Once you’ve done a Mac race it kind of gets in your blood. I’ve done 20 between Chicago and Bayview. Due to unusual circumstances I got a call from my cousin to do this years ChiMac on Thursday night before Friday’s 3:00 pm start. I had to get to Chicago (325miles) and get registered by 11:00 am. They needed me to meet the 5 crew minimum or they couldn’t race. All worked out and I got the required personal AIS device registered with the RC. The boat was a 70 - Coronado 34. Nice lines and Tripp design at only 10,500 lbs. The slowest rated boat in the cruising class by far. This was replacement for another boat that was unavailable at the last minute. The crew was experienced and talented . Sizing up our competition we were painfully under equipped. There were a lot of carbon sails and short spirits. Our Dacron sails and sunbrella leech cover looked a bit out of place. No matching outfits either. We nailed the downwind start and proceeded up the course to weather of our 12 boat section. We were keeping pace with our Genoa and held our position after launching our cruising spinnaker. The fleet faded west of the rhumb line as we kept our 7 knot boat speed up east of the rhumb. We were heartened when the 102 ft Whitehawk blew by us doing about 12-14 knots on our heading. We were a couple of miles to weather of our fleet waiting for the forecasted big shift. 3 hours into the race we were in 3rd place. 8 hours in after the shift we were in first place. 11 hours in at 2:30am we were still in first place as the wind softened with an approaching storm. We delayed putting the spinnaker back up. The storm hit with 20 knots which quickly escalated to 60knot. Let the Genoa sheets run as the boat accelerated to 11 knots. Lasted 20 minutes. When we recovered we noticed the port upper shroud on the windward side was dangling. The wood spreader had totally broken off 8” from the tip. We tried lashing a whisker pole to the mast and pushing out the shroud. It didn’t work so we retired and motored 42 miles to Milwaukee in 20 knots of wind and 5 foot breaking seas on the nose. The end of what could have been an epic race. Bummer