Sailing Regattas Aren't Just for New England

Harbor Springs — Michiganders are a sea people. I know that, technically, according to the cartographers, Michigan is a part of the Midwest. But Michigan isn’t Midwestern like Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, or Ohio. The vistas aren’t really the same, the feeling just isn’t either. It’s different here. Michigan is kind of its own place, with the Great Lakes and the boats that sail them.

I am, of course, referring to the 1 million registered Michigan watercraft (Michigan has more boats than almost every other state in the union if you weren’t aware), but I’m also referring to the famed Ugotta Regatta of Little Traverse Bay, which has been happening Up North since the summer of 1961.

Started by local sailors like Fred Ford and Virgil Lipscomb, the regatta was originally named the “Little Traverse Invitational Regatta” and was primarily a local affair. The regatta grew in popularity and eventually it took on the name the “Ugotta Regatta” in the early 1990s, though according to local lore a flyer for a regatta party in 1985 was already using the name “U-gotta Regatta.”

The regatta is a ripe 65 years old this year, though the sailing tradition in Harbor Springs is quite a bit older. The Little Traverse Yacht Club was founded a full 131 years ago, in 1895. Long before the automobile or the telephone, they were sailing Up North, in and out of the deepest natural harbor in the Great Lakes.

Hosted by The Little Traverse Yacht Club, the regatta has, over time, become one of the America’s best-known sailing traditions. Hosted every summer over the weekend following the races from Port Huron to Mackinac and Chicago to Mackinac, the regatta draws some of the best sailing teams in the country down from the straits to Little Traverse Bay.

The regatta weekend runs Thursday through Sunday and is full of races, events, parties, and is a generally busy weekend in a most picturesque town. Early Friday afternoon, after the boats had left the harbor and began racing, I walked around town with my camera. There were lots of people out about walking on the docks, laying on the grass in the park, eating out on the deck at The Pier, and looking out toward the middle of the bay with squinted eyes through long binoculars.

Unless you are lucky enough to be on a boat yourself, the best place to watch the regatta is actually not in Harbor Springs but across the bay in Petoskey. Watching from the park east of the pier is alright, though it’s quite low, turning most of the boats into 2-D objects. This makes the best spot to watch Sunset Park, just up the hill, off M-31. Elevated above the water, with a long lens or a strong pair of binoculars, you can get a great view of the boats in the bay and beyond.

I stayed up there at Sunset Park for a while with my camera and a 200mm lens. It was a bright sunny day watching the white, navy, red, and yellow sails passing over the blue water and in front of the green wooded shore. Some were long, some were short, some were big, some were small. The Ugotta Regatta attracts a varied fleet of sailors. There were other boats out in the bay and out toward the lake watching the races. I think, most likely, on the days of the regatta, the bay fuller than any other days of the year.

All this sounds a little more New England than Midwest, doesn’t it? That’s what I mean when I say Michiganders are a sea people and Michigan is an aquatic state. Our Great Lakes frame our recreation and our culture more than any bodies of water shape anything in any other midwestern state. We have more coastline, more lighthouses, and nearly more boats than any other state in the U.S.

Whether you know how to sail or not, the lakes and the boats on them pepper your world as a Michigander. The sight of a sailboat skimming across the horizon out on the big lake on a July afternoon is a foundational Michigan scene. Some of the people that race in the regatta are from Michigan; others are not.

But the Ugotta Regatta is in Michigan and is a most perfect example of Michigan’s sailing culture, and the very coastal nature of our very unique Midwestern peninsula.