chores.”
The veteran sailors piled up in the back corner to use their weight to balance the boat.
Ron Churchill, 58, a gas company operations manager from Kimball Township, Mich., said on the docks of Mackinac Island after this race, “I was driving and turned and looked at what seemed like three amigo drunk guys, so close to each other. But they were helping keep the bow out of the water so we could sail faster.”
Riley and her brother Bryson, a four-year member of the University of Michigan sailing team, worked all the maneuvers on deck with Brennan Churchill of Kimball Township, Mich. (Bryson and Brennan earned their first Mackinac race medals as teenagers. (Brennan Churchill, 23, is a youth coordinator for Northstar Elite Hockey.)
Young or old, weight matters.
And the older, bigger guys played a key role this year.
Strategic placement of bodies on deck was essential, said John Anter, 63, a retired electrician from Port Huron, Mich. “We were hauling ass.”
Sailors who battled Good Lookin’ on the race course said challenges felt endless.
Rowdy, a Thomas 35 owned by Val Saph of Armada, Mich., usually makes the podium but placed 4th this year.
Tyson Connolly said they lost a batten to the main sail when it just squirted into the water when being tucked into the sail just 15 minute before their start, which means the sail would be unable to hold a good shape and forfeit speed.
A spectator sailboat gave Rowdy extra battens. Then the wind index device fell off the mast, disrupting their ability to track wind. “I’m just happy we’re all healthy and safe.”
Bryson DenUyl, 23, who just graduated with an aerospace engineering degree and soon begins grad school, said the team learned its lessons after crisis during the 2024 Chicago Mackinac Race.
In Chicago, he said, “We got hit by a storm and the spinnaker pole snapped in half. This year, it was daytime so we could see the storm come in and boats taking their spinnakers down. The highest we saw was wind at 44-45 knots from the south. We were heeled over and we took off. It was hectic.”
This year, the crew was ready to move fast.
“We took the spinnaker down about one minute before the wind piped up to 44 knots of wind north of Lexington,” Mark DenUyl said. “We saw boats behind us wiping out. You see them tip and alter course. We were watching for that, and we timed it just right. We left the chute up as long as we dared. Within one minute of taking the spinnaker down, the full force of the storm hit us.”
Before the pivot, DenUyl called everyone together and told the crew to get gear ready.
“We do good going through storms,” Anter said. “We had everybody in the back of the boat. We were on a sleigh ride going more than 17 knots.”
This crew was in sync whether it involved storms, light air or pockets of nothing that stranded boats on the lake — the crew kept the boat moving when it could, said Eric Cooper, 44, a software developer from Madison, Wis.
Victory followed broken halyards in 2017 and 2025 on Good Lookin.’
Lessons learned, Ron Churchill said.
“We handled the storm maybe perfectly,” he said. “We stayed composed. This time, when the jib halyard broke, we re-rigged it in 10 minutes max and went back to full sail.”
After making it through erratic weather on Saturday afternoon, nighttime sailing felt effortless, Anter said. “With the full moon, it was like somebody shining a spotlight on the lake. We didn't need a flashlight to see.”
During those quiet hours, crew members reflected on the past and the future. Anter said he whispered for words of encouragement to his mentor Jamie Shinske of St. Clair, Mich., a beloved past commodore of the Port Huron Yacht Club who co-owned Loon Magic, a Mackinac-winning Catalina 38. He died suddenly in April at age 83.
His absence is felt deeply by generations of sailors at the Port Huron Yachut Club.
Erik Schwanz, 41, of Fort Gratiot, Mich., raced on Rowdy and told Shifting Gears after the race that he noticed when rounding Cove Island — 5 or 10 miles from Cove Island, a long way from shore — a loon.
“I would not expect to see a loon out there in the middle of Lake Huron,” Schwanz said. “It was Sunday morning, about 8 o’clock. We heard a loon call and instantly thought that was strange being so far offshore. It was flying right in front of us.”
He paused a minute and said, “I yelled, ‘Shinske!’”
Shinske sailed his last Mackinac race on Good Lookin’ in 2009 with DenUyl, Anter and Kevin Irland, 49, a sales director from Grand Rapids, Mich. They placed second, the first time Good Lookin’ made the podium.
“I knew Jamie was out there on the water with us,” Anter told Shifting Gears. “I talked to other sailors sharing memories of Jamie. He taught us to love sailing.”
Phoebe Wall Howard covered sailing for The Detroit Free Press for seven years, until 2024. Find her recent sailing stories here.
Note: Phoebe returned to Michigan from California to marry John Anter, who is quoted in this story. She has sailed on Good Lookin’ and is friends with the DenUyl family.
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