It wasn’t as if it was silent, all of a sudden, like hitting the ‘mute’ button on your T.V. It was more like there was
suddenly something missing from the torrent of sounds they’d been hearing since they first climbed aboard the
sailboat Blue Seiche: the sounds of the bow of the little boat surging through, up and over the building waves,
pushing a wall of water from the hull as it impacted the lake’s surface, cresting and falling down the latest wave.
The thrum hum of the shrouds and stays as the wind whipped them, treating the 3 sailors to a free-form
acoustic performance, hands unnecessary. Hearing the incessant sounds of the flags flapping, the crash of
items (unknown) below decks and at all times, the howl of the wind, buffeting the little boat within a whirling
vortex of an incessant din.
And then it seemed to be silent, suddenly. “Did you shut the motor off?” Jay asked Jim, who had helmed from
the time the boat exited the outer break wall and the relative safety of Monroe Harbor. “Did he shut the motor
off” Jay repeated, this time to Steve, hopeful the answer would be yes this time.
The 3 friends had been planning this trip for weeks; its origin nestled in the belief that a crew could be
assembled to complete a long distance race, a 200 mile long distance race. For many reasons, that particular
“Aim High / Score Low” dream dissolved in the light of reality and all that remained was 3 friends, departing
Chicago on a Friday evening, with plans to cross Lake Michigan for New Buffalo, Michigan. Only 30+ miles, an
‘over nighter’, intending to arrive after midnight, grab a bit of sleep, eat breakfast and return home the
following afternoon. Simple, straightforward, clean.
Mother Nature had different plans, as she had been blowing from the North-East, hard on the surface of Lake
Michigan, since Tuesday. Jay had asked the previous day “What’s the definition of a small craft?” This was an
important question, as there was a small craft advisory in effect for the Southern Half of Lake Michigan. Winds
steady at 25+, gusts in the high 20’s/low 30’s, waves 4-6, which meant there were random ‘growlers’ of 8’ or
larger. “Anyone know how a small craft is defined?”
Winthrop Harbor To Wilmette Harbor-
Wilmette Harbor To Northerly Island-
Northerly Island To Calumet Harbor-Calumet Harbor To Gary-
Small Craft Advisory remains in effect through late tonight
This Afternoon
Northeast winds 18 to 25 knots. Partly cloudy. Waves 4 to 6 feet subsiding to 3 to 5 feet.
Southwest Lake Michigan Forecast 7-20-2006
The answer remains elusive, depending upon who you ask. Afterwards, almost everyone agreed you wouldn’t
voluntarily take a 28.5’ sailboat into those conditions. Certainly not for a night crossing, with an after-midnight
arrival into an unknown harbor with 2 novice sailors and a rookie Skipper.
“And certainly not without a psychiatrist and/or lots of drugs on board” was a quip from one sailor. The three
had neither of these on board but made up for it with lots of enthusiasm. That trait would help, a lot, as the
night unfolded.
No worries, the sky’s on fire and it’s blowin' like snot!
The mainsail was successfully reefed before exiting the harbor. “That should settle us down” Jay thought as
Jim struggled to secure the outhaul, forgetting the purpose of the maxim: “Reef early/Reef often.” The purpose
is control of the boat and ultimately, provide for the safety of the crew.
Next on the agenda: the storm jib. Trouble with this sail began early. As they hoisted this sail, the lower portion
of the sail’s luff pulled from the groove in the head stay foil. “Crap!” thought Jay. “Not the time or conditions to
be crawling around a pitching foredeck”.
Jim, at the helm, fell off down wind, taking a bit of the sting out of the wind and waves. And this is when it got
real quiet. The motor, the dependable Yanmar 18-horse friggin’ diesel motor…stopped. Just quit, without
warning. It’s 7:45 PM, it’ll be dark in less than an hour, they’re over a mile outside the mouth of Monroe Harbor,
have no motor, have a reefed main and a useless headsail lashed to the deck.
Jim, always good for an understatement, said “Well, it looks like New Buffalo is out”. Jay, the optimist, or
stubborn fool, tries to re-start the motor and quits after 2-3 attempts. “#$@ $%@# it!” summarizes his feelings.
Steve is hanging in, silently, legs braced in the cockpit against the pitching waves. For a short time, it’s a very
quiet cockpit.
Options are put out for discussion and analysis. Jay had previously said “…we are now in full analysis mode”.
So they got to it. Coast Guard Mayday? Sandy Beach landing? Chicago Police Department May Day? Other?
Eventually, ‘other’ won out, only because more fell under its domain. Jay said “OK, I’ll make one call and we’ll
see what happens”. He ducked below decks to rummage for his phone. “Hope the damn battery has enough
juice” he thinks as he dials his friend in Whiting, Indiana.
"The Call" to Whiting; 8:15 PM Friday July 20, 2006
stop”)
Jay relays the conversation to Steve & Jim: “He’s going to call back and “Little Buddy” just happened to be
there, celebrating a birthday. We’ve got help coming”. A pause while a larger than normal wave surged
beneath the boat. “We’ll keep the phone close and whoever’s nearest when it rings answers it.”
Mark and Little Buddy had been celebrating a birthday for two of their kids, now they were involved in a rescue
mission. Their immediate reaction? “Let’s go get the pizza we ordered” Mark says to Little Buddy. “We’ve got
time”.
The little boat and occupants began to settle into a routine, with quartering waves off the port stern lifting the
boat up and over wave crests, then surfing down into the trough, time-after-time-after-time. Looking aft, the
height of the crests obliterates the Chicago skyline; the same would happen as they peered south toward
Hammond, the height of the waves surging upward to obscure the Indiana shoreline. The view forward
alternated from darkness of the waves to a thin white line of lights, well off in the distance.
And then the occasional ‘growler’ would arrive, lifting them without effort to new heights, dropping them off the
crest with a “crash” of the bow and a lateral “swoosh” of water. “Wow, that was a big one!” was a phrase
repeated a lot.
Nightfall imminent, no motor and 6+ knots of boat speed downwind under reefed main!
Peering forward became a challenge, as they began searching for the Calumet River break wall. Jay repeated
the navigation light sequence, for what felt like the hundredth time: From the shoreline, first there’ll be a yellow
light marking the midpoint of the inner wall. Next, further east, there’ll be a red, then green light. These two
mark the ‘slot’ in the break wall. No, we’re not going to shoot the slot! And last, the eastern-most structure is
the end of the break wall; it’ll have a blinking white light with a horn or a bell”. We’ve got to find the end of the
break wall.
Mark & Little Buddy picked up their pizza. They may have enjoyed a few barley sport drinks as they ate the
pizza with their wives and kids. Little Buddy tried to call Tim several times, with no success. Tim is a ‘live
aboard’ resident of the Hammond Marina, ‘home’ being a Passport 40 named ‘Vixen’. Exactly the boat you
need for this type of adventure. Or insanity.
Tim was no where to be found, Little Buddy even ventured below decks of the Passport to find him. “Man, I
hope he’s not getting lucky right now” Little Buddy thinks to himself. Unfortunately, no luck, on both accounts.
Mark and LB construct Plan B, using Mark’s 34’ C&C, christened ‘Changing Channels’, as the rescue vessel. A
34’ C&C, with an Atomic 4 motor and wind howling on the transom; Mark’s thinking “This’ll be interesting”.
It took 2-3 tries, by eventually the C&C was able to back out and get into the primary harbor channel.
Meanwhile, Jay who was beginning to realize they would soon run out of navigable water, took this exact
moment to hail Mark. Repeatedly. On the VHF. Without success. Multiple times. Mark finally responded, his
hands previously occupied, backing out of his slip, “Where are you?”
Where were they? The little boat was just passing east of the end of the breakwall, the 3 on board hearing the
breakwall before seeing it. Waves crashing against rocks and an intermittent horn announced its location at 90
degrees off their starboard beam, less than a ¼ mile distance. “We cut that close. Too close” Jay thinks to
himself.
Jay tells Steve, who’s been stationed at the mast, serving as Breakwall Lookout, “Next thing we could hit out
here is the Hammond Crib. It looks like an oil derrick on a short pile of rocks, topped with a ¼ watt white,
intermittent flashing bulb. Should be out somewhere at our 10-11 o’clock position.”
Steve’s thinking “Great. We didn’t see the breakwall until we were right on top of it and now we’re looking for a
dim bulb with a million lights on-shore behind it. Wonderful!”
On board the C&C, almost ready to exit the harbor, LB is thinking “Man, if things are this rough inside the
harbor, I wonder how they’ll be when we exit the mouth?” They find out in short order, heading directly into
waves seemingly unaffected by the breakwall. “Where are they?” is LB’s thought. Mark, helming the C&C, is
thinking “Holy Mackerel, there’s a lot of wind out here!”
The little boat had fired up every light it had on board: running, steaming, anchor, and cabin lights. They would
have lit the deck light, but sailboats NEVER have a functioning deck light! With that many lights, they should
have been easy to spot by the crew aboard the C&C, as the backdrop behind the little boat was black ink
darkness.
By comparison, visibility in the other direction was almost blinding: bright casino lights, industrial lights, city
lights, street lights…all clustered into a thin ribbon of glowing/flickering white lights. Jay knew where the harbor
entrance was, after years of ins-and-outs, but never in these conditions.
LB announces “We have you spotted. Do you see us?”
Jay “No. Too many lights.”
LB “See the casino? Look towards the two amber lights. That’s where we are”
Jay, thinking to himself “Amber lights? What the %%$#^@ color is that?”
Then he spots the C&C, just where they said they were, right in the middle of the 2 amber lights. “Halleluiah!”
LB begins to explain the game plan via cell phone to Steve, who is relaying the plan to Jay and Jim in the
cockpit (“sure hope the battery is charged” again flits into Jay’s thoughts). “It’s too rough out here. Sail into the
harbor mouth and we’ll pick you up there”
Jay, thinking they’ve gone mad, states to Jim and Steve: “They’ve gone mad! They want us to sail into the
harbor?!”
Jim, ever prudent, says “This is probably a good time for you to take the wheel”. Jim had done a great job,
wrestling with the following waves almost the entire run from Monroe. First rolling the wheel hard right and then
quickly wheeling hard left, trying to keep the boat headed south. Repeat. Repeat and repeat again. The boat
experiencing heel, pitch and yaw…all night long.
There were a couple unintentional jibes; hard, skull banging/cracking jibes. Killer jibes. “It’s going over! Watch
your heads!” Jim would just get the bow headed a bit too far to starboard coming off a wave and “Bang!” the
traveler slammed down to port. The first two times were scary, but there was a lot going on when they
happened, so the jibes were lost in the madness. The last one, the final jibe towards the Casino Boat, was just
lack of timing and communication amongst the crew. BANG! The boom slammed from starboard to port side.
“Please don’t break now, we’re almost there!” Much later, in the calm of the marina, the next day, the thought
became “Why didn’t we rig a preventer?”
Both boats see each other, there’s a plan in place, Jim & Steve begin preparations for the tow. And (hopefully)
the docking. Jim ran a dock line through a chock on the bow. Steve ran a stern dock line, soon to become the
‘brake line’, secured well on the aft cleat. “We can’t have it come off that cleat!”
The Hammond Marina and the Windy City to the North, where the journey began
The little boat is surging towards the harbor mouth on a starboard jibe; the C&C is circling in the harbor mouth,
awaiting their arrival. There’s an eerie silent calm to the scene, as if the participants weren’t involved,
witnesses from a far. It’s as loud as it has been all night but it seems quiet, a cotton absorbed, soft deadened
quiet.
Jay starts his check list with Jim and Steve “When we get into the harbor, we’re going to drop the main sail.
Steve, you trip the main halyard clutch on your way to the mast, I’ll helm and feed you the halyard. Jim, you’re
on the bow. Catch and cleat what they throw you. Are we ready to do this?”
Both yell “yes” over the din of the wind, but no one could have been ‘ready’ for what happened next. The little
boat approached the harbor entrance, essentially hardening up once the entrance had been cleared, the wind
now quartering over the starboard bow.
Jay & Steve dropped the main successfully, Steve wrestling the main down onto the boom, sail ties in hand, on
a pitching and rolling cabin top slick with spray. Perhaps the drop was too successful, in retrospect, and much
too early. If only they had delayed the drop for another 100 yards, the marina turning basin would have offered
a huge safety factor for what happened next.
As soon as the main was dropped, the little boat became a wind-blown cork on the water’s surface, going
wherever the wind wanted. And the wind wanted it to go to the rocks on the western side of the harbor
entrance. Quickly.
“No helm!” Jay yells, to no one in particular.
“No Kidding!” Little Buddy yells, this time to Jay.
Mark yells “turn hard to port” as Jay simultaneously turns the boat to port, regaining some control.
A quick assessment has the little boat pointed south w/ maybe 30 feet between her and the rip-rap rocky
shore. And it’s into this narrow sliver of water the C&C charges. Perhaps ‘charges’ is a bit too colorful, as “fills”
or “defends” would better describe Mark’s action at the helm of the C&C.
LB tosses the tow line, Jim catches it, gets it chalked and cleated. The C&C circles, picks up the slack of the
tow line and heads into the marina. The little boat, much lighter, plays ‘crack the whip’ with the C&C and
accelerates, forcing Jim to fend off the bow and stern of the two boats.
The plan is to turn to port in the main E/W channel and dock at the first available T-dock. “OK, I think we can
do that” Jay thinks to himself. “Better tell Steve what to expect”.
Jay tells Steve “Steve, pretend you’re a carrier pilot and you’ve got one, maybe two, chances to catch this boat.
You gotta jump off, land clean on the dock, loop the line on a pillar and hold on.” Slight pause before “Got it?”
There’s nothing spoken, just a nod of the head.
The two boats turn into the channel and the plan changes, immediately. The first T-dock has a monster power
boat occupying its entire length. “What next?”
Mark yells “You’ve got to use the next one!"
Now it’s Jay’s turn to question someone’s sanity as he thinks “Are you nuts?" He’s seen the next dock and
thinks “There’s a power boat on the east end and not enough room past it. Plus, we’re picking up speed as the
wind blows on my stern.”
All this transpired in 5 seconds. Five seconds that seemed like an hour. “OK, here we go!”
Little Buddy threw off the tow line, first with a “Good luck, you’re on your own” and then with a yell to Tim, who
had emerged from his boat just in time to see the arrival of a mast moving much faster than anything he’d seen
before… within the harbor. “Go to P dock and help us get in!” LB yells.
The little boat, still accelerating, slid toward its intended space with a slalom ‘S’ maneuver, just missing the
stern of the power boat before running a parallel line along the T-dock. Jay’s thinking “What IS Plan B if we don’
t catch the dock?” Just then, Steve lands clean on the dock and loops a pier on his 2nd attempt. The dock
creaks, groans, strains and flexes under this sudden and unexpected load. The gloves Steve is wearing,
‘vintage West Marine’s’ (a euphemism for “worn out”), shred as the line buzzes through his hands. Jim, jumping
off as the bow arcs toward the dock, pushes against the boat’s remaining forward momentum and then against
the boat as it threatens the dock. Threat neutralized, without a scratch. Unbelievable.
All of a sudden, it’s quiet. The little boat is stopped, the 3 friends are safe, it’s well after 10:30 PM and they’re
no where near New Buffalo. But that’s OK, because they’re OK.
Postscript
The C&C, after throwing off the tow line, was in hard reverse headed west in the main channel as they
approached P dock, attempting to counter-act the force of the wind on its stern. Anything to slow the boat
down. Tim sprinted from his boat to P-Dock (setting a new world record for both his age and habits group)
arrived before the C&C and helped dock it successfully.
Medicinal beverages were consumed aboard Tim’s boat by the half-dozen participants in the adventure; the
tale reconstructed, embellished and retold into the wee hours of Saturday morning.
The 3 slept on board the little boat, rocked to sleep by the waves, the wind and the hum thrum of the shrouds.
The next morning, the three were awoken early by the roar of Cigarette boats headed into the huge waves on
the Lake for a ‘Poker Run’. They ate a breakfast of hot chicken noodle soup & fresh bread, originally planned
as lunch on the return trip. An hour later, they watched as one of the Cigarette boats churned back into
harbor, pushing a huge wake, boaters on the docks yelling for them to “slow down!” The response from the
boat was “We can’t!” as they pointed to a 3’ diameter hole in their port side just above the water line. On the
still violent lake, their boat had launched off a huge wave, sending them airborne, coming down suspended
between two waves, flexing the hull and shattering it. They’re lucky the boat didn’t snap into two and sink!
Attempts to bleed the diesel on the little boat proved fruitless. By noon, Don E. answered another ‘call’ by
providing 2 gallons of diesel and Arby’s for lunch. The diesel proved the tank wasn’t empty and the Arby’s
refilled three tanks that were empty.
Waiting for the taxi to the train station
The engine re-start effort was abandoned by 2 PM and the journey to the Metra Electric train began. The 3
were home by 5 PM; only 24 hours after their adventure began. Later that week, Crowley’s Yacht Yard
performed a Service Call to bleed and re-start the engine. Diagnosis: low fuel, sloshed in the tank by the large
waves, exposed the fuel pick-up to air. Air in a diesel = automatic shut down. Lesson learned: fill up before any
journey and don’t trust the fuel gauge. More importantly, take heed of “Small Craft Advisories”!
- ‘Small Craft’ Participants (alphabetical)
Mark Chiluski, Hammond Marina, s/v ‘Changing Channels’
Don Etter, Shore Support/Crew, ‘Changing Channels’ Whiting, IN
Jim Galiger, Crew ‘Blue Seiche’ Park Ridge, IL
Jay Grizzell, Monroe Harbor, s/v ‘Blue Seiche’
Tim Hill, Hammond Marina, s/v ‘Vixen’
Mark ‘Little Buddy’ Korduck, Crew, ‘Changing Channels’ Tinley Park, IL
Steve Tarpey, Crew ‘Blue Seiche’ Park Ridge, IL
| Small Craft Advisory (A Great Lake Tale) By Jay Grizzell |
