The Storm

Night of 6/30/11

Our second night in Saugatuck started off as any normal steamy hot summer evening does but this one ended with a twist... 

After enjoying an amazing dinner and ice cream in town we wandered back to the boat to enjoy a couple of drinks under the starry sky. A bit after turning in, we were abruptly awoken by huge drops of rain coming through the hatch that was wide open over our bed in the main salon. This has happened a few times that we have spent the night on Further and by now we know our roles on what we need to do to hunker down the boat. Since we had a couple of extra things out on the boat from the day it took us a couple minutes longer than usual to store everything that was out, mainly our makeshift sun shade. Brady, as he usually does, puts in a couple extra ties on the boat as well before a storm hits to make sure we are nice and secure. Usually that is that and we can easily head back to bed while the storm hits. 

Well, not this time... A little while after we got up and put all the things on the top of the boat away and hunkered down for the storm we were once again woken up, not by the thunder, lightning or the heavy sheets of rain that was pounding on our deck but by the storm seiche that was very quickly raising the level of the Kalamazoo River and slamming us hard over and over again into the dock that we were attached to. After taking a couple of minutes to figure out what was happening we jumped into action since we were afraid Further would get damaged if we did nothing. That and we were hitting the dock so hard we weren't able to sleep! We both put on our rain jackets and headed outside to figure out what to do. We might as well have gone out in our clothes since it took about 2.5 seconds of being out in the rain for us to be soaked to the bone. 

There was a piling to our left that was about 15 feet away that we were trying to lasso with no success. Brady tried over and over again but it was just far enough for us not to reach. We tried to use our boat hook and place the rope over the pilling but once again, we were just out of reach to get the rope over. Finally after about 10-15 minutes of madness, and being serenaded by the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald playing in the background - fitting right?!?, one of us come up with the brilliant idea of walking our line to one of the large front dock cleats about 40 feet away to help inch us closer to the piling. This was a feat in itself since the storm surge was coming in SO quickly it felt like Further was going to be pulled under the dock! It was SO incredibly hard to move her at all. I honestly don't know how we did it but thankfully we were able to slowly inch Further off the dock and move us securely to the center of the slip so that we could avoid any damage and finally get some sleep! 

I wish I could have been watching us during this situation. I'm sure we looked like a couple of crazy people doing who knows what in the middle of a storm. I'm sure the situation wasn't a quarter as bad as we thought it was during our reverie state of mind. In the middle of this chaos, someone guy did yell and ask Brady if we were about to head out in the storm. I'm sure we looked like we had no idea what we were doing. Chalk it up to another lesson learned.

Next time we will be sure to use ALL available pilings to secure us away from the dock when on a river, because the seiche on the Michigan side of the lake, especially when on a river is a lot stronger than in Chicago!