Single Handed, Lake Michigan Storm story

Here's another story from this summer:

"GLSS members, GLSS Single Handed Challenge, June 15, 2002:

With all records lost I’m trying to recreate my race while memory is fresh.

Departing Chicago at 8:00AM local, I had a late start but worked well through the fleet. By the 12:00PM radio check, most of the other boats and the Chicago skyline where out of site. Around 1:00PM I skirted a small thunderstorm, took a wind bump with full working sails and hit around eighteen knots-- up until 2:00 I had seen no speed under nine and must have averaged close to ten. About twenty miles east-southeast of Milwaukee things slowed. The weather channel forecast a thunderstorm, moving southeast at twenty out of Port Washington, with sixty knots of wind and hail possible. At 3:30PM, due east of Milwaukee now, the storm’s roll cloud looked behind me moving off southeast. Just a spike of wind out northeast was visible, so I decided to do a bump and run like before-- about the only smart thing from here on was donning my Mustang Suit and heavy hat. With full sails I was moving at nine knots, when the seas were flattened with wind-- I would guess around sixty knots. I threw off all sheets and headed downwind-- from nine knots boat speed to twenty in seconds. At twenty-four knots, there was a loud bang and the boat pitch-poled. When it hit ninety degrees, I jumped. The dagger board flew out unsecured three feet from my head and then the nets settled over me, pressing me two feet below the surface. With the floatation suit pushing me up, it was a hard swim out. Harnessed in, I would have drowned. I surfaced outside the ama glad to be hit on the head by golf-ball sized hailstones. All this happened in a two-minute time frame. Inspection of the hull showed the stem zippered open and leeward skin and aka delaminated. That’s what tripped the boat.

When the sun cleared the clouds, I threw off my cotton stuff, dried out the inside of the suite as best I could and waited for sails on the horizon. I guess the radio checks, set for every four hours, came and went. With the air/water temperature about 60/60, I was cold but OK. Cal Karr came by 3:30AM local. Within fifty feet of me, asleep in his cockpit, engine charging, he heard me. I am forever greatful.

Twelve hours sitting on the slippery hull of an inverted fifty foot trimaran is what you might call, “time to think”.

Please consider the following:



1. All multihulls in a GLSS event must have inverted egress, opened easily, without need of tools. After all, some sail naked. Call it Matt’s rule.

2. All participants must carry on them, at all times, a small waterproof VHF and a personal EPIRB. (Radio checks are good for morale, but don’t work in the case of a serious emergency.)

3. Dock checks should be given at the start of the race, not at the end. (Cal and I had a few beers with Tim Kent in Milwaukee. Tim said in the Vendee, “if you don’t pass inspection at the dock, before the race, you don’t go”. We need inspections in Chicago and Port Huron. Not later on the Island when inspections are nothing but draconian—like a bad Big-Mac. We are not about deducting points and places. We are about being safe.

4. Keep those jack lines in the center of the boat with as short a tether as you can stand. So your feet hit the water, not your head!



As I write this, “Lucretia” is right side up in Waukegan after a thirty-mile tow. Damage to her hull is bad, but certainly repairable. Mast, boom and sails are OK. I’m OK. And… if I’m ten miles from a thunderstorm, you can bet I’ll have a third reef in—we’ve got just so much good luck allocated in this life.

Sail pretty and I’ll see you soon,

Fred Ball"