The Edmund Fitzgerald Revisited

South Haven

So on Sunday Sue, Anna and my self set out for south Haven 22 miles down the coast. The skies looked somewhat threatening but it looked like we would make it with a decent margins to spare. And we did. We actually got very little rain on the cruise. We arrived at the DNR marina and tied up to the face wall on the Kalamazoo river and settled in. Remember this little detail. My sister Patty was there to greet us. We had some lunch aboard to wait out the weather as it had started to rain. Fortunately it let up and we were able to explore the town. They have a very nice brand new maritime museum full of displays both indoor and out. I had been watching the weather a bit as the forecast was for some brisk winds over night. Sue did her usual magic in the galley and we enjoyed supper aboard. It was a bit rolly on the face dock but nothing too severe. Anna was pretty tired from her travels the night before so was eager to hit the rack early. Unfortunately her efforts were in vain. About midnight the winds picked up substantially which woke me as the boat began to hit the dock. I went outside to adjust the lines and saw that there was 1’ swells in the river and the wind was blowing 25-30 mph.

 

The boat was dancing so much Anna and Sue abandoned ships and went into the boaters lounge and posted up on the couches. As any good captain would do I remained with the ship. About a half hour later thing went from bad to worse. The winds were a steady 30-40 mph gusting to 45 with 2’ swells at the dock. The fight was on to save Next Chapter. I deployed every line and fender I had on board.

 

I even deployed the anchor and pulled the anchor rode onto the dock to lash it to a piling 75’ away to take the strain of the dock lines. The lines groaned and stretched like I have never seen. The fenders almost went totally flat looking like they would burst at any moment. At about 2am I gave up the fight and took the position that I had done all I could.

 

I crawled into the bucking bronco and went to bed. Crazy enough I passed out because the next thing I knew it was light out. Although it was still pretty rough it had settled down a good bit. Even better news Next Chapter had survived with the exception of a few scratches in the gel coat. What a night and one for an exciting blog post. My crew returned from the boat house looking a bit tired also but not too worse for ware. The winds were not projected to lay down until late in the day so we stayed in port. Anna and I rode bikes around and enjoyed some great time together. We also had the opportunity to meet and have lunch with Bryan VanReesema’s cousin who is interested in doing the Great Loop. Good old fashion Michigan guy. He cracked us up when he told us he had dropped a tree on his wife cutting it down. Good news is she is still married to her. We really hope they get to do the Loop. The Great Lakes are no joke. They eat freighters like the famous Edmund Fitzgerald. Thank god they did not eat Next Chapter. Like the song,”Oh what a night.”