They pay for their travel, their gas and repairs if they blow an engine trying to win. And there aren’t any big, flashy prizes at the end of the race – just a trophy and free hot dogs.
But Capt. Brian Williams, this year’s winner of the International Tugboat Race, said he was holding back tears at the finish line.
“It’s unbelievably awesome,” he said, with his young daughter, wife and friends around him at Dieppe Park.
His boat, the Sheila Kaye, bears his mother’s name and was decked out in pink decorations to show support for breast cancer. She died from the disease in 2008.
Williams has been organizing the race since the Freedom Fest went under in 2003. His family’s history with the race goes back to 1973, when his father started participating.
Saturday’s win was an “emotional” first for the family, Williams said. The boat took first place overall and first in its horsepower class.
Scooping the title from the nine other boats in the race meant pushing his tug, which has been racing since 1999, to its limits.
“We blew the stack apart!” Williams yelled as his tug pulled up to the hundreds who had gathered along the Windsor shore to cheer the boats on.
From the sidelines, the boat’s engine could be heard loudly chugging at full force ans it spewed out a steady stream of black smoke. On board, the smell of burning plastic and machinery indicated that Sheila was running hot. Williams ran the tug at full speed from the start line near the west end’s Mill Street all the way downtown.
“They’re not made to do this!” passenger Christine Doron said during the race, pointing to the other boats that had plumes of black smoke coming from their stacks as well.
She said that last year, the American flag near the boat’s smoke stack caught on fire from the heat.
Like many of the more than 30 people on board dressed in pink, Doron said she also loves the pure excitement of the race.
“I’m on a tugboat, full throttle,” she said.
Doron lost her mother to breast cancer in February. “I’m getting goose bumps,” she said as the Sheila Kaye crossed the finish line and honked its horn.
Passengers on the Sheila Kaye were mostly from Michigan, but three Windsorites were seated near the bow of the boat. Chris Skrzypa was first invited onto the Sheila Kaye in 2002 and has been in love with the event ever since.
“It never gets old. That’s what makes it fun and interesting,” he said.
He was accompanied by his sister, Karen Middleton, and her friend, Dawn Joy-Joncas.
“It’s awfully generous of these people to let us on their family’s boat,” Joy-Joncas said. It was her first time on the Sheila Kaye, and although she was fighting off nausea, she said the experience was “exhilarating.”
Middleton has been riding in the race for the past couple years. She said that unlike on shore, during the race, Canadian-American distinctions don’t matter.
“We’re all friends,” she said.
Women dressed as pirates dance on top of the Phoebe tug boat as they compete in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
The Pioneer tug boat completes in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
Ken Hurley, left, rides on the Sheila Kaye, while waiting to compete in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
A man dressed as a viking rides on the Josephine, a tug boat from Toledo, Ohio, as it competes in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
Kyle Schieweck, 17, looks out the window of the Sheila Kaye after it won the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
Tug boats complete in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
Tim Dunmeyer is dressed as a viking while riding on the Josephine, a tug boat from Toledo, Ohio, competing in the International Tug Boat Race on the Detroit River, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (DAX MEMER/The Windsor Star)
