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It 's a sunny Saturday in late May, but the Eldean Shipyard in Macatawa, Michigan, is nearly silent. Inside a metal storage facility, a massive black sailboat sits in a cradle nearly three stories high. It's called il Mostro (Italian for "the monster"), and there's a reason for that. The height of the mast off the water is more than 100 feet. Dangling from the bottom of the boat is an enormous white pole—a stainless steel and lead canting keel—which looks like a 12-foot clock pendulum with a torpedo attached to it. For years this Volvo 70 raced around the world with ocean sailors, and it is still considered one of the fastest distance monohull sailboats ever built. Yellow scaffolding surrounds il Mostro. It wiggles slightly as Peter Thornton, who owns the yacht, and a few others walk the spiraling ascent into the air. The boat is so wide at 18.5 feet that it needs two steering wheels positioned on either side. Sometimes it takes six men to turn a single winch, a drumlike device that pulls in the lines for the sails. "It's a rocket," says Thornton, who won the coveted Royono Trophy at last year's Race to Mackinac by being the first to finish. "And it was just sitting in a boatyard with so much potential. People are spending millions upon millions of dollars to build fast sailboats. If all you are looking for is outright raw speed, this is the boat." The boat is painted in the shape of a shoe, with red straps and gray treads. Once it was adorned with PUMA logos, now removed at the request of its original sponsor. In place of one of the logos, Thornton had a jagged pumpkin face painted on the boat with a pair of menacing eyes. Even in daylight, the stark white face glows against its ebony background like it's warding off competitors. "I'm far from being the greatest sailor in the world, but I'm probably one of the most enthusiastic," says Thornton, a longtime member of the Chicago Yacht Club. "I love taking old boats and seeing what they were, what they could be, and then executing that." That's exactly what Thornton has done. With significant changes made to il Mostro in the offseason, he now hopes to sail the fastest Race to Mackinac—from Navy Pier to Mackinac Island, Michigan—this July by beating Roy Disney's 2002 monohull record of 23 hours, 30 minutes, and 34 seconds. "I'm running out of track," says Thornton, who is 73. "If I don't do it now, when would I do it? I'm still reasonably healthy, and this is such an exciting boat." 124 A QUEST TO SAIL Back in Chicago more than 150 miles away, students from Rickover Naval Academy in Edgewater are pursuing another challenge: learning how to sail and race in Belmont Harbor. Senior Martin Heft, who wears a T-shirt that says ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE, jokes that he joined the team four years ago because he mistakenly thought it would be an easy extracurricular activity. "Before sailing, I stayed home and played video games," Heft says. "Now it's a race to get my homework done, go to the harbor, and sail. It's become my passion." But learning to sail didn't come easily, especially for someone who had never been on a sailboat before. On the first day of practice, Heft was put in a boat and told to steer. "It was one of the scariest things I had ever done," says Heft, who's been "We aren't just introducing a sport, but an entire doorway to opportunities." —COMMANDER MIKE TOOKER Rickover Naval Academy's sailing team captain for the past three years. "But I learned." Most high school sailing programs are stacked with athletes who come from upper-class backgrounds, attend elite prep schools, and have grown up around the sport. That's not the case at Rickover Naval Academy. Nearly 85 percent of its students are considered low income and more than 70 percent are Hispanic, according to Chicago Public Schools' website. "Up to this point, there's been very little opportunity for Chicago Public School kids to get out there and do a sailing program," says Commander Mike Tooker, who works with the sailors at the academy. "It's so expensive, and it's in an environment that is not normally accessible to the less well-todo who are in the lower to middle class." Giving access to these students is helping diversify the sport while allowing them a chance to network and gain leadership skills and important business knowledge. "That's why what the Chicago Yacht Club Foundation is doing is so remarkable," Tooker says. "We aren't just introducing a sport, but an entire doorway to opportunities by giving them the chance to rub elbows and meet people they never would have had a chance to meet." A few years ago the foundation began inviting girls from Chicago public schools like Rickover Naval Academy to write essays using sailing as a metaphor for life. The authors of the best essays, which are generally about overcoming adversity, are then sent to Sisters Under Sail, a nonprofit leadership program based in New Jersey that helps girls and women learn to sail with an all-female crew on the 110-foot-long Unicorn. One of them, Rickover Naval Academy senior Itzel Lucio, says, "It empowered me to think beyond my expectations, especially since I come from a background where women are [told they're] meant to be at home." That's also the reason Chris Mitchell, the former director of sailing at the Chicago Yacht Club and a trustee at the Chicago Yacht Club Foundation, approached Rickover Naval Academy about starting a sailing program that would be funded by the Chicago Yacht Club Foundation. "Sailing doesn't tend to be a sport that people just start to do out of the blue," Mitchell says. "Many of these students have never even seen a boat or the city of Chicago's skyline. It's a foreign concept for anyone who comes in from the outside." That's a sentiment Heft knows all too well. He says it's been a story of "David versus Goliath" when sailing against other schools like New Trier, St. Ignatius, and Walter Payton College Preparatory. He jokes that these schools come to races with more boats and enough sailors to have alternates who can rotate in and off the water. "They wanted to win," Heft says. "My biggest goal was getting through my first race without capsizing." During all of his early races, Heft finished in last place. At one point Heft suffered a concussion from hitting his head on the boom. When he MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 122-127_MA_FEAT_Yacht_SUMMER13.indd 124 6/18/13 12:47 PM