| The Storm by Jim Hurt | |
|
So
we turned around and were once again heading back toward the piers.
In disbelief, I watched the one-foot chop turn into two-foot waves and
start white capping in a matter of seconds!
I could tell by the look on Fred's face that he was seeing and feeling
the same thing I was. There was
now a very stiff wind blowing in our faces as we looked toward the clouds on
the horizon. Fred took charge.
"Jim,
reel in those lines and planner boards. We’re
getting out of here!" he yelled.
As
I was handing him his life jacket, I was putting mine on.
We always had them on when we were under power but would usually take
them off when we were just trolling on calm water.
Neither of us had to even think about whether we needed them right at
this moment.
"Maybe
you better put it in neutral and reel too, Fred.
Look at that!" I said pointing out toward the lake.
I
had just noticed that every single boat which had launched out of St. Joseph
that morning was coming back into port. You
could also tell that they were not taking their time.
It looked to me like things were developing into a panic situation.
I didn't yet know what kind of problems we faced, but at thirty-one, I
knew that it was not a good idea to panic in any situation.
By
now, the boat was rocking quite a bit because we were parallel to the waves. It is hard enough to stand in a boat that is rocking back and
forth like ours was, let alone trying to reel the lines in quickly.
By this time, the wind was blowing spray off the tops of the white
caps, and to be quite honest, I was scared!
We had both reeled in two rods and had just thrown them onto the floor
of the boat. This was no time to
worry about being neat or losing a rod and reel.
We needed to worry about things more important than rods and reels.
"Jim,
get those planner boards in here if you can.
I am taking us to the pier right now!" Fred said with just a touch
of panic in his voice.
"Just go! Don't worry about the planner boards!" I tried to yell over my shoulder, but I could tell the wind just blew my words away and Fred probably never heard any of it as he drove the boat. I did somehow manage to get the planner boards in while kneeling on the deck. I held the mast with one hand and reeled with the other as hard as I could. Fred is experienced and capable behind the wheel of a boat, so I wasn’t too concerned once we were under power and headed for the piers.
We were close enough that it took only a few minutes to get there. With just the right touch on the throttle, Fred was able to keep the boat in the troughs between the waves so that we could make good time. We were thinking that as soon as we got inside the pier heads, our problems would be over.
There
were several boats, maybe even a hundred or so, getting back to the piers at
about the same time we did. Most
were more typical Lake Michigan worthy crafts of twenty five to thirty feet,
and since they were in a hurry, they were throwing up some pretty big wakes. There is supposed to be a slow, no-wake zone inside the
piers, but I think most of those guys were more worried about saving their
skin and their boats than about the no-wake zone.
What they probably didn't fully realize at the time is that not
everybody coming into the piers had boats as big as theirs.
Some were still throwing up three to four foot rollers as they slowed
down at the mouth of the pier.
We
also had the trick of getting in line. We
had been heading perpendicular to the piers coming in from the north. Most of the other boats were coming in from out in the lake
farther to the West and headed strait in. We had to time a left-hand turn
behind a boat where there was
enough room, and in front of the next boat.
With the waves and chop at the mouth of the piers, you could not stop
and wait for someone to politely invite you in! If you weren't moving, you were in danger of capsizing.
Fred and I both spotted a gap we thought would work.
I pointed at it, and he headed for it immediately.
There were two boats coming in with enough room for us to go
between them without making the one in back slow down.
Once we got through the gap, there was a pretty good size opening
before you got to the next line of boats. That gap gave us room to make the
turn to head inside the piers.
We got between the two boats okay and I quickly
glanced at the face of the captain of the boat we were passing.
He was nodding as if to say, “Go ahead and go through, I won't run
over you.”
We had to climb up over the roller of the boat we
followed, and as soon as we got up over it and down into a relatively flat
trough, Fred deftly started his turn left.
Everything was going fine, but as we completed the turn, the thing that
neither of us had seen coming happened.
Next page > Almost Safe But Almost Sunk > Page 1, 2, 3, 4
