Sailing the New Boat Home
John Pecha
Stormy weather was predicted for the U.P. as I drove the 8 ½ hours from Harrison Twp. to Marinette, WI on my way to inspect and test sail a prospective 1984 Catalina 30 TRBS. I ran into a severe thunderstorm about ten miles north of Menominee, but the weather began to break and I continued on. As I drove through Menominee I saw more weather moving in. Arriving at Nest Egg Marine the salesman came out of the marine store and hurried me inside just as the tornado sirens sounded. One of the dock workers has a photo of the waterspout. We talked to a couple in a Catalina 27 caught in the storm who saw three waterspouts on the bay, verified by the U.S. Weather Service.
The inspection and test sail were fantastic. With 18 – 20 knot winds she sailed beautifully. The previous owner was into teak to say the least. I knew I had a prize. I negotiated a deal on the spot. The following week the marina called and told me they had a hail storm and all the Windex’s in the marina were either damaged or destroyed, mine included. I also have a copy of newspaper photo with that storm. I knew I had to rescue her soon. I managed to put together a crew of three.
We set out early in the morning, but lost 3½ hours dropping off the rental truck in Green Bay and didn’t set sail until 9:30 that evening. I had the watch until 2:00 AM. We observed lightning to the north-northwest approaching until about 11:30 when it seemed someone switched off the power and the storm dissipated. I set up the watches at 3 hour intervals, three hours on watch then three hours on the helm. To break up the times I scheduled the watches to be at two hour intervals between midnight and 6:00 AM. I was back on at 6:00 AM.
Since I didn’t have a crew I thought was capable of handling sails in the dark, I limited sailing to daylight hours when I was on deck. I had made this trip twice prior and both times 95% of the time was spent motoring. We were able to raise the sails for about four hours during that time. Then the wind began changing direction and I ordered sails lowered as I was off watch at that time
My next watch was from 6:00 PM to Midnight. This took us from south of Gray’s reef to past the Mackinaw Bridge. Once past Gray’s reef we were able to raise the jib and sail on it to just past the Mac. We had planned on stopping at Mackinaw City for dinner and refueling. But we didn’t get there until almost 10:00 PM and by that time both the fuel depot and marina were closed, so we pushed on. About 11:30 PM I noticed we had lightning both to the north-west and south-west coming our way. While were watching I noticed some of the lights on the Big Mac had gone out. Closer attention to this observation proved to be a little bit ominous. I realized that the lights had not gone out. This was an outline…of a big ship heading for us.
I saw both her port and starboard lights and immediately turned to starboard toward the L.P. At first all seemed OK, but then I noticed her starboard light disappear. I realized the freighter had made the same coarse correction I had and was still heading for us. I then broke out the spotlight, made an abrupt coarse change south as fast as I could and signaled the freighter with the spotlight. This worked and the ocean freighter quickly passed us. The spotlight had made the difference. It was one of my crew who
had made sure it was on deck. The evening cooling had also made sure the thunderstorms dissipated before they reached us.
I awoke for the next watch at 4:00 AM. The crew brought to my attention that since we had missed the opportunity to refuel at Mackinaw City we were now at less than ¼ of a tank. We had a five gallon spare, so that was not a problem. Since we had planned breakfast and refueling at Presque Isle Harbor, I did the math and determined we had enough fuel to make our destination without stopping to refuel. Sunrise that morning proved one of the most colorful I have ever seen. Reds, oranges, blues, yellows, and many more colors I couldn’t name. I did manage to take a picture of it and a second with one of the crew in the foreground. I used the flash on the second and he looks superimposed into the photo. We arrived in the harbor at 7:30 AM with 2 ½ gallons to spare. Unfortunately, the restaurant there did not open until 11:00 AM.
While we were waiting, we received disturbing weather data indicating we were in for severe weather. So we decided to set sail once the storms past. Breakfast turned into a disappointment as they only served lunch. So we settled for that and waited it out by doing chores and exploring the surrounding area. Presque Isle Harbor is a beautiful location. It has a natural harbor shielded from the open water. Several sailboats were anchored there making one of the more picturesque sights of the trip. The marina is clean and in very good condition. Even though the predictions from NOAA sounded dire, no severe weather developed. The wind changed and picked up but nothing else. As a state facility, the harbor has limited access to weather data. Their computers are online but the providers only allow NOAA access to the radar site and the images were about two to four hours old. I didn’t want to take the crew into the open water portion of the trip into a storm with 70 mph. winds, lightening, and hail. About 5:00 PM a 47 ft. Beneteau pulled into the harbor. I went over to their slip and inquired about the weather they encountered and told them my situation. It turned out they had sailed from the St. Clair Shores. The skipper invited me aboard, turned on his laptop, hooked up to his network via satellite and downloaded the latest radar and wind data. “That should ease your mind, you look clear to go”. There was only a small thunderstorm in Saginaw Bay and that would be long gone by the time we got there. We ate diner at a local pizzeria and departed about 7:30 PM. The winds were light and from the south, so we motored on.
I had the 2-6 AM watch after 5 hours of sleep. There was no wind at all, the lake was like glass. We could see our wake and path for miles. Once off watch at 6:00 AM, I thought the crew would like a real breakfast. So I made coffee, cooked scrambled eggs and sausage and served with bagels and orange juice. As we finished breakfast we ran into fog with visibility barely 1/16 of a mile. So for a couple of hours we were forced to periodically slow down and listen for other ships. I had brought along a Hawaiian conch shell for show but it came in handy. When blown properly, it made a louder and deeper sound than the air horn we had. About an hour out of the fog we had a lake freighter pass inside of our heading by a ½ mile or so, even though we had planned our course inside of the shipping lanes. We adjusted course to head